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Reese-o-centric Universe?

6/27/2013

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Reese has sabotaged her share of church gatherings.

I remember one prayer and Bible study group from a few years ago. At the beginning of the meeting we sang a simple gathering song. Reese was so hell-bent on disruption this particular evening she managed to make disgusting noises through the hand Mindy had clamped over her mouth.

Oh, well. Reese had missed a nap and so became the tyrant of all she surveyed. Our little Mussolini, if you will. But, Reese also wanted to be the center of the action and attention. Any other arrangement was not going to do. 

The first time Reese was in public worship she was 12 days old. During her short life the church community has been so good to Reese with what we Christians often call “unconditional love”.

The church has blessed her with attention, smiles, games, little kindnesses – all the things that make unconditional love take on flesh and blood. I’m sure Reese has felt like the center of the whole, happy universe.

This has been a very good thing, and one we are deeply thankful for as parents. Children can never have too many joyful, safe adults around them letting them know they exist, and that their existence is a very good thing.

But Reese is not the center of the universe. There are other people in the world. And learning this through the church is as good and important a lesson as the one about unconditional love.

None of us is the center of the universe; God is. This is often easy to confess with our lips, but harder to confess with our lives. Honestly, I think it’s one of the reasons it is important to give money sacrificially to my community of faith.

But anyway we slice it, a part of the Christian Good News is that through Christ Jesus we who are not the source and center of the universe can share in the life of the God who is the source and center of the universe.

People can lose track of that good news almost without realizing it.

An influential Christian author named Brian McLaren said he remembers as a young Christian being told to recite John 3:16. However, the newly-baptized McLaren was told to replace the word “world” (literally “cosmos”) with his own name. “For God so loved BRIAN he gave his only begotten son….”

McLaren wrote that, of course, there is a degree of blessed truth to that verbal experiment. God’s love is personal. God is interested in forgiving us, healing us, and restoring us as unique persons made in God’s image.

But McLaren also correctly said that the replacement of “world” for “my name here” is also a great risk. If left alone to run amuck in our spirits, the idea gets things horribly backward and can debilitate us spiritually.

God loves and is restoring THE WORLD in Jesus, and so by God’s gift I (or you or any of us) get to be a part of that great, big, dance-for-joy story. By being a part of it I am caught up in this salvation myself. Yet I’m not the center of it. Nor am I its engine or its master.

In the resurrection of Jesus we first and foremost celebrate that God is recreating the universe, the “whole enchilada” of which I (or you or any of us) are just a little piece of cheese or perhaps a slice of olive.

Bono, the lead singer of the band U2, talks of always seeking out a certain priest before the release of an album. Bono wanted the priest to bless the album and the work that went into it. The priest was happy to oblige.

One time, however, the priest told Bono he might want to turn things around. He might think of looking around for what God was doing and be a part of it instead of always asking God to come and bless what Bono was doing. The priest’s point was that U2 was not the center of the universe, God was. And God had some great things going on that Bono might want to be a part of.

This perspective shift was part of what led the singer to become involved with the poor and HIV-riddled, especially in Africa. And that ministry has helped save millions of lives.

Reese is not God. Neither am I. I’ll let you answer for yourself.

But thankfully the real God is always looking for partners to help love and heal the world. I think living into this can radically change how we look at life around us, how we choose to spend our resources, and maybe even how we look at the Lord. 

When the “bad” news finally hits Reese fully (does it ever hit any us fully?) and she realizes this is not a Reese-o-centric universe, she will likely be mad. But, she’ll be better (and happier) for it in the long run. As we all are, I think. Eventually at least.



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I Gave My Daughter a Scorpion

6/5/2013

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Reese is tricky to feed. She always has been. She is a child who actually does not like (and has not ever liked) hamburgers or hot dogs. Thankfully, she’ll still go for pizza. But it has to be cheese and nothing else. Oh well. There are worse things than avoiding hot dogs. Or pepperoni, for that matter.

But Reese used to be easier with this type of thing. Back when Reese was a baby just getting into solid food, I remember taking her to a taco place while on a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. When the tacos arrived at our table Reese got wild, but in a fun way. Bouncing. Grunting. Smacking her lips. Gesturing wildly. Waving her arms. Fun stuff.

I gave her a tomato from my taco and she loved it. But a few moments later I accidentally gave Reese a tomato from my hot salsa. She went red-faced and started to cry. I was tired and distracted and probably had an eye on whatever was up on the TV, but that was no excuse. How could I have done this to her?

Not sufficiently cured of my negligence, a few minutes later I gave Reese a spoon of my refried beans…which I had forgotten to blow on. This was even worse. She let out a yelp of enraged pain and stuck out her tongue. I scraped the hot beans off with my finger. It was terrible. How could I hurt her so stupidly – twice – within five minutes?

But Reese didn’t hold it against me. Once the pain was past and the apologies poured out (not that she understood the words, of course), she accepted food from my hand like nothing had happened.

It is an amazing, foolish, and trusting love children so often invest in us flawed adults.

After the meal was over, I found myself thinking of Jesus’ words in Luke 11 about how loving, sane parents obviously don’t offer stinging scorpions when asked by their children for nourishing eggs. But through inattention I had given Reese two “stings” in five minutes when all she wanted was a little taste of something good. And I love my daughter desperately.

How often do we do what I did to Reese to each other? Now I’m not just talking about parents and small children and about tomatoes and refried beans.

How often do we hurt each other like that? How often do we hurt someone close to us not through malevolence, but through negligence? How often do we hurt someone by just not paying them the attention they deserve as a child of God? How often are we so focused on something in our lives that someone we claim to care about just gets chewed up because our eyes are elsewhere?

And, if we do sometimes hurt people like this, how often do we recognize it, repent, and seek to make amends? This kind of thing is always a pressing issue if Jesus is to be believed. After all, Jesus famously said in Matthew 25 that the way we treat the easily overlooked around us is how we treat him.  

When I repented, baby Reese let me off the hook. I was reminded of the First Letter of John in the New Testament when, talking of God’s forgiveness known in Jesus, the author writes, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us….”

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus looks down from the cross and asks for those assembled under his feet to be forgiven because they didn’t know what they were doing. I have no doubt that his prayer was answered happily. Restoration happens.


I had jammed piping hot beans into Reese’s mouth and she forgave me quickly, completely. Who knew my baby could act a little like the Lord? I hope I’m as able as she to forgive when I get the mouthful of molten beans from someone I care about.


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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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