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An Unfortunate Misunderstanding

8/27/2014

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A number of years ago Reese and I were driving to a friend's house. Mindy wasn’t with us at the time. Reese, in her own words, “was sleepy of driving,” so she asked how far we were from our destination.


We were close, really close. So close that I said to her, "Reese, you could hold your breath and by the time you let it out, we'd be there."


Reese was silent for a moment as she considered her response.


Then she replied, "Breasts. When I big girl I have breasts. Like Mommy's. I happy then. Breasts. To go with the baby in my tummy. The baby get bigger and bigger. Then come out. That all will make me happy."

“Reese, I said ‘breath,’ not ‘breasts.’”

“Oh,” she said.

Where to begin? (Sigh….Smile.)

What strikes me looking back on the moment is how far and how fast Reese and I journeyed down a strange path simply because of a mishearing, a misunderstanding.

Sometimes misunderstandings can be funny, of course. Such is the power behind something like Abbott and Costello's classic comedy riff "Who's on First.”.

And it was the engine behind the humor in an article I remember about mistakes on job-seeker cover letters. Two of my favorites: “I’m attacking my resume for you,” and, “Dear Sir or Madman.”

But the costs of misunderstanding can be real. The same article indicated that in a poll one out of five executives noted that a single typo would cost the applicant the job.

Early Christians knew a lot about mishearings and misunderstandings. They ran into trouble at times because the larger culture often considered them odd. And even worse, people in the larger culture sometimes said that Christians were cannibals.

Why? Because during their worship gatherings Christians were said to eat the flesh and drink the blood of a man named Jesus.


And saying such things wasn’t without precedent from Jesus himself, of course. The Christian story itself said Jesus held up a loaf of bread and said it was his body; he held up a cup of wine and said it was his blood.

Besides this, if you read chapter six in the gospel of John a large part of the chapter has to do with this sort of misunderstanding. Some people in the story ask, with disgust I’m sure, how Jesus can serve up his flesh for a meal. Others up and leave Jesus because it all seems too weird.

So, what’s going on here?

For one thing, there’s the misunderstanding. Some Christians are vegetarians and others “meatatarians,” but all of us agree (I hope) that literally snacking on people (even Jesus) is not an acceptable practice. It’s important to clear up that issue in case it ever becomes a problem with someone you’re talking to about Christian faith.

But, there’s something else too. Something deeper, I think. There’s the deep reality behind Jesus’ powerful language.

If we are Christians, we are confessing that we draw our life and strength ultimately through what God is doing through Jesus. We confess that somehow the strength, love, and wisdom of Jesus are within us. Sometimes they comfort us, but other times they challenge us to dream new dreams and reach out to others in new ways. And, as Christians we seek to live out this confession through the way we spend our time, our money, our words, and our deeds.


In such ways we say it is true indeed that even though we aren’t cannibals, Jesus is truly our food and drink. It is from him that our life and energy come.

Ancient people weren’t idiots. I’m sure most people heard the gossip and didn’t really think Christian people ate other people for dinner. In fact, I bet many of them used the “cannibal” gossip as a way of avoiding the real power within the language, the real call to follow Jesus for themselves.

You see, “eating a diet of Jesus” caused his followers to welcome people the world around them found worthless. It caused them to reach out across barriers of class and background that most people imagined were impossible to overcome.

“Eating a diet of Jesus” led them to share their daily bread with shocking generosity in a world often thought not to have enough to go around, a world of “I get mine and you get what’s leftover.” It led them to speak about the freedom of God within a culture where most people were slaves.

It led them to seek to be the hands and feet of Jesus at home and with strangers. It led them to forgive people instead of seek revenge upon them. It led them to lay down the weapons of war and bless others, even those who cursed them. 

To many people, all this made Christians seem a little bit odd – not cannibal weird, but still plenty weird. And sometimes it made them look wonderful. It made them look like the coming of heaven to earth. It made them look like Jesus himself.

Am I weird like that? At least a little? Are you? What would it look like to be weird like that?



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I Clean Your Feet Now?

7/16/2014

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I remember a truly odd experience from back when Reese was two-years-old.

It was an hour or so after the Sunday worship service and the two of us were in my office. I was trying desperately to doze off while Reese was trying just as desperately to keep me awake. Neither of us seemed ready to give in to the other.

Then Reese said something out of nowhere that I didn’t expect. Like she often did back then, she said it in such a way that the words read on paper as a command, but her intonation makes them sound like a question. She said, “I clean your feet now?”

And she did.

I hung my feet over the side of the chair. We worked off my shoes and socks. She grabbed some of her diaper wipes and went to work. She buffed the top of my feet and scraped at their bottoms.

She separated each of my toes and plucked around for sock lint, which at the time she called, “Toe Jam.” (And I’ll have you know that no matter what she says to you, I didn’t have any.) Reese kept cleaning way longer than I thought she would. She barely said a word as she worked. As odd as it sounds to say it, it was really quite relaxing.

If you spend a little time around Reese you usually notice quickly that – despite her myriad fantastic qualities – she tends to be assertive, intense, mildly aggressive, and loud. Reese doesn’t take orders well and will often seek to avoid doing what she is asked to do (unless she is simultaneously asking herself to do the exact same thing at the exact same time).  

But here she was humbly serving me, caring for me. It was a shock. Why was she doing it?

Surely there were a lot of reasons. During that stage of her life, Reese liked to pick at her own Toe Jam, for instance. (Thankfully this chapter has closed.) But, she probably also remembered, perhaps just distantly, the previous year when as part of the congregation’s Maundy Thursday worship service, Reese had her own feet washed by her mother.

But why did that happen in a worship service of all places?

It was because of the 13th chapter of John’s gospel story about Jesus. As the chapter begins, Jesus, who John takes great pains to say is the presence of the one, true God in our flesh and blood, strips down to his underwear and goes to work cleaning the Toe Jam out of his disciples’ feet.

The disciples are shocked, as well they should be. That’s not the way the “real world” works, right? Everything should be all about Jesus as big and powerful Lord waving his power around and the lowly disciples washing his feet. It shouldn’t be the other way round. It shouldn’t be about them and their dirty feet.

At the close of the chapter, Jesus tells the same friends that he has a new commandment for them (the word for the worship service, maundy, comes from the Latin word for command). His people are to love one another as he has loved them.

Clearly this must, at least in part, draw from and be illustrated by the foot washing that just happened. The take-away is that through such “love in action” the world will know that we are his. And, in this moment others may see that Jesus is a new type of Lord worth knowing for themselves.

Reese didn’t know this story about Jesus yet, at least in all its details. But she had seen it in action. Not only through actual foot washing, but through acts of shocking generosity and “it’s not about me” care she’d received from people who identify themselves with Jesus. And so, even as headstrong and bullheaded as she was (and is sometimes), Reese was starting to understand such an act of service and love is normal for the friends of Jesus.

As I close I would offer that this is the only sort of “normal” that will help the church survive and the world thrive in the years to come.

Having Reese wash my feet was wildly unexpected, but it was even more wildly wonderful.


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Shoplifting

5/22/2014

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When Reese was two-years-old she shoplifted.

She was with her mother when it happened. (This is not to say that her mother caused the theft or that Reese wouldn’t have thieved with me by her side instead of her mom). Reese stole from a Michael’s craft store while she was there with Mindy picking up flowers with which to decorate the cross for an Easter worship service.

Apparently, while Mindy wasn’t looking, Reese grabbed a piece of fancy, clear, gelatinous soap with a bird figurine in it. Reese put it in her Cookie Monster backpack. Then she zipped the bag up and made sure not to tell Mindy what she’d done. Mindy bought the flowers, and they left the store. It seems Reese thought the soap was food and had plans to eat it.

Mindy didn’t find the soap until later in the day. She explained to Reese why this action wasn’t a good thing. Then she took Reese back to the store and had her cough up the soap along with an apology.

Thankfully, the police were not called.

I know how it happened. I mean, I know how Reese learned the mechanics of what she did.

By the age of two she’d watched us shop dozens of times. She’d seen her parents put items in bags at stores. Reese had even signed a credit card receipt for me once. At home on a number of occasions she’d picked up a wicker basket and placed all manner of things in it. When I asked Reese what she was doing, she said, “I shopping.” 

She already had the mechanics of shopping down, but Reese lacked an understanding of the proper context for shopping (like the silly, cultural practice of actually paying for things with money). And without this understanding, Reese’s shopping became stealing.

I’ve noticed a similar context issue in the way I read the Bible and allow God to use scripture to influence my life. And, it’s an important issue. If you mess up the context, you can miss the real power of the story. If you miss the power of the story, you can miss Christ alive and on the move in your world, in your life.

Here’s a small example for me having to do with the “Palm Sunday” story we read the Sunday before Easter.

You might remember the story about Jesus entering Jerusalem for the final time on a humble donkey. A crowd of people line the road leading to the city gates. They spread their jackets on the road before him, wave branches, and shout praises.

I automatically put this story in the context of “Sunday religious service.” However, before it became this, the context of the actual event was more like a political protest parade.

The people were unhappy with the way their governmental, economic, and religious institutions were living. They saw Jesus as God’s answer to these problems. Jesus responds by climbing on a donkey as a way of evoking the imagery of the prophet Zechariah. In doing this, he seems to be saying, “I am your victorious ruler, but I come humbly and in peace.”

Meditate on that for a moment. The parade was about Jesus as a peaceful king seeking to change the world before it became a religious parade celebrating a Jesus who keeps our souls out after we die. How might that change in context influence how we are followers of Jesus?

If we will let it, whether it’s a Bible story, a conversation, or an action, paying attention to the proper context can shift the way we live in the world in a wonderful way. But, without a sense of proper context, bad things can and do happen.

In such a world, even toddlers shoplift.



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Playing Hospital

5/6/2014

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When Reese was a year and a half old she turned our living room into a hospital.


She decided that our loveseat was a hospital bed shared by T.C. and My Friend, two of her baby dolls. She delicately placed a pillow under both their heads and covered them with blankets.

“They are not doin’ well,” Reese told me. “They sick. They in hospital.”

At one point Reese asked me to pray for them. I said I would.

I put my right hand on My Friend’s arm. Reese, of her own accord, took my left hand in her right. Then I asked Reese to put her left hand on T.C.’s arm. She did. I prayed a simple prayer, pausing after each line to let Reese say it herself. After the “amen,” I showed Reese how to give a gentle kiss of peace on the doll’s forehead. I kissed My Friend. She kissed T.C.

A day or so after our prayer meeting, I wasn’t feeling well and lying on the living room sofa. Reese walked by. On a whim, I asked her to pray for me. She did so – eagerly. For the most part, I couldn’t understand what she was saying, although I could pick up an occasional “feel better” or “Jesus.” And, of course, her speech ended with an “amen.”

Why did she turn the living room into a hospital? Why was she so interested in prayers for healing and peace?

It occurred to me that Reese had been on a number of hospital visits with Mindy right around the same time. So, Reese had stood beside the hospital beds and heard the prayers and seen the peaceful touches. Now she was playing them out, practicing them, pretending them through her dolls. Through her play, Reese was trying this aspect of Christian service on for size.

This play and pretending is a critical part of how she processes life and matures.

A number of times Mindy and I have heard Reese scolding her stuffed animals for the very same things for which we’ve scolded her. My mother-in-law for years worked as a counselor of families and children. With kids she often used play therapy to allow them to grapple with life’s challenges by pretending them out with toys.

It seems to me that as we age we should not give up this healthy play as a way of growing, especially if we are seeking to grow into more fully-formed followers of Jesus.

Along these lines, I remember the house-building mission trips I’ve taken to northern Mexico.

There is a lot about such a trip that is not play. The gut-wrenching poverty and the desperate need for livable housing are not in the least bit “playful.” But, in a different sense, a mission trip is all about holy, Christian play.  

Think about it. A group of people go somewhere distant from the normal patterns of home to “try-on” what it’s like to live, even for a few days, as a more focused community of Jesus. We share our resources. We make ourselves available to one another. We make times of prayer and praise a priority for us a community. We live as if the mission given us by Christ was the most important thing we had going on in our lives. And we call ourselves to look at those we are working with through the compassionate eyes of Jesus.

In the best sense possible, such groups play at being more intentionally and clearly Christian, if even only for a few days. At while we play, it really happens.

In essence, it is very much like what Reese was doing as she played chaplain of her makeshift hospital, and this is a very good thing. If we will let it, such play can help us grow in faith, hope, and love – not just for a few days, but perhaps for the rest of our natural lives and beyond.

What quality of Christ would you like to try on for size through this type of “play therapy”? Who knows? By pretending in such a way you may find that the Lord has actually made it yours.



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Identity, Faith, and the Ladies' Room

4/17/2014

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I remember when Reese was a baby, and it used to be so easy.

Reese and I would be in a store together, and the time would come when I had to take her with me into the men’s room – either for my sake or to change her diaper. When Reese was a baby, we would take care of bathroom business swiftly and smoothly without any static from Reese.

But then Reese became a toddler. Then, when it came time to use a public restroom, she was full of protest.

“I want to go to girls’ room. Mommy takes me to girls’ room for potty,” Reese would say.

“I can’t go there, Reese. I am a boy.”

“But I want to. I a girl.”

“I know you would prefer that, Reese. But I can’t go there. And you’re not old enough to go by yourself. I’m a boy. It’s illegal for me to go to the girls’ room. I’m sorry.”

(The conversation would spin around and around like this for another minute or two, and then finally…)

“But, Reese, I’m a boy. I have to use the boys’ room. I can’t got to the girls’ room.”

Then she’d pat me on the leg and she’d say, “It’s OK, Daddy. It’s OK. Someday. Someday.”

The end of the exchange almost made the rest of it worth it. Reese seemed to think that me being a boy was a developmental problem. I think she probably still feels that way and may still have that perspective twenty years from now – depending on the men she meets along the way.

Reese’s toddler resistance had nothing to do with being uncomfortable in the men’s room. Once we would finally get through the debate, and I would win, she would be willing to go with me, and she’d ponder the oddity of men’s room urinals while we did what we had to do.

The resistance had to do, I think, with a growing sense of her personal identity.

Reese wanted to be in the women’s restroom because she was a woman, albeit in early, teeny-tiny form. Of course, to a certain extent, Mindy and I helped educate her into this identity. Surely this training worked in concert with the inborn female leanings Reese must surely have had. In our toileting debates, Reese was beginning to claim that deep identity for herself.

I am (toddler) woman; hear me roar (about going to the men’s room at Target).

This is how it’s worked with other identities, of course.

At the same age, when Reese would see a cross or a crucifix she’d often say, “Jesus is on that. He has ‘owies’. I want him to feel better.” 

When we’d do bedtime prayers, after the Lord’s Prayer, Reese would start naming people in her life she wanted to see receive a special helping of God’s care. She’d often name people we would have never expected her to think of. Then Reese started also giving thanks for favorite toys and blankets. I didn’t see that coming, but I should have.

We taught Reese these types of things. It’s part of being born into a Christian family, I suppose.

But as a toddler Reese began claiming them for herself.

She started to practice the faith herself.

In reality, it’s the same thing I still do in my 40s. I learn more about my faith from others. I sense things from within. Then I try these practices out and take them in new directions that fit with my identity and my calling from God.

Despite our different developmental stages, Reese and I were – and still are – doing pretty much the same thing. We are trying to follow Jesus in the day-in-day-out details of our real lives. I don’t think there’s another way to do it, really.

I just wish that back then, when Reese was a toddler, Jesus would have told her to take it easy on me when out of necessity I had to take her to the men’s room.



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Like / No Like

4/10/2014

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Being behind the times technologically can save you a little money every now and again.

Periodically over the years, Mindy and I have purchased VHS tapes for Reese. Yes, you heard me correctly. VHS tapes. We still have two working VCRs. Yes, you heard me correctly.

You see, we can go to a thrift store and get Reese a movie for a dollar or two. If Reese hates a particular selection, or if the tape breaks, it’s no big deal. Only a buck lost.

One time a number of years back, I had Reese in a thrift store, and we were choosing a movie. She was advocating for this lame-looking and needless sequel to Beauty and the Beast. I was advocating for a lesser work in Disney’s classic animation canon, The Rescuers.

I offered it to Reese and told her I thought she would really enjoy it. She took (literally) a second to look at the front of the box, and said with all the finality of a death sentence, “I no like this.” I told her she hadn’t even seen it, but it didn’t matter.

At the time Reese was very busy dividing the entire world into two categories. I guess it’s a little like how Genesis said God divided the primordial world into day and night. For Reese the categories were “I like” and “I no like”.

Sometimes Reese not liking something meant she was interested in something else at that particular moment. Sometimes it meant she simply hadn’t tried whatever she’d condemned. Sometimes it meant she was scared of it. And, of course, other times it meant the most obvious thing – she had experienced it and found it lacking.

Now I know that this process of evaluation is an essential part of life for all of us. We can’t function without it. I know my “like/no like” meter turns on all the time. Sometimes it seems to switch on all by itself, almost without my knowledge.

One day I saw a movie (on DVD, not VHS) and was telling Mindy about it the next morning. Out of nowhere I mentioned that it was actually a movie where, in my estimation, the male actors were better looking that the females.

Huh? Apparently my like/no like meter was running while I watched the film. This comment was my way of saying “I no like” the looks of the women in this movie. I didn’t even realize I was sizing people up that way as I watched the film.

This “like/no like” is part of life and useful, I suppose, as long as it doesn’t become the only voice we hear or the center of our heart’s universe. I may like something (someone) or not like it (her), but what does God think? What do the Christian virtues of compassion and kindness say? What about the needs of the other person, the one I am so coldly evaluating?

In all of this dwells the deep danger of “no liking” someone else to the point of treating them like a devil or assuming the other person must have a one-way ticket to Hell since you “no like” them.

There’s an old saying that goes like this: Question -- “What did Jesus say to the prostitute?” Answer – “Jesus never met a prostitute.” The sense is that even when Jesus met a prostitute he didn’t see her that way.

I don’t agree. I’m pretty sure when Jesus met a prostitute, or a traitorous tax man, or a Roman soldier, or his betrayer, he knew who he was dealing with on that obvious level. Like all of us, he had a “like/no like” evaluation meter thing going on behind his eyes.

But Jesus is the Son of God. There were other voices within him. This prostitute was also a person showing him unsurpassed kindness. This tax man could become a sign of how far God’s love can reach. This foreign soldier occupying his country may have faith unmatched even by God’s own people. This betrayer did not have the power to ultimately turn back God’s mission to resurrect the world.

The Apostle Paul suggests this isn’t just for Jesus. The way Paul puts it to the church in his second letter to Corinth, Greece is this:

            16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come!”

Saying “I like this” or “I don’t like that” is a necessary part of living in this world. Sure. But allowing God’s Spirit to speak a deeper voice within us to guide us beyond those likes and dislikes is more necessary still. It is a necessary part of living in God’s new world begun in Jesus Christ.


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She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain

4/4/2014

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After a nap when Reese was two and a half and we were living in Phoenix, I took her to Lookout Mountain. I had a plan in mind.

We’d never been there before. It was near the house. The weather was gorgeous. And I figured it would be a few minutes of outdoor fun for both of us. So, I convinced Reese we were going to “a special park”, and she was happy to go along with my plan. At first.

The last time I took Reese to a mountain had been quite a while before. I had carried her up the trail a couple of hundred of yards, turned her around to see the view, let her touch a rock, told her not to touch a cactus, and carried her back to the car.

I knew that Reese was now a little older and more mobile, but I expected the experience to turn out more or less the same as it had before. Seeing that the Lookout Mountain trail was rated “moderate” (not easy) and extended a couple of miles as it wrapped around the mountain, this expectation made complete sense to me. I was sure I would end up carrying her as far as I could, and that would be that.

But that was not Reese’s idea. Not in the least.

She insisted on walking from the start. She moved with her head down as she picked her way quickly along the rocky path. She ran at every opportunity. She led. Over and over she said, “I can do it. I can.”

We came to a turn-around point, at least in my mind. I let her see the view and showed her how far we were above the car. I told her it was time to go back.

She said, “No. Forward.”

I asked her why not back.

She said, “I go around the mountain. I mean it.”

“You’re not kidding?”

“No. I not kidding. I mean it.”

Forward we went. All the way around the mountain we went. She didn’t run out of gas until over two-thirds of the way around. She only fell once. She gave me advice on when I needed to be careful so I wouldn’t fall.

It was amazing.

People grow up. Now I don’t mean that in a negative way, like when one adult says to another adult during an argument, “C’mon, grow up!” I mean it in a positive way, an essential, yet wonderful and often brilliant and surprising way.

The Apostle Paul moved from place to place across the Roman Empire raising the flag of God’s good news of Jesus in public places. He kept his eyes and ears open for people who saluted the gospel flag and wanted to follow this Jesus. He organized them into raw little communities of worship, mutual care, and love to the neighbors around them. He noticed a few people who might make good leaders. Then he moved on.

Paul would stay in touch, answer questions, visit from time to time, and offer input on issues from afar. That’s why we have letters from him retained for us in what we call the New Testament. But, if the Holy Spirit didn’t get into the people, raise them, help them grow up into people who acted as Jesus’ representatives where they were, the whole experiment failed. No church.

A fair amount of what we have in some of Paul’s letters has to do with the harsher, “C’mon, grow up!” that I mentioned before. But, without doubt there were times when the speed and effectiveness with which Paul’s “children” grew up in Christ surprised Paul. There surely were times when he planned to carry them up the trail for a quick view, but ended up going all the way around the mountain with them.

It can be scary to hear that the success or failure of a whole Christian community has almost everything to do with each of our willingness to grow up in faith. Yet it need not be too scary. If generations before us had not grown up, we would never have had the faith handed onto us. But here we are, and so they did.

Now it is simply our turn, perhaps to hand the faith on even more effectively and completely than we received it. Whether the eyes reading these words are in the head of an 8-year-old or an 80-year-old, now it is simply our turn.

May the Holy Spirit grant us the strength and courage for the living of this hour, and for the living of it well. May the Holy Spirit help us all to grow up and walk around the mountain.



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Christmas in March

3/20/2014

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I remember when it all began.

Mindy had set up the Christmas tree during the Thanksgiving weekend. Then a week or so later someone from our extended family mailed us the first wrapped Christmas present of 2008. It was for Reese. The gift went under the tree. Reese was not quite two and a half years old.

About two minutes after the present was laid at the foot of the tree, Reese asked, “Oooh. What’s that?”

“It’s a Christmas present,” I said.

“For who?”

“For you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Ooh.”

“Yes, ooh.”

“I want to open this,” she said.

“Of course you can open it…on Christmas morning. Maybe even on Christmas Eve night. In a little while. A few weeks.”

“I want to open this now.”

“No,” I said.

“You no say, ‘No,’ daddy,” she said.

“No,” I said.

And so it began. For the first time Reese was chomping at the bit to get to the “opening phase” of the holiday gift giving experience. The year before Reese had been a happy participant in the seasonal festivities. However, she had not yet become a power hungry director of the “whats” and “whens” of our family holiday traditions, especially those having to do with gifts.

But now she was more than ready to assume that role, even if it meant pushing aside those who currently held it, namely her parents.

Reese wanted to open the gift now. And that makes sense, even if – in this case, at least – it wasn’t going to happen. Gifts are meant to be opened, to be grasped, experienced, played with, and shared. Basketballs are meant to be bounced, clothes worn, and dolls hugged.

It would be flat out nuts if on Christmas morning we gave a wrapped present to Reese and said, “Oh no, don’t unwrap it. Just put it on the shelf as it is, look at it from time to time, and think, ‘Isn’t it nice someone who cares about me gave me a present.’” I mean, what would the family member who sent the present to Reese think of that use of his gift?

When I was a little older than Reese much of my life was caught up in playing with Star Wars figures and collecting football cards. I still feel odd when today as an adult I see an unopened box of football cards from the 1980s or a 30 year-old R2D2 figure still encased in the plastic tomb of its box.

What’s that about? I’m told it keeps the value up for “collectors”. Yuck and not for me. I guess I’m the type who would rather damage the long-term value of a hamburger by actually eating it, a toy by playing with it, and a gift by using it as intended by the giver.

Christians talk about spiritual gifts from time to time. There are lists of these in various places in the New Testament. Put simply, I’d say that spiritual gifts are capacities that God grants us to carry on the work and the presence of Jesus through our own lives.

These are gifts given to frail people like you and me so that we can do what Jesus did and say what Jesus said and so spread God’s love on earth even as it is in heaven.

And God doesn’t want the gifts he’s given to each of us to stay in their boxes. He wants us to open them now.

One of these gifts is the hospitality to make someone feel welcome and honored like she was the Lord himself. Another is the prophetic power to speak God’s challenging word, even to the rich and the powerful. Another is the discernment to notice where God is present and where spiritual danger may be lurking.

Another gift is the generosity to give the very best of who you are to someone without the need to get something in return. Another is the creativity to represent God’s beauty with words or music or wood or fabric or whatever. Another is the desire to work for someone else’s care and healing through your compassionate prayer and action.

The list goes on and on. There are lots of gifts. God is generous.

If you happen to be reading this and you are someone seeking to follow Jesus, then I know you have such gifts. I don’t necessarily know specifically what they are, but I know they are there. It is always exciting to see someone find out what they are.

What do you feel your spiritual gifts might be?

But it is even more exciting to see someone – me, you, anyone – start unwrapping those gifts and putting them to use. So do it. Don’t pretend circumstances will be better next week. Rip open the wrapping paper around your heart and open the box.

Thankfully, the time came for me to take the Star Wars figure out of the box and enjoy it. The time came for Reese to unwrap the mystery present under the tree and play with it.

And more awesome still, the time comes for each of us to step up, trust God, and say, “I want to follow Jesus, and so I trust God’s given me a gift to share with the world God loves. Here it is. I’m unwrapping it and starting to play with it. Let’s see what happens. And may it all be to God’s glory and my joy.”

Don’t wait until Christmas. Start opening the present now.



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Ear Wax & the Trinity

3/18/2014

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I can say with near certainty that before Reese was born I didn’t feel a hole in my life that a baby needed to fill. I think I would have been fine without a child. And, in certain way, sometimes having Reese feels like it's all about less down time and more stress for me as a person/parent.

(Now I doubt I’ll get an audible “Amen!” from anyone for saying that, but I know I’m getting more than a couple silent ones from person/parents who know what I mean.) :v)

That being said, I surprise no one (including myself) by saying that I am overjoyed that Reese is here and apparently sticking around for the long-term. For one thing, with Reese around things happen – moments occur – that wouldn’t otherwise. She spices life.

For instance, I remember a time when Reese was very, very young. 


Reese, Mindy, and I were sitting together on a couch watching a truly odd movie. It was a live action musical based upon the story of the puppet Pinnochio’s toymaker/father Geppetto. It starred Drew Carry (with hair!) and Julia Louis Dreyfuss (with an English accent!).

Toward the end of the movie Reese was fiddling around with her ear. Before I knew what was happening, with much fanfare she pulled out a glob of earwax. She called the glob her earring. Without giving me time to react, she wiped it on my hand and said to me in a tone of serious command, “No eat that.” She had nothing to worry about. I obeyed without question.

Instead, I was both repelled and curious. I asked Reese if she had tried to eat one of “her earrings” in the past. She indicated that she had.

The spice of life.

It goes without saying that such moments would never have occurred without the advent of Reese. It also goes without saying that if one day she gave me the single-finger-salute and left my life forever, or if she were snatched away by crime or tragedy, I would be ripped in two. It would feel as if all my bones had been crushed into powder. And I would be desperate to move all creation to set things right.

Perhaps this is a way God tricks me into feeling a little like God.

Christians have a habit of talking about God as a Trinity. In essence, if we are to envision the God of the Bible, we don’t imagine “The Lord of Heaven and Earth” as a lonely, solitary God. Instead we are told God is love. 



In other words, God is at the core a relationship, a fellowship of mutual honor, sacrifice, and care between the three the Bible names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the God that mysteriously existed before the fuse of the Big Bang was lit.

For me there are two implications of this Trinity thing that are essential.

For one thing, before we came into existence God did not suffer from loneliness, from a hole God needed human beings to fill. 



God was already a perfect fellowship of love. We were not created to fill a need. We were created out of an overflow of love. We were not created to do something for God. Our creation was an invitation to share in the community of love that is God. 

Nonetheless, once the world was created, God decided he would rather die than lose it and lose us. 


This calls to mind the story of Jesus as the embodiment of God’s love for us, for creation. In other words, even though we may have given God the single-finger-salute and gone our own way, it is awe-inspiring how much God wanted to welcome us back into his open arms, even if those arms were opened by nails on a Cross.

To sum up: we weren’t needed, but, goodness, we are very much wanted. That is good news that keeps us from thinking too much and too little of ourselves. 


And, it is news that makes a certain sense to me when as a parent I consider not only the wonders of God, but also the wonders of my daughter.


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I Got a Baby in There

3/6/2014

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When she was a lot younger, one particular Sunday Reese really messed with my mind.

After worship we were hanging around the church campus talking to some people. Reese was starting to show me how well she could toss a rock. I told Reese that we don’t throw rocks, but I’d be willing to get her a ball if she would like to toss one of those. She said, yes, so I got her a soft, rubbery golf ball looking thing about the size of a large softball.

Once in hand, Reese looked at the ball for a little bit. Then Reese decided she didn’t want to toss it. Instead she wanted to give birth to it.

She put the ball under the front of her dress and situated it in front of her belly. She patted the lump carefully with both her little hands.

I asked her what she had in there. Reese said, “I have baby in there.”

Then she walked around the fall pumpkin patch the congregation was hosting on campus and showed her belly to a couple of people. After that, right there among the pumpkins, gourds, and autumn finery, Reese proceeded to “give birth” to her baby. She popped the ball out from under her dress, held it carefully, and showered loving attention upon it.

Sadly, the large golf ball made an ugly, dimpled, newborn child.

Looking back, I think what was happening here is pretty obvious.

Reese was clearly (dramatically and very publicly – sigh) playing at being a mature, pregnant woman. It was cute. It was alarming. It had me wondering a little about what a Child Protective Services caseworker would think if one had been picking up a pumpkin that particular afternoon.

Even then, Reese was starting to make strong associations. She had seen pictures of her family: Mindy, me, and Reese. Reese understood those right off. She could, from early on in her life, look at such image, point, and say, “There I am!”

She had also seen pictures of Mindy and me with Mindy sporting a big belly full of Reese. At first, when looking at those pictures, Reese would always ask us where she was. We told her a few times that she was inside Mommy’s uterus. “Is that the belly?” “Yes.” Then she got the idea pretty quickly.

But Reese had also seen pictures of Mindy and I from our wedding day. To these she asked, “Me in Mommy’s belly?” and we told her, “No, not yet.”

Reese started to put all this together.

In addition to all the pictures, even then Reese was starting to sense a little of what it meant to be a girl, a woman, perhaps even a mother someday. Reese was connecting things, imagining possibilities, playing roles.

It seems to me that Reese was envisioning how the story of being a person, connects with her own life experience, her own story. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s still my theory. (But, then again, who can comprehend the toddler mind?)

Earlier during the same week in which I became grandfather to an oversized golf ball, I’d been reading the memoir of a Christian named John Dear.

As a younger man, Dear was called to interview an older Christian whose life and ministry Dear deeply cherished. In his memoir Dear said he asked the more mature man, Daniel Berrigan, a few superficial questions about his work for the interview. Then – suddenly at a loss for his next question – Dear blurted out, “So, what’s the point of all this?”

With both tenderness and earnestness the older man answered, “The point is to make our story fit into the story of Jesus, so our life makes sense in the light of the life of Jesus.” Dear said that this little sentence offered him a framework for everything he would try to do for the rest of his own life.

That little scene from the memoir was playing in my mind as I thought about how Reese was, in her own babyish way, playing with how her life fit into the story of being “a big girl” (as Reese would put it) or a mature woman (as I would put it).

I think there is a critical aspect of Christian spirituality bouncing around in here somewhere. As Christians we are in a serious, yet wonderful way engaged in this type of play-acting, this type of connection making all the time.

We read Scripture, and perhaps especially the gospels, to gain a sense of Jesus: how he acts, how he prays, how his life story reads. Then we make associations. We experiment by imagining how our lives can fit into his as we live them here and now. And then we try out the associations by doing what we believe Christ calls us to do in our present circumstances.

Sometimes the experiment ends up being a blessing. Other times it leads to a mess. Still other times a mixed “blessed mess” or a “messy blessing” is the outcome. But, we will never grow unless we dare to play, make connections between sacred stories (both Christ’s story and our own), and experiment with those connections in the living out of our daily lives.

For Reese, the story of womanhood and marriage and children was not just locked up in a picture of her mother. It had to do with her real life here and now.

For Reese and for the rest of us, the story of Jesus is not just locked up in an honored, ancient book. It has to do with our real lives here and now.

Let’s never forget how to play it out.



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    Author

    Robert here.



    This is something called a Reese Piece. Reese is a nickname for Karyssa, my daughter. 



    Each Reese Piece is a brief exploration of some way I sense God has spoken to me through her.

    God reaches us through the experiences and relationships of daily life. This seems obvious, but I find it’s something which is still easy for me to forget. 


    It is my prayer that “Reese Pieces” will encourage you to look for the ways the Lord is trying to reach you through the life you live each day and the people who populate it.

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