You Can’t Do Everything for Everyone

I just recently finished a short sermon series call “Life After New Life,” exploring the things Jesus does and doesn’t do after his resurrection and what they have to tell us about living as resurrection people. But there were enough ideas to explore that they didn't all fit within the timeframe of this series, so I thought I would tackle one of my thoughts in this format.

One thing Jesus doesn’t do after he rises from the dead…is everything. He doesn’t walk out of the tomb with a massive to-do list. He doesn’t embark on a 40-day campaign to heal every sick person he can. He’s not hurried or harried, frantically trying to get as much done as possible. Simply put, he doesn’t try to accomplish everything for everyone.

He didn’t behave that way before the crucifixion. And he doesn’t behave that way after the resurrection.

Which again, like all the ideas we explored in this series, is surprising and alarming. Anytime I take a few days off from work (like Jesus’ three days in the grave), upon my return I feel anxious and eager to get caught up. Or anytime I have an impending deadline (like Jesus’ 40 days left on earth), I desperately and hectically rush from task to task, trying to get as much accomplished as I possibly can.

I felt this anxiety just a few weeks ago, as I wrestled with whether to attend my uncle’s funeral. There had been miscommunication about whether the memorial would just be for the siblings or for extended family and friends, so I hadn’t received a verbal invitation until just a few days prior to the service. Which also meant I hadn’t adequately prepared to be gone for a few days that week. So, to attend the funeral would have meant neglecting some necessary parts of my job, putting my family in a bind, preaching a lousy sermon that coming Sunday, and doing all of that in a perpetual state of stress. But to stay home and not attend would have meant not seeing my family, not being able to properly grieve the loss of my uncle, and not being able to comfort my dad in the midst of his grief.

I wanted to do everything. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. But there was no way around it: I was going to let someone down. I couldn’t do it all. I couldn’t make everyone happy. I couldn’t help but disappoint. And at one point in that decision making process, I literally found myself laying on the steps in our home, tears welling from my eyes, groaning with paralysis and indecision.

But Jesus doesn’t appear to feel this same level of anxiety, shame, and desperation. He doesn’t fret over unfulfilled expectations or unsatisfied people. He’s not frantically ticking things off his to-do list. Instead, he moves slowly and deliberately—living in peace, sharing meals with friends, offering reconciliation to the guilty and ashamed, and intentionally encouraging and mentoring his disciples.

Living a resurrection life involves learning to live with a shame-and-anxiety-free posture, cutting ourselves slack and not feeling the need to be all things to all people. We don’t have to save the world. It’s okay to not meet people’s expectations. We literally cannot do everything for everyone. Resurrected people don’t live with a savior’s complex, because apparently, neither did our Savior. 

Finding God on the Trail

For those who don’t know, my family spent our spring break this year in St. George, Utah. We spent two days in the car, going and returning, but the six days in between were loaded with activities like hiking, rock climbing, and swimming. But the thing I was most excited for on this trip was the mountain biking. St. George is surrounded with incredible trails, and some of the best we encountered were about 3 blocks from our condo.

Mountain biking has become, over the last decade, one of my favorite activities in the world. I love the thrill of the descent, the speed of each turn, the wind rushing past my face, and my heart stopping for just a moment as I launch from a jump and await my return to earth. It’s always a time of physical exhaustion, yet emotional rejuvenation. I find peace and joy, community and friendship, and relief from the burdens of life.

But as I rode the trails in St. George—and especially the Zen Trail—I also found God. I found myself in a spiritual experience, sensing God’s presence and giving Him praise. And it happened in a number of ways.

First, God was most-certainly apparent in the beautiful, grandiose setting in which I was riding. The trail flanked the cliff of a giant mesa, with stunning views of the desert below and the mountains on the horizon. With the sun beginning to set and the sky as blue and cloudless as possible, I couldn’t help but be in awe of the Creator. I was utterly amazed that God had created all this magnificence. I was caught up in God’s power and goodness and was nearly brought to tears with each pedal stroke through the beauty of creation.

But I also found myself engrossed in worship through contemplation of the minutia of God’s handiwork. As I quickly careened down the trail, narrowly avoiding a myriad of potential pitfalls in the form of rocks and dirt, drops and jumps, rollers and climbs, I found myself thinking about the wonder of the human body. How in the world were my eyes and brain able to absorb the countless bits of information that was necessary to dodge and turn, slow down and speed up, narrowly avoiding disaster a thousand times over?! I don’t think I’m being overly dramatic or inaccurate in calling it a miracle. 

God has designed our bodies to function in ways that vastly surpass my understanding. He doesn’t just create the mountains and deserts, rocks and dirt, sunsets and blue skies. His creative work is also intricate and delicate, down to the tiniest detail of the human body. So, once again, I found myself worshiping our great God. I was grateful for both his monstrous power and the intricate detail of his interaction with our world.

So, while perched atop my carbon steed, meandering through the Utah desert, I was reminded of the ability to worship God everywhere and for everything. And I’m committed to doing that very thing in all the normal moments of my day, and not just while on vacation from reality.

Cultivating the Right Spirit

On my drive up to Bridger Bowl this Monday, I found myself in the midst of a simple miscommunication that sadly resulted in a very angry man hanging his head and his middle finger out his window and shouting in a violent tirade. Fortunately, I wasn’t able to hear the specifics of his outcry, but while I’m not a professional lip-reader, I’m assuming the words he was screaming would not be appropriate for me to share with you all. 

It was about 9:15am on Monday morning, so I found myself in the long line of skiers making their way to the mountain. I wasn’t in a hurry (like some people often are) and had no desire to pass the cars in front of me (like some people often do). But suddenly I noticed that the car in front of me had drastically slowed down and the driver had extended his hand from window and appeared to be waving me on to pass. I checked to make sure it was safe and then quickly skirted around him. 

But I quickly realized that he hadn’t been waving to me, but was signaling to a plow truck that was waiting to merge into the long line of traffic. I tucked in behind the plow to contentedly and patiently continue my journey to the ski hill, but not before being presented with a barrage of angry words and actions from the man I had passed. And I mean a vein-popping, red-faced sort of ANGRY. This guy was SO MAD. And he offered the same furious gestures to the two vehicles behind me that misunderstood what was happening and passed him as well.

The thing that shocked me most about this encounter, however, wasn’t the content of his tirade, but how quickly and instinctively it emerged. He didn’t have to mindfully and intentionally conjure up his response. He didn’t take a moment to process his emotions and then react accordingly or appropriately. He just erupted, without hesitation.

Which means that this man’s life has cultivated a spirit of frustration and anger, emotions that sit bubbling, just below the surface, ready to explode at any given moment. And I’m really not trying to judge him, because I do the same thing at times. I’ve never found myself screaming obscenities out my car window (or using my middle finger in that sort of way), but I certainly react poorly and regrettably at times. Maybe he had a really bad morning. Maybe he has a family member who is sick or struggling. Maybe he’s suffering from relational or vocational stress. I totally get it. But for whatever reason, he hasn’t cultivated a peaceful and generous spirit that will emerge as kindness and love in his moments of anxiety, pain, and struggle.

We all foster a certain lifestyle that will naturally rise to the surface in our moments of crises or uncertainty, for better or worse. Jesus says it this way:

“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:45)

Whatever we’re nurturing—whether grace, peace, generosity, and love; or judgment, anger, greed, and hatred—will dictate how we react and respond to the onslaught of encounters we experience each day. So, let’s make sure we’re doing the hard work, up front, of cultivating a righteous spirit that will subconsciously emerge as forgiveness, generosity, peacefulness, and love when we’re faced with trying situations. Let’s make sure that what we’re storing in our hearts is the sort of thing we’d want bubbling to the surface—because it surely will.

Let Jesus Have It

A few weeks ago, one of my Facebook friends shared the included meme about bitterness, hurt, and holding grudges, with the concluding advice that when it comes to these ideas, we need to simply ‘Let Jesus have it.” The argument is that we aren’t meant to carry these burdens, so we should let them go and give them over to God. When it comes to our bitterness, hurt, and grudges, we should let Jesus have it.

It’s a nice sentiment and I appreciated the reminder to place my ultimate concerns in Jesus’ hands and let him deal with my troubles.

But, like I so often do, in the hours and days to come, I found myself overanalyzing the expression “Let Jesus have it.” This phrase is interesting because it can be used in a number of ways—with one being sweet and kind, and the other angrier and more upset. 

Like we’ve already addressed, one way of ‘letting Jesus have it’ is a lovely act of trust and surrender. We acknowledge that the heavy weights we too often bear were never meant to be borne alone, so we offload them onto to the strong shoulders of our Messiah, Jesus. 

But the phrase could also be read differently. In our common lexicon, to ‘let someone have it’ is to unload the full range of our emotions in a verbal or physical tirade. We tell that person what we actually think; we give that person what they have coming to them; we spew out our anger and frustration; we don’t hold back. And while this ‘letting them have it’ outburst might feel a bit relieving and personally cathartic, when this action is directed at another person, it almost always comes out in sinful and relationally harmful ways.

But what if the object of our ‘let them have it’ emotional explosion was God—the way King David expresses his anger and frustration in the book of Psalms? Would this still be considered sinful and relationally harmful? Or does scripture make it clear that God has broad enough shoulders to bear the brute force of our indignation? I would say that the Bible gives us adequate justification for venting our frustrations with God. And in fact, even encourages this sort lament.

So, to return to our original phrase, “Let Jesus have it,” what if both ways of thinking about this expression were faithful responses to our bitterness, hurt, and grudges? Obviously, ‘letting Jesus have it’ through surrendering our worries and struggles to him would be a faithful way of dealing with our emotions. But I would also argue that ‘letting Jesus have it’ through angry, frustrated, vocalized lament is also a health and faithful way of dealing with our problems. We certainly don’t want to stay angry and frustrated forever, but naming our irritations—our bitterness, pain, and relational problems—and voicing our true emotions to God is not an act of weakness or sin; it’s healthy and sometimes necessary.

So, whatever struggles you are dealing with right now, the invitation is to find a way to ‘let Jesus have it.’ Maybe you can do that in a calm, collected, and peaceful manner; or maybe you need to scream out your frustrations to the Lord. I think either way of dealing with our difficulties can be helpful and healthy, but the main point is that our struggles—our pain, suffering, heartache, loneliness, and interpersonal challenges—must be dealt with, one way or another. 

So let Jesus have it.

Two Favorite Parts of the Day

There are two parts of my day that I’ve grown to really love—one in the morning and one in the evening. Each morning at 8:10, we open the front door and head out, as a family, on our daily walk to school. We’re only three blocks away, so it’s a relatively short time together, but I love the opportunity to spend a few minutes in conversation and connection as a family. 

There are no distractions or disruptions, just pure, unadulterated presence. We talk and walk, holding hands and playing with the dog—and when we reach the playground, we hug our kids goodbye, wish them a great day, and then lovingly and watch them all the way to the door of the school. On most days I find myself praying them to the door—asking God’s protection over them; praying they will be kids of compassion toward others; powerlessly placing them in the hands of their teachers, while inviting God’s presence over the whole process. It’s sweet and innocent and I fear for the day when our kids are “too old” for such behavior.

The other moment of my day that I’ve grown to love is walking with Annie, our dog, a few nights a week after the girls have gone to sleep. If Annie hasn’t had enough time to run and play during the day, it feels important to get her out to burn off a little energy before bed. And I find these short, half-mile walks to be incredibly peaceful and relaxing at the end of the day. It’s dark and quiet, the stars are out, the wind blowing lightly through the trees—and I often find myself in prayer and gratitude for the day. My mind and breathing slows, my heart and soul are at peace, and the stresses of the day melt away. It’s a beautifully sacred part of my day.

And I say all of this to encourage you and myself to find these moments of serenity, quietness, and prayer more often. Maybe this evening ritual of walking in the dark needs to become daily, for me, rather than just occasional. Especially in our current cultural context, we need to find peacefulness and connection, with God and one another, during this season of chaos and disunity.

So, what are the places and practices of peacefulness for you. What settles your soul at the end of a grueling day? What brings you peacefulness amid a world of pandemic and social unrest? What rhythms always invite you into a posture of prayer? And are you doing those things with regularity and consistency? Are you committed to these practices, even when busyness appears and stresses arrive?

Let’s make sure we are caring for our entire selves during this time where we could easily neglect our health.

Hope from the Stars

For many of you this won’t be news, but for those who haven’t heard, we’re in store for an exciting astronomical event this month. If you’ve been watching the night sky recently, you have probably noticed two large celestial bodies to the southwest—Jupiter and Saturn (our solar system’s two largest planets)—have been drawing increasingly closer to one another each night. And they’re drawing so near that we’re in pretty rarified air. Jupiter and Saturn get pretty close to each other once every 20 years or so, but on December 21, they will appear closer than they have since the year 1623. They'll be so close, in fact, that the two planets will essentially look like one.

This is extremely uncommon and I’m excited to witness it. But, in my opinion, that’s not nearly the coolest part of this story. There are a few other incredible aspects of this event.

First, this rare occasion where two planets appear (to the naked eye) as one, has a few names: the ‘Christmas Star’ or the ‘Star of Bethlehem.’ And then the second oddity of this story is that this celestial occurrence is just happening to take place on the longest and darkest night of the year—December 21—the Winter Solstice.

So, let’s recap what we know about this story:

On the darkest, longest, most-bleak night of the year…in the darkest, longest, most-bleak year in recent history…the Star of Bethlehem is about to show up in a way that it hasn’t in nearly 400 years.

I mean, come on! There’s no way that’s all true, is there?! Talk about a reason for hope!

I don’t really think and am not necessarily saying that God is purposefully and intentionally sending us this Christmas Star, the Star of Bethlehem, but it sure seems like perfect timing. We need to be reminded that no matter how dark and bleak life seems, God came before, He’s coming again, and, in fact, He’s already here in our presence.

As you stare to the sky in the coming weeks and then witness this astronomical phenomenon on December 21, may you be reminded that our God is still at work, is still showing up in our lives and our world, and can be hoped on during this long, bleak season of intense darkness. Watch and wait for Him. Hope and dream for Him. Longingly, yet patiently, search for Him. The Hope of the World is coming again—watch and see.

A Lesson in the Lights

Those of you who know me well, know that I LOVE decorating for Christmas. And I especially love decorating the outside of my house. I generally add some new element to my Christmas adornments each year, so after 7 years of home ownership, the decorations are getting a little excessive.

I love pulling up to the house and seeing the lights on. I love sitting on the couch and talking as a family or reading a book, while the Christmas tree glows, the Nativity shines, and the outside lights fill the block with festivity. It’s peaceful. It’s special. It’s magical. And it truly fills my heart with joy.

But perhaps the better way to talk about this experience is that I love having my home decorated for Christmas—because I don’t always love the work it takes to get the house adorned. There are ladders to set up and constantly move. There are decorations to retrieve from hard-to-reach shelving. It’s always cold and usually snowy. You run out of daylight to work in since it’s dark by 5:00. And worst of all: the burnt-out bulbs, sections, and strands. Without fail, there is always the headache of fixing or replacing strands of lights…sometimes even after working while on the ground but mysteriously failing after installation. It can be maddening!

The process can be long, grueling, and frustrating, but the result leaves me with peace and joy, and allows my home to shine forth to our community as a beacon of light and hope.

Which is a pretty good way of thinking about spiritual formation. 

I don’t always enjoy the process of spiritual formation—the rigors of discipline, the early mornings in the Word when I’d rather be in bed, or the choosing of kind words over my preference for snark; loving my enemies when I’d rather seek vengeance or being intentionally attentive for God’s presence in our word when I’m tempted to tune out. Spiritual formation is really hard work and sometimes I’m not up to the challenge.

And yet I love the outcome of discipleship; of striving to follow Jesus more closely; of working out my salvation with fear and trembling. I love the peace and joy that come with a life devoted to Jesus. I love the courage and conviction that mysteriously emerges in my moments of doubt and despair. And I love the work that God is doing in me to help me shine forth into my community as a beacon of light and hope, just like my Christmas lights.

So, in this dark season of Advent waiting—especially in this uncertain time of global pandemic—where it would be easy to lose hope, get spiritually lethargic, and stop growing and progressing as followers of Jesus, let’s remember that the work is always worth it. Let’s commit to the hard work of spiritual formation—constantly striving to love God more deeply, love our neighbors more fully, and develop spiritual rhythms that help us to do each of those more beautifully. And may this be the best Advent ever, since we’ve practically perfected the art of waiting.

What is the Gospel?

I’ve been thinking about this question for the last 24 hours or so. I was chatting with a few students from Montana Bible College last night after basketball and asking them what classes they are currently taking. One student said he was enjoying his evangelism class because, even though he grew up as a pastor’s kid, he wasn’t sure he could have articulated the ‘gospel’ until taking this course.

And it really is a good question, because our answer to that question—what is the gospel?—will drastically impact how we think about God, the world, and our calling as followers of Jesus.

If the gospel is primarily that we are royal screwups who had distanced ourselves from God through our sin and Jesus had to come cover for our mistakes, then God’s going to seem angry, Jesus’ death is going to seem transactional, and our role as Christians is going to be about keeping people out of hell.

If the gospel is primarily about Jesus being a nice person who helped a bunch of people, taught some great messages, and showed us how to live, then God’s going to seem powerless, Jesus’ death and resurrection are going to seem metaphorical, and our role as Christians will be about morality.

If the gospel gets reduced to only talking about what happened on the cross and what will happen when we die, then we lose the historical and cosmic rootedness of our faith and can slip into thinking faith is only about me and my relationship with Jesus.

There are many more examples than this, but the point is that what we believe matters. It plays out in how we live and move and have our being in this world. It affects the way we worship, grow as followers of Jesus, and treat the people around us.

So, I’ve been pondering how I would respond to this question: what is the gospel? What’s the good news that encapsulates who God is, what Jesus did, and how we should respond?

For me, the gospel must tell the whole story of God’s work in the world, must not leave out the problem we’ve caused, must emphasize the love of God that led Jesus to the cross, and must capture the proper response to God’s gift of grace. So, here are a few lines I’ve been mulling over, which I anticipate continuing to work on in the years to come.

The gospel is the good news that, while we have made a mess of God’s perfect plan for creation, God loves us so much that He would come to earth to live, die, and rise again to make things right with the whole world and offer us an abundant life of holistic peace in Christ. Our response to this gracious gift is to partner with God in redeeming the world through loving God, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and helping others start walking in the way of Jesus.

How about you? How would you answer this question, “What is the gospel?”