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Like a Poke in the Eye

9/11/2013

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When Reese was quite a bit younger and smaller than she is now, I poked her in the eye. Hard.

It was an accident, of course. But I poked her pretty badly, nonetheless. Reese’s left eyeball had a red mark on it. The doctor said it would take a few weeks for the red mark to disappear. And eventually it did. Yet every time I saw Reese’s bruised eye during those weeks, I hurt. I hurt, even after the pain had faded for her.

Reese had been demanding a Sesame Street video. I was trying to get the disc out of the case. Reese was trying to wrestle the case and the disc from my grasp. She didn’t yet speak English clearly, but I think she was calling out: “I do it! I do it!”

The case and disc slipped from my right hand. Instinctively my left hand shot out to catch them as they fell. At a “towering” height of 31 inches, Reese was the perfect height to catch my index finger in her eye.

“I’m so sorry, Reese!”

Her face went beet-red with a look of shock. Then her eyes closed, her face scrunched down, and she collapsed in a pile of pain. She wailed, and it wasn’t hard to translate her cry into English: “Daddy, how could you do this to me?!?!”

I didn’t intend to harm her. But, nonetheless, harm happened, and I was a real part of it. That subtle difference is difficult, very difficult, for me to navigate.

I think it is much easier for someone to become a guilt sponge for all the wrongs in the world, most of which the person really has no major part in creating.

For instance, imagine you are talking with someone who says to you with all seriousness, “I am so sorry about the Deepwater Horizon collapse and the Gulf Oil Spill.”

(Remember when that happened? I know I do. I was living in Houston at the time.)

Anyway, the person looks really troubled as she says it. Who is this person? How could they feel responsible?

There are only a handful of people for which this statement would make rational sense – a higher-up at British Petroleum, for instance. And, you are probably not talking to a BP executive.

In this imaginary conversation, you are probably talking to someone sensitive who is sucking in too much guilt over something she had no control over. And that’s the case, even if the person uses oil (like we all do in more ways than we can imagine).

That’s a ridiculous example, but hopefully you get the idea. Emotionally and spiritually we can take on an extreme amount of guilt for things we don’t really control. This is unhealthy.

But, on the other extreme, we can also blow off all the damage we didn’t intend to cause, but we really did. That was what I was feeling with Reese after I poked he in her sweet, little hazel eye. Denying the damage we cause simply because we didn’t intend to harm is also a very unhealthy tendency.

Imagine getting into a car wreck with someone who said in all seriousness, “I know I was driving 100mph on a 45mph street. I know I’d five beers before I left the bar. But, I didn’t intend to hit you, so I don’t really bear any responsibility.”

If the first person is a sponge when it comes to guilt, the second is Teflon – nothing sticks, even when it should.

Reading the gospel stories, most days I don’t think Judas Iscariot ultimately intended to get Jesus killed. This Judas was, of course, the friend and follower of Jesus who sold him for silver and set up his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Usually I tend to think Judas meant to give Jesus a kick in a backside so the Lord would get things in gear. In essence, I imagine Judas thinking, “If I turn Jesus over to the authorities, it’ll push him into getting on with his revolution as the rightful Messiah. He’ll finally get on with crushing the bad guys like a real Messiah should.”

But Judas did help get Jesus killed, whether he intended to or not. I wish Judas would have dealt with his guilt differently than he did and so had been there when Jesus rose from the dead. After all, Judas wasn’t the only one to betray Jesus. Simon-Peter did. All of us do to some extent. 

I didn’t mean to poke Reese in the eye, but I did. It would have been wrong for me to take on a mountain of guilt for the accident. After all, in no way did I mean to poke her and physically assault her.

But, it also would have been wrong for me to waive any role I had in making things better because I didn’t intend to mess things up in the first place. After all, I did poke her. 

If I get a great deal on a pair of jeans, and that screaming deal is made possible by the virtual slavery of a neighbor across the ocean or the lost job of a neighbor down the street, how do I navigate that? I didn’t intend to be a part of the harm. I’m not responsible for setting up the system, but still I’m a part of it. I still have a real role in the harm happening. I still am called in Christ to take a role in making that system better.

Whether we are seeking God’s wisdom for how we spend our money or how we rebuild our fractured family relationships, a big part of Christian discernment is hashing these types of questions out under the guidance of God’s Spirit, seeing our participation in the situation, and going in a different direction so a little more heaven creeps into it.

And, blessedly, a big part of salvation is receiving the good news that all the messes we are a part of (whether by intent or not) can be healed in Jesus. The question is: Once our eyes are open, are we willing to play a role in that healing, or are we stuck in the habit of being either a sponge or Teflon?



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Baby Talk

9/5/2013

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I knew from Reese’s earliest months that she was brilliant, especially with languages. You see, even when Reese was just little more than a newborn, she already spoke Aramaic.

Aramaic is an ancient language that was likely spoken by Jesus and his followers. Although the New Testament was originally written in a form of Greek, a few Aramaic terms are retained.

And my Reese spoke Aramaic. Well, she spoke a word of it. I very distinctly remember hearing her say on a number of occasions, “Abba. Abba. Abba. Abba.”

Before Abba was the American Blind Bowling Association or the name of a 1970s Swedish pop music super-group, it was an Aramaic term for “father.” Usually it is thought to be a term of familiarity, and so it sometimes is compared to the English words “Dad” or “Daddy” or maybe even “Pop.”

Jesus used it in reference to God. And building upon Jesus, the Apostle Paul used the word in reference to God. In fact, Paul encourages us to do so as well. Here is Paul from his letter to the congregations of the church in Galatia:

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law,  to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

Paul writes this to men and women. So, “son” is not intended to exclude women. What is intended is that because of our connection to Jesus we don’t just have the ability to refer to God with shake-in-our-shoes terms like “Almighty.” We can also use familial, relational, comfortable terms that are taught us by our toddlers. We can say, “Abba.”

So there. My daughter spoke Aramaic. When she said, “Daddy,” I said, “Yes.” When she said, “Abba,” I also said, “Yes.” I imagine God said, “Yes,” as well.

The reason I mention all this is that the term “Abba,” like the more familiar word “Dada,” is a sound that can be made by a baby. We need not be mature to say the word. By implication, we don’t have to be all grown up to address God. We need just call out for God like we have since we were all small children. 

I don’t know about you, but I often live too much in my head. I think too much, talk too much, fixate too much upon “adult problems,” and give too much weight to “mature” thought in comparison to “childish” thinking. Having so often come from this place, it was good to hear my daughter babble a biblical name for God without thinking it through or really knowing what she was saying.

It is good to be reminded that the presence of God is not just there beginning when we are mature, rational, adult, tax-paying type folk. The presence of God is there from the very beginning of the journey of our lives helping us to grow in thought, feeling, and action. The word “grace” has a lot to do with these types of things, and I too easily forget about grace.

I suppose God’s way is a bit like the way I am there for Reese. Before she could write a sentence in correct English about me, I was there. Before she even really knew what she was saying, she was crying out my name. And I said, “Yes. I am here, my child.”

We often talk about children as the future – the future of the country, the future of the church, the future of whatever we currently see ourselves as the present of. But I think this saying can obscure as much as it reveals.

Reese is perhaps a future leader of the church. She is perhaps a future parent in the church. Or a teacher. Or a missionary. Or a business leader. Or a musician. Or a whatever. But Reese is also a part of the church’s present, and she has long been so, even before her baptism a year or so ago.

Jesus talks of letting the little children come to him, and the church is simply the people who come to him, little and otherwise. Some of us are young and some old, some serious and some silly. Some of us come to him easily and some only after long struggle. Some of us come preaching long, scholarly sermons and some of us just say “Abba!”

Jesus called Reese, and she came to him, even as a small child. As a small child Reese also called out to God. And that places her on the same level I hold at the foot of the cross, the same level I hold in the heart of God. So I stand beside her, and maybe I stand beside you. May we all stand as one and cry “Abba!” together. That and nothing more is, in essence, what it means to be church.

I love you, Abba. No matter how old I get or how far I feel from you, thank you for loving me and for loving the whole world in Jesus. Help me to grow up to be more like him. Amen. 


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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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