A good glass of wine often brings one closer to the Lord

Wow, Christmas is approaching: it's so close, as the kids I nanny remind me each day. The UCO Christmas party is over, the multiple rounds of Go, Ninja Go! played out, final Winter Conference registrations trickling in. Finally, promised rest is on the horizon.

What a blessed Advent this has been! It's been a whirlwind season of discernment for me, including a set of exciting and interesting conversations between myself and the Lord. Finally, a resting place has been discovered. And I am so grateful. This finally coming to a deep rest in the Lord has made me think hard about the time that preceded it, and I'm going to share some of these thoughts.

As a young person, there is the possibility of living in a state of constant intellectual, emotional, and spiritual upset, I think, because we could constantly be asking ourselves these questions, very real, very important questions: Where am I going to live someday? What will my career be? Am I called to marriage or celibacy? Young people, in so many ways, are pilgrims because they wander from one thing to another, from one idea and dream to another, trying them on, trying to figure out whether anything they are choosing for is bringing them rest, true joy and contentment.

Not to mention the actual, practical, and environmental upsets that young people go through. Being a young person, the vocation of a young person, includes special things like moving multiple times a year. If you're a student, that means you potentially live in a different place with different people from year to year. You're sort-of connected to you nuclear family and sort-of not. Where is "home"? I think, last summer, I moved about five times, practically lived out of two bags. The average Joe or Jane does not move five times a year. No wonder we're all so stressed out, right?

But maybe there's another way to look at this season of life.

For a length of time now, I've found the Scriptures about the Israelites wandering for forty years helpful because these show me how to be at rest when I'm settled and when I'm moving. The Lord was so faithful to the Israelites as they wandered, even as they complained about the manna and said that they missed Egypt. He told them where to worship and taught them how to worship Him. He led them with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Some of His most marvelous works took place while they wandered. He provided a resting place at each place they stopped a place where they could worship Him.

My prayer, as a young adult, as a disciple of Christ, is that I do not miss the glories of this pilgrim season. I think there is the potential to be frustrated, bitter, anxious, and downright unhopeful in this season. (Not that I've been any--or all--of those things...) I think we can be tempted to look back, like the Israelites, and say, "Lord, life was better back then, back there." But that is not helpful on our faith journey because more freedom in Christ is gained when we stay in the present and receive what He has for us now. If we, as young people, can live radically during the days we are called to wander and enter the Tent of Meeting wherever the Lord sets it up, that is, where He calls us to be, then we will find rest. Our faith in His faithfulness will be irrevocably strengthened in a way that will affect the rest of our settled, adult lives. Our hearts will be formed by our response to His call, and our hearts will know they are always on a pilgrimage toward a sure destination, Heaven.

Finally, a word of hope and encouragement. I've hand-dried many a wine glass this fall because I've often been privileged to drink very nice wine with the very nice people I live with. The Lord has said to me, as I've dried these wine glasses: "I know just how hard to 'dry' you. I know you are weak, delicate. I won't press you and clean you with so much pressure that you will shatter. I will be gentle, and I will make you transparent. I will make you clean and to shine."

The Lord knows we are weak. He knows we are delicate, even. If we feel tired on this journey, brittle and ready to shatter, let us remember that He is gentle. Even if we feel we've been thrust into a wilderness, He is still gentle and quiet, leading us forward, patiently waiting for us to enter the rest He has prepared for us. May we, in these days preceding Christmas, find our rest in Him. Amen.

Is it good for man to be alone?

I'm giving a talk in about a week on personal prayer. I gave a talk on personal prayer a few weeks ago, and I've been asking Him if there's anything to subtract or add to the next talk. As it is, the talk addresses obstacles to personal prayer. I mentioned pride and fear as the main obstacles, but I think I'm to address one specific fear when I speak next week: the fear of loneliness. Something very obvious to us when we enter into our daily prayer time is that Jesus Christ isn't sitting beside us on our bed or in the chair across from us. It's not as if we can see what color socks he's wearing or what he's having for breakfast.

In Genesis, the Lord says, "It is not good that man should be alone." And thus He creates woman: companionship is in God's perfect plan, and it can exist in perfect harmony to our relationship with God, that is, there is zero chance of our relationship with God suffering when we have relationships with others.

But this all changes with Original Sin. Elisabeth Elliot, having lost two husbands, the first martyred and the second to cancer, wrote the book The Path of Loneliness to share with others the suffering and joy of being in solitude with God. She writes:

"God designed the answer to Adam's aloneness: a woman...But something happened. Sin destroyed the perfect harmony of the universe....The human companionship, which in the divine plan was the answer to man's aloneness, no longer suffices....His aloneness has another dimension which is an experience of pain--a pain called loneliness."

Why is it often difficult to enter into silence and pray? Why do we often only surrender to God in the midst of suffering? These things remind us that we are alone and that, as it says in the First Step of many 12-Step programs, "our lives have become unmanageable" because of sin. We are forced to look at the fear of being alone and the reality of our imperfection and to choose what our aloneness means. Does it mean what Satan tells us it means, "without God," the essence of Hell itself, or does it mean "God is with me," that God is who He says He is, Emmanuel?

Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, teaches the following in order to explain the position that God is to have in our lives:

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 4: 26).

Does Jesus really mean that we are to "hate" those who are closest to us? No. But in comparison to our love and devotion to God, the love that we have for our families and friends should be pale. God is to be the center of our lives, and this was not such a mighty task before the Fall. Just as we inordinately love things of this world and often love people with possessive rather than humble hearts, we are called to "hate" for the sake of the Kingdom.

I think it's very possible to be surrounded with good Christian people, good Christian activities and still be missing the point--personal encounter with Jesus Christ. That would be the Martha syndrome. Someone recently said to me, "All He wants is for you to sit at His feet. He doesn't want you to fill your life with things to do. Just sit as His feet."

Many people will do good things and are doing good things who have no conscious, chosen belief in Jesus Christ. What makes Christians different then? Certainly not just the good things we do, though works are a part of our mission. The certainty of what awaits us--Heaven--is what sets us apart. The certainty of our belief in the One for whom we do good things is what is attractive to others. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the heart of Christianity.

In summary: everything was great before evil entered the world. When sin did enter the world, personally encountering God became a task and people actually became, to some degree, a hindrance rather than a help to encountering the Lord. Then, Jesus Christ came and corrected this effect of the Fall; the faculty of a personal relationship need no longer be a hindrance but in fact the only Way to union with God the Father. Jesus Christ, flesh and bone, fully God, is the only one with whom a relationship will always help us draw near to God the Father.

So, we may not see Him in a chair next to us tomorrow morning, sipping coffee, waiting to talk to us. But "faith is the assurance of things not seen." And God is a faithful God who has given us many promises that we might know Him and walk in His ways. Coming to Him each day strengthens our belief in the eternal reality that awaits us. We can experience a bit of the joyful anticipation of Heaven, even a bit of Heaven itself, when we come and wait at His feet each morning.

Homeward Bound

Wow, what a week. It says in Scripture that "A prophet is never accepted in his hometown." This week, I tested the truth of this verse.

It's a potential sort-of nightmare to go back to one's high school and give one's testimony to a bunch of your high school teachers. For many, their high school is the last place they would ever want to return to. But it was a wonderful week, and I am very grateful that I was able to go home and share with my teachers, former youth minister, and other folks who know me what I'm now doing with my life, what the Lord has called me to and what He's calling us all to, a life of discipleship.

God really does hold all things together. I would not have guessed that He would place me in a Catholic school system, a great youth group, then show me UCO and covenant community, and then bring me to a place where I could return and serve the community that I was raised in.

I'm just grateful for His wisdom, grace, and surprises. It's a good thing His ways are not our ways.

As they say in High School Musical, we're all in this together, this work of sharing the Gospel with others. It's great to realize how wide God's net is and how He uses high school teachers, their students, everyone who is willing to throw their lot in with His, to begin the work of building His kingdom on earth.

"Lord, Increase Our Faith."

Tonight I received a call from Luciana, a female staff worker for Detroit Community Outreach. She was very excited to share with me that one of the youth I worked with this past summer had been nagging his mother ever since our summer program ended. He wanted his mother to call Luciana; he wanted to join a church. He also wants to be baptized. As Luci was sharing this with me, we both just sat on the line and wept. I hung up the phone and continued to sob with joy and prayed, in awe of God's faithfulness.

Maybe I'm just a little choleric when it comes to mission--I get worked up--but I was thinking many things in the midst of this amazing news. Here's one: isn't a small piece, or the root of this response, our Lord's own response to this young man's decision? "I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent" (Luke 15: 7).

Something else I thought of--and have been thinking of having just begun UCO staff work--is a prophetic word:

"Your eyes will weep at what you see, your ears will tingle at what you hear and your hearts will leap for joy at the surprising things I am about to bring to you. For I say to you that I am about to open to you a new age of evangelism among young people, the likes of which you have not seen..."

One might consider this prophecy and think, "Well, what does this really mean? What kinds of 'surprising things' are about to be brought to us? What's one middle school boy going to church and being baptized really mean in the bigger scheme of things? He's from Detroit--isn't there a good chanced he'll fall away anyways? And really, is one person 'multiplication' and worth weeping for?"

Absolutely Yes.

Perhaps the fulfillment of this prophecy rests not only God's work coming down to us and meeting our expectations. Perhaps the fulfillment of this prophecy will observed especially--but not only--by those who are looking for its fulfillment, by those who whole-heartedly believe in what God has promised to them. As Elizabeth says of Mary in the Gospel of Luke: "And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." And as it says in Jeremiah: "You will seek me and find me; / When you seek me with all your heart. / I will be found by you, says the Lord" (Jer. 29: 13-4). When we seek Him with ALL our heart, we will find Him. We are called to seek, to take initiative.

Yes, perhaps a part of our part is to receive God's promises with faith, with eyes ready to weep, with ears that expect to tingle. Maybe that is where man's pride and God's faithfulness cross and man's pride finally gives: when he prepares for himself a heart that is at the ready to praise and thank God. Maybe we are called to look for Him to be faithful, for He is faithful, as the Psalmists try to tell us time and again.

Before his death, Jesus repeatedly told his disciples that the Son of Man would have to die but would be raised up on the third day. Was this promise true? Yes. Were they seeking and believing in its fulfillment? No. Thus you have their fear, the blindness of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Thomas's famous doubt, Mary's weeping at the tomb. But praise be to Jesus Christ that he is merciful, that his death and resurrection took place, just as he had promised, even though his followers were not looking for the fulfillment of his promise.

A Prayer: Jesus, help us to receive your promises with faith. Open our eyes and ears to each one's fulfillment. And, like those who have been blind and those who have doubted, have mercy on us and touch us, Lord, until we see you as you are. Help us to believe more and more in the powerful reality of your resurrection. Amen.

Time Flies

Well, I am going to have to get some posts written before I move to Detroit for the summer for Detroit Summer Outreach (http://www.youthworks-detroit.org/dso.html)!

A good friend of mine is moving to Germany for an indefinite amount of time. She and I have been friends since seventh grade. We graduated from middle school, high school, and now university together. We sat next to one another at commencement. What a gift her friendship has been to me!

I'm making a photo album and a cd for her, pictures and songs that have been important to us over, golly, the past ten years! I cannot believe we've been friends for that long. Looking through old photos and listening to old songs are two things that have been making me think: it's easy to forget the place you came from and old friends as new chapters of life unfold. I've noticed how God has been using these old pictures and songs to remind me of His faithfulness throughout my life and not just within the past two or three years. I realized that we can forget the richness of God's plan for our lives when we don't take time to thank Him for a lifetime of faithfulness. One part of a prophetic word given at a Word of Life prayer meeting was this:

"Througout the coming days and weeks, you will recall your life in my people and you will break into laughter, or a smile will break forth on your lips. And my Holy Spirit will remind you that you belong to a people, and that I am your God. And I will put this hunger into you. A hunger for time with me, and a hunger for me. And I will continue this until I have transformed you into the people I want you to be. Enough is enough says the Lord. Rejoice and delight in me."

It's not that we are called to live in or dwell on the past, but insofar as God is outside of time as we understand it, His goodness and mercy are always loving and forming us. Coming into the presence of Christ can often be like catching up with a dear, old friend. As someone wise once said to me, "When someone asks you, 'Lynne, what is God doing in your life?' You can always honestly and confidently answer, 'He is loving me.'" When I struggle to see His grace in the present, I often look to the past and thank Him for what He has already accomplished.

Level 2 Challege: If we look into the past, may such reflection convict us even more of God's love for us. Can we let His faithfulness over the course of our lives anchor us as we surrender to Him in the midst of current worries, fears, or doubts, or fear of the future?

God, thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you that your blessings ten years ago still love and change us today, because Your grace is outside of "time." Thank you that your plans are perfect and that whatever we think you are doing, we can be sure that you are loving us. Amen.

People, Places, Things

Well, I should probably be going to bed, and the fact that I am posting tonight, while having a cold, needing sleep, and sharing on a retreat tomorrow is proof of how persuasive media can be today! If you, reader, are reading this when you should be doing something else, read this, and then go do something else! Do not check Facebook. Do not check your email. Do not collect 200 dollars.

But really, Level 2. How about this: The "cost of discipleship" (Dietrich Bonehoeffer) is also the cost of decisiveness. While chatting with a friend tonight, we were both observing how sad we are to be parting ways after becoming close friends. But this person feels called to move somewhere else, and I feel called to stay where I am. This is the cost of decisiveness, of not keeping one's options open.

In a talk I recently heard, I was told that there were four things which Mary the Mother of God did not do when the Angel Gabriel came to her, asking her to be the Mother of Jesus:

1. She did not negotiate
2. She did not keep her options open
3. She did not have an "exit" strategy
4. She did not ask for a contract

These four points are taken from the book Letters to a Young Catholic by George Weigel, and I find them extremely challenging, convicting, and provocative. I have wondered recently whether Jesus or Mary knew, really knew, in advance the exact nature of the suffering they would endure throughout their human lifetimes. The Apostles certainly did not when they gave their "Yes's" to their Teacher. So many of God's faithful we see in Scripture saying "Yes" without knowing exactly what they are saying "Yes" to. But it's not about, of course, what they're saying "Yes" to as much as it is to Whom they are saying "Yes."

Sometimes, I like to think that I have a fairly accurate notion of the challenge coming toward me. But lately, I've experienced "hidden" facets of the crosses the Lord has sent to me. Just when I think I'm done with Cross X ("X" being "ex" and not "ten"), He shows me that there is still more to be learned from carrying the Cross. Just when I say, "Whew, Lord! I've 'run the race' and now I'm ready to receive the break you have for me" He shows me that I'm not done running, that I can trust He has more grace for me as I continue running.

Tonight, my friend said that while they were sad to be moving away, they were also at peace and weren't sad because they were answering God's call. This is the mystery: we find our home in Him not in people, places, or things. Community is the means through which He chooses to love us. He doesn't have to use you, me, a community, a new job, a new car, etc. to show His love for us. But He chooses to love us with creativity and without reserve, the most creative and profound way being to send us His Very Son.

May God bless you, reader, with peace and joy in this Easter season!

Tea Anyone?

In high school, God gave me the image of a tea kettle filled with this stagnant water. When you heat a tea kettle, it gets put under a lot of pressure, and it screams! And then, after the water's hot, you can pour it, and it meets someone's need for something to drink. Just so, when God heats us up--sets us on fire with the Holy Spirit--we become an outpouring, something drinkable for others.

Well, lately, I've been feeling like this tea kettle again. This Lent, God's been stirring up the stagnant, lukewarm water in me. The Holy Spirit has been forcing me to "let off steam" and "whistle." I've been resisting--which has only increased the internal pressure!--but finally, in the past two weeks, I've been experiencing the joy of letting God presure me, gently encourage me to change and conform to His perfect plan for my life.

But I really like the tea kettle image because I think, often times, when we experience in the Christian walk the Holy Spirit's stirring in us, when we feel, as Queen would say, "under pressure," so hot and uncomfortable with our lives and what we know to be God's will, we can get anxious, proud, fearful, and feel that we're being punished by God. We want to figure out what He's doing with us and why. We forget that in order to get the water hot enough to serve, in order to produce water that is pure, the pressure has to be there, the heat has to be there. The water's temperature has to change, and the water has to change dramatically. God's putting us under pressure isn't a bad thing but a good thing! He only wants to purify and set on-fire those children whom He loves!

But He doesn't just change us for our own salvation; He does so for the sake of the Body, that we could be an acceptable offering poured out for those around us who are thirsty. People need to drink pure water. Jesus did something much more than become pure for love of us. He became "impure" for us, taking on our sins in his death and then, in His resurrection, freeing us from the burden of having to be totally pure as a result of our own efforts. He came and set an example of what it means to become something that we naturally are not. He "humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross."

So, the Level 2 challenge: Will we let God purify us? Will we let Him in these two weeks before Easter "turn up the heat," even if it means we will be gently and persistently invited to change areas of our lives? Will we let him "turn up the heat" and let ourselves experience the good kind of "pressure" that leads to purity, for love of Him and our brothers and sisters?

The Gift of Emptiness

About a month and a half ago, I was sick. I had a cough that would not subside and that kept me awake through the night. After the second night of this, I, slightly frustrated, asked our Lord what He was up to, and I put it on Him to carry me through the day. I reminded Him that I needed 8 hours of sleep in order to get my homework done, pay attention in-class, and love my housemates. And He said something to me that He'd first said to a good friend of mine: "Lynne, don't you think I know what you need?"

Oh wow, this made me smile. The moment this word sank into my heart, I knew I needed to repent from a lack of faith and grumpiness! Yes. Duh. The God that loved me into my existence and had given me every desire of my heart, the God who had met my every need, of course this God knew my need for sleep! After this revelation reprise, I saw each day that followed another nearly sleepless night as God's gift. For the next several days, I got used to feeling so incredibly empty yet so alive; I was becoming very sensitive to how much God's grace carried His poor, weak, selfish, beloved daughter. I was becoming intimately aware of God's desire to serve me. I revelled in my sleepless nights, feeling so special, so chosen to carry this cross which would surely bring me closer to my Lovely Father because He had chosen it for me. I even went so far as to begin asking God what He wanted me to do with the gift of my extra late night/morning hours: God, do You want me to pray for UCO? My family's welfare? Friends? Other UCOs? Show me. "Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord."

But, God is ever-mysterious, ever-wise. Not long after I experienced the brightness of God's face smiling on me in this new and beautiful valley, He showed me the way out rather quickly. Within the next two days, I slept through the night. This had not happened for two weeks. So I asked God again what was up. Why had He brought me into this valley and then so quickly kicked me out? I was really enjoying everything about the valley--the trees were green, no one else knew of it, the river was nice. In other words, I loved the intensity and creativity with which He was showing me that He alone was enough, and I didn't want this to dynamic to change.

Nevertheless, it did, maybe because I was getting too attached to it. In retrospect, He showed me two things. First, He had drawn me into the valley-desert so that I would turn to Him for all my delight. Second, He said that while He had suddenly and dramatically whisked me into a valley to show me that we are empty and broken vessels, we could and should choose to stay in the valley, that is, to rejoice in Him mindful of our profound need for His grace.

So, that has been my prayer throughout the past several weeks: "God, I don't feel empty, but I know I am. So, fill me! God I don't feel broken, but I know I am. Heal me!" I've realized how wonderful it is to run into the valley-desert rather than be dragged into it and then complain about it as I and every one of His children so often has. Only empty vessels need God's grace. Only the broken need a Savior. Praise the Lord (PTL, to some of you...) that we need a Savior and that God gently (and sometimes slightly less-gently!) shows us our need and desire for Him. St. Therese of Lisieux knew this "Little Way" to Jesus very well--this surrender, characterized by the image of a small child throwing its arms around the Father, confident of the Father's love.

So, as is becoming the norm, the Level 2 Challenge I pose is this: Could we actually ask to be led into the desert or valley, confident in God's love for us, His desire for more of us? Could we, with laughter, throw up our hands and "put it on" God to meet not just large needs but the small ones, too, the domestic details of our lives which we still often control, trusting that the more hand over, the more God will delight us with what He will return?


May God bless us this Lent with the gift of emptiness. May He makes us aware of our emptiness and the grace He perpetually showers down upon us. May He give us a spirit of gratitude for this grace. Amen.

Please Laugh Over Spilled Lasagna

As this is the first post, I will say a few words about this blog's title. Last night, I was hanging out with a couple of friends, and we were talking about what some refer to as "surface stuff." I said at one point, with the surface having been explored (for you Latinists, note the ablative absolute), "Well, I think it's time we move down to 'Level 2!'" They laughed, and asked what I meant; I thought it was the right time for us to share about what was going on in our lives "below the surface." So, yeah: let me be the first to say, Welcome, Reader, to Level 2! Here you will find random thoughts and deep thoughts, but most of the time, thoughts about God's faithfulness. May God bless you!

---

My story begins in my kitchen. I was removing a tray of lasagna from the microwave tonight, and oops! It slipped from my hands, fell to the floor with a slight "splat," and there was red sauce everywhere. I just stood still for a moment in silence, and then I laughed. Oh man: the tomato sauce reached the farthest ends of the kitchen--it was truly amazing. It took several paper towels, (yes, not very green, I know), but I finally got it cleaned up.

What is so amazing about this story? Well, my reaction. I am so grateful that today, I could just laugh! When I was little, maybe 5 or 6, I remember reaching up to the kitchen counter for a glass of milk. I dragged it to the edge of the counter and...whoosh! It sloshed all over me and the floor. I'm pretty sure that I indeed cried over spilled milk that evening, though I am also fairly certain that my parents laughed!

But isn't that what God our Father does with us when we cry over something small? Yes, it is true that when we weep, our Father and the Son do indeed mourn with us--mourning can be holy. But how often do we cry when the Father would have us laugh?

And so this is my Level 2 thought/challenge for today: How much are we willing to laugh? Laughter is a great vehicle to sanctity. Laughter, I have learned, is something we can engage in when we have given whatever we are holding tightly over to God. We can laugh because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Our confidence in God's love for us allows us to laugh and smile our way through the valleys in our lives, even if the valley is as small as a glass of spilled milk or a tray of lasagna. And if we can't laugh over such things, if we can't learn to react with peace and humor amidst such trivial things, then how will we be able to laugh in the face of much deeper, longer, wider valleys, such as a broken relationship or a death in our family?

God is gracious and means to make saints of us in our everyday lives. May we always be ready to respond to "spilled lasagnas" with a laugh, confident in God's love for us!