The Gospel According to "The Wesley"

Dear Friends,

Finals have been over about a week now. Many of you have gone home for the summer and are either gearing up for jobs or winding down from the craziness of the school year. Can I just say what a great time I had last week? It was such a joy to have you all in my home. The (co-ed) Ladies Tea Party and the (co-ed) Men’s BBQ were wonderful ways to celebrate the end of our school year. Last Thursday night as I put my boys to bed they were still buzzing from the excitement of a water-balloon fight in the rain with “the Wesley Students.” Thank you for making them feel so special and so included. As I tucked them in, Isaiah looked at me and said, “Mommy, this was the best day ever, when the Wesley Students came over. It was better than a birthday party!” This sweet four year old is still asking if he can have “the Wesley Students” and a water balloon fight for his birthday. I have to explain to him that November and water balloon fights don’t go well together. Anyway, I just want you all to know how special you are to my whole family, how much you are loved, and how deeply you will all be missed. As I share my last “Ramblings” of the school year, please know that I’m only a phone call or text away, and this rambling girl is still going to ramble. You can continue to find me (and all the ramblings I’ve ever written) at http;//www.sami-rambles.blogspot.com.

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

The weekend before finals we had our “Fall Retreat in the Spring . . . Again.” I loved it! We all fasted together for 24 hours; we spent time setting our intentions for that separated time, things we were lifting to God and asking Him to intervene in; and we watched all kinds of John Hughes’ movies! The official title of our “Fall Retreat in the Spring . . . Again” was “The Gospel According to John Hughes,” which I thought was pretty good since the last time I asked students to do a fasting retreat with me I made them watch ten hours of Beth Moore videos. I don’t think any of them have had the heart to watch Beth Moore since then! So John Hughes was a bit easier to handle, I think. And during that twenty-four hours I felt like I watched my junior high and high school years playing out before my eyes on the big screen. Who knew hair could be so big, jeans so high wasted, or PG rated movies so inappropriate!? Wow.

Since then I have been thinking of what exactly “the Gospel According to John Hughes” is. Here is what resonates within me: 1) Love changes everything. 2) Authentic community is redemptive. 3) Individuals are bigger than the box others try to put them in. And finally 4) when people change, the world they live in is transformed. As I have pondered these life lessons I realize that they are actually related to four other statements that have been an integral part of my life for the last nine years. Since my first year serving as campus minister our mission at the Wesley has been to put a human face on God’s love, create a safe place for students to meet Jesus, discover who we are in Christ, and take the love of Jesus beyond our own four walls (this one actually came about in my third year or so). I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when God spoke these core values into my heart.

I remember sitting at a computer trying to articulate what the Wesley Foundation meant to me in my very first “official” Wesley e-mail. I was trying to put into words what it did for me as a college student years ago and what I wanted it to do for everyone we would minister to in my tenure. First and foremost it made God’s love real to me like it had never been real before. I knew God loved me because I felt His love through people who took the time to get to know me and celebrate me as an individual instead of trying to make me into someone else. As a student discovering the Wesley Foundation for the first time, I realized that God’s love had a human face, and “He” looked a lot like my campus minister and friends who daily accepted me, encouraged me, and walked with me through graduation. I knew God wanted that legacy to continue, and “Put a human face on God’s love” was born. This Love led me to hear God’s call upon my life and also brought me to the sweet man who has been my husband for almost 15 years. Yes, Love changed everything for me twenty years ago, and I have had the privilege of seeing this Love change lives “for good” for the past nine years.

During one of our first Thursday night Bible studies we looked at what the Kingdom of God was like, trying to understand how it is different from the world we live in. I remember reading the passage from Isaiah that speaks of lions lying down with lambs while a little child leads them. As I stood before the group that night God began to put in my heart a picture of what He intended to do at the Wesley. He began to show me that our ministry was supposed to be a place where everyone could safely come to know Jesus, no matter how different they were. He began to show me that all people are sacred and beloved to Him, even as animals as diverse as lions and lambs are important and needed within creation. As we began to create an atmosphere of safety, where each unique person could be welcomed into our community and offered the unconditional love and hospitality of Jesus Christ, we began to see an openness to a relationship with Jesus in people that had not been there before. We could literally see Jesus transforming lives from the inside out. Authentic community is at the heart of creating a safe place for students to meet Jesus, and such an atmosphere is truly redemptive.

I went to my first (and last) Ichthus my first year as campus minister. It was hot, sweaty, grungy. We stayed in tents, slept in water, pooped in port-a-potties, and picked up trash in the rain. All for the chance to attend an outdoor Christian music festival for three days. During that weekend I spent a lot of time in the worship tent. While I was there God once again began to speak to my heart through a picture. Here’s how I described it in my journal, April 29, 2003:

We went to Ichthus—the big music festival. You gave me a new vision of myself—beautiful! In this vision You (Jesus) are looking at me and I am looking at You—You are so beautiful! And You are smiling—everything about You is smiling—Your eyes, Your inward light, Your Spirit. And then I began to see me—I was beautiful—with a light and confidence radiating from inside, truly beautiful. I realize I was seeing myself looking at You. What I also realize as I write this is that I was seeing what You see! Wow!

After that powerful moment, I began to realize that rarely do any of us ever see ourselves as Christ sees us. We are too caught up in others’ opinions of us, or our own opinions of ourselves. These opinions are rarely grounded in truth and are confining in ways that choke out the life within us. When we discover who we are in Christ we are truly free, joyful, and powerfully beautiful. Often that discovery can be disruptive because suddenly we no longer fit in the neat and tidy boxes others would have us occupy. However, we do begin to enjoy the freedom and abundant life Jesus died to give to us. We become who we were created in Love to be, and we no longer fit in the boxes we used to live in. Over the years it has been so cool to see my students begin to embrace this freedom and live into it. You are all so utterly beautiful to me. Praise God!

The final part of our identity as a campus ministry is bittersweet. When we realized what God was asking of us and gave our hearts to it, our Wesley Foundation was completely transformed. But this new way of being was born from a painful realization that we were doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. Wesley has always been a small community. This is a part of our identity we have struggled with from the time I stepped foot in the doors. During my first couple of years here we began to really try to grow our ministry by doing creative outreaches in our neighborhood and on campus. One day I was walking on campus having a screaming meme with the Lord. In my frustration I prayed to Him, “We are busting our butts trying to grow! Why won’t send us new students?” And with deep tenderness I felt in my spirit these words: “Because if I sent you new people now you would quit reaching out.” The realization that I had been reaching out to campus only because I wanted more numbers, only because I wanted to boost my own ego, hit me square in the eyes. God began to show me that He wanted us to reach out to campus because He loves college students. He wants us to share His love in creative ways because there are people on our campus who will never go to a campus ministry but still need to know He loves them. And so our students unanimously voted to expand our mission to include our vision to “take the love of Jesus beyond our own four walls.” We have faithfully tried to share God’s unconditional love with our campus and community since then. In the years since that change in heart was embraced it is clear to all who know us that reaching out is now one of our core values. I believe that this change in us has impacted our campus. I know of many students who haven’t been formal members of our ministry who have been touched by our ministry. Deep and lasting transformation never happens in a vacuum. When Jesus gets a hold of our lives and does His thing, the world we live in is never quite the same; it too is transformed.

A final message from the films of John Hughes is this: Life is a gift to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest. I love how he weaves this vision of life being worth living through all of his movies. Of course the ultimate goal of life in his stories is a bit misguided. In the big hair 80’s that Hughes’ movies celebrate and glorify, it is one’s first true love that brings saving grace to the desperate world of adolescent angst. Yet as followers of Christ, we know that Jesus is the only One who can really save us and make our lives everything we long for them to be. We know that He really is the only source of true love, authentic community, life beyond the box, and lasting transformation. It has been a joy and privilege for me to come to know Him in just these ways while I have been with you. At our last worship service I encouraged each of you to continue to run with perseverance the life-race marked out for you, leaning on Jesus as you move forward into your next chapters, knowing that I am in your cloud of witnesses madly cheering you on (Hebrews 12:1). But the gift I have just realized in the past week is that these are the things you have done for me. When I arrived here nine years ago, it was hard for me to grasp God’s love for me. It was hard for me to feel safe enough to trust His grace. It was near impossible for me to step outside the box of others’ expectations and be myself. And I was so terrified of upsetting the status quo that there was little chance the world I inhabited could be transformed. Yet in all that time you all have loved me, accepted me, showered me with grace of Jesus, and continually cheered me on. All of you have made my cloud of witnesses so utterly beautiful. Because of your witness to His love for me I am completely undone and so much more His now than when I started. Thank you for that. Your presence in my life has been a precious gift I have enjoyed, one that has made my life full to overflowing. I love you all so much.

One last time, I leave you with this benediction:

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. Amen.

This is me trusting,

Sami

Gratitude

When I was in college I stayed with an English professor who out of the kindness of her heart made it a practice to rent out her large attic room to whichever poor, starving student God happened to bring to her doorstep. For the last half of my college career, it was me. In exchange for the next to nothing rent I paid, I received a room, all my meals, and my laundry to boot. Yes, she washed my clothes for me. Karen even packed my lunch for school each day. I cannot begin to tell you what a blessing it was. When I first moved in I discovered that Karen was in remission from cancer of the esophagus. Over the course of the next three years, her cancer would return, and, as a part of the family, I walked with Karen through those painful, final months of her life. I felt like God had placed me there to bring hope and joy to a difficult journey. I attended the weekly healing service hosted by the Episcopal church she attended; I prayed for Karen daily, asking God to bring forth a miracle; and I rubbed her swollen feet at night as both of us laughed through Dave Letterman’s top ten list on TV.

I will never forget the week her brother visited her just a few months before her death. It was truly bittersweet. How clearly I remember the day he left. As I returned home from school, I recall pausing before the back door and bracing myself before my entrance into the house. I knew the morning had been difficult for Karen. I didn’t feel up to it, but I put on my happy face and went on it, greeting Karen with my usual jovial self, hoping to help lift her mood. Karen’s words in response pulled no punches: “Sami,” she said, “it is hard for me to say goodbye to people for the last time when you are so damn cheerful!” I was stunned, but over the years her words have become one of my highest treasures. I have carried her gift of direct honesty into every situation where I sense others are deeply grieving. Because she was so blunt with me, I was able to learn early on how important it is to walk softly on the raw edges of another person’s life. That wisdom has served me well over the years.

But I can honestly say that I’ve never felt what she felt until today. Last night was our last worship service at Wesley for the semester. And for me personally, it was my last, period. I don’t even know how to put into words how I feel. I just know that I am hurting. People who don’t relate to me as the campus minister of the Wesley Foundation have no idea how significant last night was. It’s like they are talking to me as if I am the same person they have always known, but inside I am undone. It just doesn’t seem fair that I am in the midst of letting go of a part of my life that has been central to everything I am for the last nine years, and yet I have to relate to the world outside of this experience as if I am still the same person. I am not.

Yet the best parts of me still are the same. My heart truly is full. More full I would venture to say, than ever before. All of you, my precious students, poured out your love for me last night, in ways I could not have anticipated. I just had no idea. I know so deeply the love I have for you. I am staggered and humbled by, truly in awe of, the love you have for me. Oh my. There are no words. God has truly placed you here to bring hope and joy to a difficult journey. Wow.

John Claypool, a Baptist minister, wrote about the heartrending experience of losing his ten year old daughter to leukemia in his book Tracks of a Fellow Struggler. In it he shares the journey of her diagnosis, remission and relapse, and finally her death. In poignant vulnerability he shares his grief, not from the vantage point of a wise and far-removed pastor advising parishioners on grief, but rather from the perspective of a devastated father who has lost his own beloved child. As he struggles to understand what has happened, he offers a way of moving through the heartache that helps me now as I move through these final days: “Here, in a nutshell, is what it means to understand something as a gift and to handle it with gratitude, a perspective biblical religion puts around all of life. And I am here to testify that this is the only way down from the Mountain of Loss. I do not mean to say that such a perspective makes things easy, for it does not. But at least it makes things bearable when I remember that Laura Lue was a gift, pure and simple, something I neither earned nor deserved nor had a right to. And when I remember that the appropriate response to a gift, even when it is take away, is gratitude, then I am better able to try and thank God that I was ever given her in the first place.”

I choose gratitude. There are, to be frank, numerous other options available to my battered and broken heart. But I have to view them as less than viable options for helping me truly live deeply these last days together. I have to view them as temptations with the power to rob me and those I love of holy moments together, where we celebrate our fun times, reminisce on the good times, and reflect on the meaningful times that changed us forever. Ultimately, more than anything else, I am deeply grateful. I’m so grateful for each one of you, your tender expressions of love, the legacy of Jesus writing Himself all over and through us that we have shared. My time at Wesley, all nine beautiful years of it, has been a gift, full of God’s grace and mercy. Every sweat drop and tear has been worth it. Every struggle and fight to keep Wesley alive and thriving has been well spent. I would give myself all over again for the ministry we have experienced together without question. None of the loving, no matter the cost, has ever been wasted. While my heart grieves the changes that are happening, I honestly thank God that He brought me here to be a “spiritual mother hen” in the first place.

So, my dear, sweet ones, we have a week and a half left in our semester. The time is quickly flying. I don’t want to waste a minute of it. Please come for these final days together. Let us laugh, be silly, and boisterously celebrate life together as we always have done. In the midst of my heartache this is my highest joy.

This is me trusting,

Sami

"The Work of Courage: Heart wide open"

Hello to all! Praise God for Easter! Woo Hoo! I am so glad that Jesus rose again. I am so thankful for resurrection. I am so immensely happy that death and evil and hopelessness do not have the last word, ever.

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

In his book Sabbatical Year Henri Nouwen shared this insight: “The word courage comes from Coeur, which means ‘heart.’ To have courage is to listen to our heart, to speak from our heart, and to act from our heart. Our heart, which is the center of our being, is the seat of courage.” Within a month after he wrote these words he passed away from a massive cardiac arrest. What is most poignant to me is that this is exactly how he lived his whole life, from his heart. It is always what I have loved best about his writing. Henri Nouwen’s words have helped me live my life from my heart too.

I have pondered this year in light of the recent unfolding news that I will not be returning in the fall to the Wesley Foundation. I have spent the majority of this year working, living, and serving without that knowledge, doing things for the last time without knowing it was my last time. I am so thankful for the gift of these last weeks to have that knowledge so that I can make sure I love well with the time I have left. Yet in the deepest part of me, I have no regrets, even for the nine months when I didn’t know my time was drawing to a close. Here is what makes sense to me: Since I was in college I have always wanted to live life to the fullest, to not waste one moment away. For me that means that I live (in Nouwen’s words) from my heart, or (in my words) with my heart wide open.

Some will say this is foolish. In our world it is considered wise to live with your eyes wide open, but never the heart. This is mostly because it is impossible to protect one’s heart when it is open to all experiences and all people. True, I have had my heart broken on numerous occasions. Yet each time I found a loving Lord who healed me and made me whole. And also each time He would gently show me ways that He was not first in my heart. What I have found is that the more I make Him first in my heart, the more His love fills me up and spills over into others, and the more my heart is truly protected from being shattered. He makes true courage plausible because only He safeguards our vulnerability without sacrificing our transparency and passion.

Henri goes on to say this: “Often we debate current issues and express our opinions about them. But courage is taking a stance, even an unpopular stance, not because we think differently from others but because from the center of our being we realize how to respond to the situation we are in. Courage does not require spectacular gestures. Courage often starts in small corners.” My hope is that in the time we have had together you have come to realize what is most important to you in the center of your being, your heart, and that you will live all of your life from that place. For me that has meant that in the last nine years I have passionately loved students, with all my quirks and idiosyncracies showing, allowing my love affair with Jesus to be an example of how He meets us where we are and draws us unashamedly to Himself. This has been what courage has asked of me. What does courage ask of you?

When I consider each of you and your many gifts and yearnings, my heart is warmed. I am so grateful for the opportunity to walk with you on your journeys, to cheer you on, to comfort and console, to encourage and challenge. I am excited for the ways God is going to shape and bless the world through each of you. You are my treasure; you are my harvest; you are so worth me opening my heart and risking vulnerability. So what does is mean for you to listen to your heart, to speak from your heart, to act from your heart? What difference do you most want to make in this one lifetime you’ve been given?

Whatever it is, live it boldly, and with courage. Know that God walks with you, empowers you, and cheers you on. You are not the person you are by chance. His love and mercy and grace have woven themselves into your life in such a way that you care about what you care about for a reason. Your passion is God expressing His hopes for a better world through you. He fully intends to bless your courageous acts of passion as you live into who He created you to be. So my dear ones, hold nothing back, leave nothing unsaid, give everything you are to His hands. Entrust yourself fully to the work of courage, and then rest in God’s great passion for you.

This is me trusting,

Sami

Everything Changes But Beauty Remains

I love the title for today’s Rambling: “Everything Changes But Beauty Remains.” I wish I could say that I came up with it, but I didn’t. I got it from one of my dear students, that sweet Kelsey girl who titled a picture album on Facebook that way. It touches something deep in me. Especially now. A few weeks ago I was told by my District Superintendent that the Bishop has decided to not reappoint me to the Wesley Foundation. Basically that means that as of July 1^st I will no longer be the Methodist campus minister at WKU. While I cannot speak to what the Bishop’s reasons for this move are (really because I honestly don’t know them), I can say that my Board of Directors has been very supportive of our ministry and the direction we have been going, as well as the students who are connected to the Wesley Foundation. Our ministry has been thriving and growing. What seems to make the most sense to me is simply to say that this is just the Methodist way. I don’t particularly understand it, but God has asked me to trust Him. So that’s what I’m doing.

Saying goodbye to nine years of ministry in a place I deeply love is hard. There’s just no way around it. What sustains me is the belief that everything of value that we have experienced together does not pass away. Instead, I find that those places of beauty that have touched our hearts over the years are of an Eternal quality. Nothing can destroy them. Their impact is lasting. Those beautiful moments will transcend time and space, planting themselves firmly in the hearts of those who have been touched, transforming us and finally birthing new beauty in a way that only God’s Harvest can.

I speak from experience. I have seen how bonds of friendship remain after transition, forged in the grace of God’s abiding love, covering distances and spanning years to keep hearts connected to each other. It is quite simply . . . beautiful. And I know from my own life that there are those Holy Moments that continue to speak to me, bringing new revelation and insight, even though the temporal time signature is long gone. Only God can do that. And only the things that God is in have any lasting value anyway.

In the past nine years I have tried to see and lift up those things of Eternal value. That has been the gift of the e-letter for me. As I pondered what to share each week, something that resonated deeply in my soul would emerge. I found that the message I most wanted to share was also the message I most needed to hear; each one helped me connect to the presence of God always near, always inviting me to have His perspective instead of my own. I love that I can still look back over these “ramblings” and still hear my sweet Lord speaking to me. He is so good.

So that never changes: the sweetness of a Lord who continually invites us to share His Eternal life bursting upon our ordinary mundane ones. I am confident that even though this chapter in my life (and that of the Wesley Foundation) is ending, God is not through bursting in on us yet. As I said in a message during worship a couple of weeks ago, the servant may change, but the Holy God who fills the vessel does not. God is not going anywhere. And at the same time God is going wherever I end up. Praise the Lord!

That is where I leave you my dear ones, in the Almighty Hands of the God who loves you so much. The old song is still true: He’s got the whole world in His hands; He’s got you and me brother in His hands; He’s got you and me sister, in His hands; He’s got everybody here, in His hands; He’s got the whole world in His hands. And yes, He’s even got the Wesley Foundation securely in His hands.

This is me trusting,

Sami

A Better Song

We are deep into the Lenten season now. This coming weekend we will celebrate Palm Sunday, always a joyful day when we remember and often recreate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. It is a time of confidence and celebration, when we shout out our praises to God. It’s easy to praise God in the middle of a party.

I’m guessing this is what boltstered Peter’s declaration to Jesus that even though others may fall away from Him, he never will. I mean, it must have been some parade. I can totally see Peter getting a glimpse of the true identity of Jesus in that moment as the Son of God, not just to know intellectually, but to also see God’s glory in Him and on Him. Because I have experienced those moments of absolute certainty of God’s power and presence, I can totally relate to the surety of Peter’s declaration, based upon a moment of revelation that moved him deeply. It’s just too bad we cannot live in those moments.

I remember in seminary that one of my best professor’s least favorite hymns was “Are Ye Able Said the Master.” It’s lyrics go like this:

“Are ye able,” said the Master, “to be crucified with me?” “Yea,” the sturdy dreamers answered, “to the death we follow thee.”

Lord, we are able. Our spirits are thine. Remold them, make us, like thee, divine.

Thy guiding radiance above us shall be a beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.

I had a hard time understanding his dislike for it then. I guess I was still a sturdy dreamer. Here is what I realize now: when we can easily see God’s power and strength and glory in those precious moments of clarity, when God gives us a revealing moment to understand His true nature, it’s easy to ride on the confidence of that moment into promises of faithfulness that our own power and strength can’t keep. We think we can follow Him anywhere. And if the life of discipleship were all radiance, we could. But the road to the crucifixion quickly becomes dark. When Jesus calls us to discipleship, He says, “Pick up your cross and follow Me.” That road is not one of uninterrupted radiance. It is a road of trust. It is a road where our confidence in self dies, so that confidence in Him is all that remains. I have never heard this road spoken of as easy. And like all of us who answer the call to follow Him, Peter learns it soon enough. In a courtyard where he tries to follow Jesus, even from a distance, Peter’s confidence is broken. He denies Jesus so easily, not just once but three times. In that moment Peter’s self-confidence is crucified.

I love that Jesus gets this about Peter before Peter ever does. Jesus sees the truth in Peter before the denial ever happens. But what is more, Jesus sees in that heartbreaking denial the birth of real confidence, the kind that is the gift of the Holy Spirit, a confidence in God’s grace and power to redeem that moved a crowd of 3000 to accept Jesus as their risen Lord and Savior. I love that Jesus brings beautiful endings to our stories of brokenness. I love that we can trust Him to bring His glory out of our moments of heartache, loss, and sadness.

Another song comes to mind. I learned it when I was working as a summer intern for a youth group during college. It’s words go like this:

“We believe in God, and we all need Jesus, ‘Cause life is hard, and it might not get easier. But don’t be afraid to know who you are, and don’t be afraid to show it. If you believe in God, if you say you need Jesus, He’ll be where you are, And He never will leave you. Sing to me now words that are true so all in this place can know it. We believe in God, and we all need Jesus.”

It is a better song. We have no way of knowing what will come. Sometimes it is impossible to see the Via Dolerosa that lies ahead. But we can trust that Jesus walks every part of that road with us. We can be assured that He will never ask us to walk a road that He hasn’t walked before us to prepare the way. We can also rest in His promise to never leave us nor forsake us, to walk every step of the way with us. Finally, we can trust that He will bring forth His glory in the very part of our journey that grieves us the most. His resurrection is a promise of redemption that touches every part of our walk with Him. Praise the Lord! So this is my Lenten reflection today. I want to sing a better song: not to put confidence in the flesh, which I know is weak; but to walk with courage into the unknown because I know He walks with me and His strength is made perfect in my weakness.

Dear, precious ones, my prayer for you is that you will live and walk fearlessly, unafraid to be true to the persons He made you to be. Because He truly is where you are, He love loves you, and He gives you every Strength you need to courageously walk forward. And for the record, I love you too.

This is me trusting,

Sami

Uncrushable Hope

Earlier in the semester my oldest son Noah and I had a little butting of the heads. He had been invited to a birthday party by one of his friends who wanted everyone to wear their favorite basketball jersey. Noah wanted to wear his upward uniform. Because his upward game was going to be that following Saturday morning, I told him he could wear the jersey, but the t-shirt and shorts he would have to save. Noah was crushed. He was so upset because the jersey was incomplete without the right shorts or shirt under it. He worked himself into such a fit I could barely talk to him. Finally I went to his bedroom and began pulling out other shorts he could wear under it. After a while, Noah began to realize that the clothes I was choosing for him worked just as well as what he wanted, and he would still be able to wear a fresh uniform the following day. He found an outfit he could be happy with and quickly regained his composure. After a little while had passed I knelt down to talk to him. As I pulled him close he began to go through an apology, because he thought he was getting scolded. Instead I said, “You don’t have to apologize. I just want you to know that you can trust me, that I love you, and that I am working things out for you in a way that will be good for you.”

Even as I was saying those words I knew they were Holy Spirit inspired God words. I believe these are the words that God speaks to every person He loves. Yep that would be everyone. Sometimes it is so hard in the middle of disappointment and heartache to hear them, just like it was hard for Noah to see that my plan for him was good, even if it looked different from his.

So many times I hear the stories of disappointment and despair from people who are heartbroken because life hasn’t turned out the way they wanted it to. My heart aches for them. I know deeply the pain of loss; I remember well the sting of my own dashed hopes. When I hear these life stories coming out of a place of complete brokenness and inabilitiy to comprehend, I feel the resonating anguish. The deep places within me recognize it and rush forth to meet the grief with empathy and compassion. But the deep places in me recognize something else that the person in pain is not quite ready to see. It is the promise of God’s love that meets the person where they are, gives them a new understanding of His love for them, and then blesses them with a new vision for themselves that is born out of His uncrushable hope. Ephesians 3:14-21 expresses it best:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom ever family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generation, forever and ever. Amen.

The one thing I have learned about God more than any other is that He is really into redemption. What that means is that He chooses the broken and desperate (even dead) places of our lives to be the birthplaces for His new life revealed in us. It is the message of the cross that He reinvents over and over again through our ordinary lives. He loves to see His resurrection power displayed in the exact spot of our hopeless despair and grim resignation. Often times we are too hurt to see past our own pain to understand the beautiful new thing He is bringing forth. That’s okay. He gets that about us. I believe it is why He gives us to one another. While you are in your grief and can’t see out of it, I can hold your hand and see God’s grace and mercy for you. When my head and heart are weighed down with burdens I can’t carry, you believe in God’s goodness and strength for me.

The gift of disappointment is that it helps us come to know our true identity. We are hurt and disappointed often because something or someone is removed from our lives that we didn’t think we could live without. We believe that without that something or someone we cannot be complete and worthwhile people. Yet when life removes something we believe gives us our value, we have the opportunity to learn that our value comes from Him, from being His child. We have worth because He made us, He loves us, and He is working out His purposes in our lives. When the crutch of that something or someone is gone, we learn to stand in God’s truth of us rather than remaining dependent upon an outside source to know our worth.

And let me just say, once we can stand tall in His love and value of us, He is ready to accomplish abundantly far more in and through our lives than all we can ask and imagine. The hope of resurrection ceases to be an abstract and distant historical happening and becomes to us the very power by which we live our lives. People see and take notice because God is released to do what on He can do: show off His glory!

What does this mean? It means that your heartache is not the end of the story. It means that there will be a day when you can look with joy upon your life, when your disappointment and grief are but a faint shadow. It means that there is coming a moment when you will know your labor and your tears have not been in vain. There will be a day when you will see with your own eyes His power accomplishing in your life far more than you ever thought to ask for or even imagine. You can trust Him to bring goodness to you. You can trust Him to redeem, make right, turn around, make beautiful every disappointment and despair that you offer into His hands.

I share these things as an encouragement, especially during this season of Lent. While you may be in a season of looking toward the cross, the one that Jesus died on as well as the cross of disappointment and heartache in your own life, remember that the end of the story has nothing to do with death and everything to do with resurrection. Jesus didn’t just tell His disciples beforehand that He would be delivered into the hands of His enemies and killed, but He also said that on the third day He would rise again. I am as confident that this as is true for Jesus showing up in your life story as it is for the one He lived here on earth. You are His. He loves you. He delights in You. And He is waiting for that day when He can resurrect the broken places of your life and show forth His power and glory through you to all the earth. Hear His sweet words spoken to your waiting heart: “I just want you to know that you can trust Me, that I love you, and that I am working things out for you in a way that will be good for you.”

This is me trusting,

Sami

First Love

First love. The phrase brings back all kinds of memories (not all of them pleasant) of my first foray into serious romantic endeavors. I look back at the 16 year old girl that I was, so thankful that I’m not her now. Quite honestly I had no concept of what kind of love God desired for my life. That lack of understanding cost bought me a heap of wisdom that I’m so thankful for today. Since then I’ve learned so much more about love and loving. As I compare the love I felt as an awkward teenager to the love I share now with my sweet husband, I can’t help but have a heart overflowing with gratitude and thanksgiving. God has brought me so far; He has healed so many things; He has restored so much that I thought could never be restored. I can honestly say that my sweet husband is the love of my life. But God is my First Love. And that has made all the difference. It is His Love that makes every other love possible; it is His Love that makes every other love sweet. Although my precious husband is the only one who rings my bell, God is my First Love.

What we love first makes all the difference. We cannot love anyone or anything before God without costing ourselves a world of heartache. Quite simply, nothing and no one but Him can hold the fullness of our hearts without dropping something. Only God is worthy to be our First Love, because only God’s hands are big enough to entrust all that we are to them. Only God is powerful enough to redeem, restore, and recreate all of the wounds of our past. Only God can bring back to life that which has been rendered dead within us.

This message is so simple yet so profound. Love God first. Let God truly be your First Love. In Mark 12:29 Jesus shares the greatest commandment: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the lore your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This is the most important thing. When we get this right, everything else finds its proper place in our lives.

I just finished having lunch with a young woman who is so dear to me. She has experienced heartbreaking loss, and yet she refuses to let anything separate her from God’s love. When I am with her I feel the light of Christ just all around. When others who experience devastating heartache withdraw, shut down, and shut God out, she has tenaciously held on to her faith, desiring to be His even when each day for her holds the hurt of deep grief. She courageously reaches through the pain of her grief to grasp the hand of God. I praise Him for her. By doing the only thing she knows to do to get through her grief she is showing others the way out of despair and into the arms of a loving, all encompassing God. I’m so grateful for her witness, and so touched.

We are in the season of Lent, that liturgical time of year when we turn our faces toward the cross and walk with Jesus toward the crucifixion and His resurrection. During the forty days leading up to the remembrance of Christ’s death on the cross, Christians for centuries has reserved this time for the practice of spiritual disciplines which help to leave earthly desires behind and prepare the heart to receive God’s presence in a fuller way. When I was a 16 year old love struck teenager who didn’t understand the true dimensions of love, I would give up drinking Dr. Pepper during Lent. But love means so much more now. God has shown me with gentle clarity the depths of His Love for me, the precious gift of His eternal salvation opened for me on the cross, the sweetness of His daily presence to lead and to guide. Lent this year has become more of a Love Song, with my clumsy yet deliberate notes echoing His Love Notes in my life. I want my Lenten sacrifice to open up space in me to love Him more. I want to meet Him in Love, and enlarge my own capacity to live in the Love He greets me with each day.

If you are like one young man who used to be a student of mine, giving up Dr. Pepper would do that for you. Bless his heart, he would rather have had a Dr. Pepper infusion than a blood infusion! Because it was so much a part of him, to give it up would have really been difficult. And the point is in the difficulty to turn our hearts to Jesus, to ask God to come into the empty space left by unfulfilled desire and fill us up, to seek to love and desire God as much as that thing we want that we can’t have.

I believe this season of reverence, spiritual discipline, and self-denial is essentially an invitation. When Jesus emptied Himself and came to us (Phillipians 2:5-8), ultimately giving His life for us on the cross, the Bible tells us that He endured it for the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2). His joy was to open up eternal and abundant life to us, to redeem our lives from the pit, to put His Holy Spirit within us so that we could taste and see the goodness of God. When He invites us to take up our crosses and follow Him, He is inviting us to a journey that will ultimately lead to our heart’s desire. The pain of self-denial is really just the path to our deepest joys fulfilled.

So join me this Lenten season in walking a path of Love. Listen for God’s word to your heart for the spiritual discipline that will lead you closer to Him. Perhaps it is the soft drink deletion that will make the difference for you. Maybe it is to fast from complaining. Maybe He simply wants you to stop putting yourself or others down, to replace negative words with positive ones. Maybe He wants you to read your Bible daily, or even read through the Gospels. Whatever it is, say yes. And let the Love of the Lord lead you to fall more deeply in love with Him.

This is me trusting,

Sami

After the "Uh-Oh"!

Tim and I are in a parenting class at church that gives advice on how to handle discipline issues with children in a way that maintains the dignity of both the child and parent. A few weeks ago the book we are reading introduced the “Uh-Oh” song, to be sung merrily after a child has entered into discipline territory and needs to have some redirection. I haven’t quite caught on to the practice yet. But I have been pondering “Uh-Oh” moments that we somehow slip into that are very real and very much in need of redirection.

I’m not talking about childhood misadventures in mischievousness. I’m talking about those moments when we realize that our lives have ventured down a path that we never intended, and we have arrived in a place that is ugly, desperate, and hopeless. Perhaps it is the moment you realize the unplanned pregnancy is real. Or the moment that you know a whole semester has bombed. Or the moment when you sense that this partying thing is no longer a party. Or the moment you understand why the car is totaled and the insurance isn’t paying. Or the moment when you comprehend the fact that you will no longer be let off with “just a warning.” Whatever it is, it’s the moment when you say to yourself, “Wow, I screwed up.”

There are two key components to this experience. Both involve radical self-awareness. I’m not talking about those times when someone else looks into your life and tells you, “Man, you really blew it!” They may or may not be right. And often, even if they are right, we are so defensive their message never penetrates. Instead, this is a moment of clarity, when the fog clears and we come to our senses. When we have the grace to understand that our lives are in desperate need of help and we cannot generate that help on our own. I am talking about that specific experience of knowing the unvarnished truth of where we are in life and also owning the part we played in getting there. Knowing and owning. It’s really the moment when we can look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “I get it now.”

Often in that moment of realization we feel such a keen sense of shame, regret, and hopelessness. We despair of ever getting back to that place of innocent trust, that place of before. Yet imbedded in the heartache of painful realization there is hope. And this moment can, if we allow it, lead us to a place that is better than before because it will grounded in a deep knowing of what we are capable of and an understanding of how our choices always bear fruit. This moment of despairing in ourselves can lead us to a place where we learn to lean wholly on God’s grace and less upon our own self-sufficiency. It really can be good.

So how does God see our moment of moral failure? It’s odd. I grew up with a keen sense of fearing God’s judgement. I could not admit to myself mistakes because I was so afraid of facing God’s rejection. But what I have learned is that it never surprises God when we fail. He is not waiting at the door of our relationship with Him, waiting to pounce on us with “I told you so’s” and “you should have known better’s.” He is waiting for just that moment of knowing and owning, that moment when it ceases to surprise us that we fail. Because that is the moment when we can most acknowledge our need of Him and we are most open to receiving it. It is that moment when we are so fully convinced of our own way’s folly that we are willing to try a new way, a different way. We are willing to do things His way because we know that our way leads to no way. And that is just the moment when His grace rushes in, cleans us up, and sets us on a new path.

It may surprise you that even after royally screwing up we can still be considered righteous. This is because we rarely understand the nature of true righteousness. True righteousness (or lack thereof) has less to do with what we do and everything to do with Who (or who) we trust. When we trust God we receive His righteousness. When we trust Him (believe Him) to forgive us, to cover our sin, to accept us back into His care, to lead us to a good place, that is when we have the beginnings of righteousness. And when we trust Him enough to actually begin to follow Him where He leads, that is when His righteousness takes root in our lives and begins to flourish. That is when His righteousness becomes something others can see. Not because we are trusting in our own good deeds (which is no righteousness at all), but because they can see we love Him, and are looking at Him, and are following after Him. Here is what scripture has to say about it: “Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Romans 4:4-5).

So what do we do now? Just this: believe that God loves you and wants to help you. He gets that you blew it. And mercy of mercies, you do too. He isn’t going to dwell on that. He wants to move you to a better place. So let Him. Seek Him. Follow after Him. Let the grief you feel over your past mistakes be the place that you seek to fill with coming to know and understand His plan for your life that is radically different from your own. In Revelation the apostle John offers this excellent wisdom to the church at Ephesus about getting back to that sweet spot of communion with the Lord: “Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5). Quite literally he is simply saying turn yourself away from where you were going and turn toward the Lord and His path for you.

I want to close by sharing words of scripture for you. I invite you to write them down in your own handwriting, tape it to your wall or door. Put these words in a place where you will see them often and where you can ponder what they mean for you in your life. Listen to what God’s Spirit is saying to you:

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as the heat of summer. Selah

Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah

Therefore let al who are faithful offer prayer to you; at the time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah

I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.

Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. (Psalm 32)

So dear ones, know that the Lord loves you. His mercy and goodness are so for you. Everyday He stands waiting and ready to pick you up, dust you off, and put you back on the right path again. But it is impossible to experience that blessedness without first knowing and owning. So my prayer for each of us is that we would have the courage to know and own what we need to, so that we can receive what we need from Him.

This is me trusting,

Sami

The Shape of Things

It’s been a long few months. This season of Winter has seemed to seep deeply into everything. It’s like the cold, the snow, the aggravation of inconvenience caused by closings and bad roads have all conspired to slow us down, send us inside, give us ample opportunity for reflection. Everything stops and the dust settles. And we are able to see in the quiet discomfiture exactly how things really are.

I will never forget the day early in my ministry when I was sharing my heart with a pastor friend, just pleading that after so much struggle in my life I just wanted to be happy. He replied that God doesn’t want us to be happy but rather holy. I must say I did not feel the warm fuzzy consolation that so often accompanies the spiritual gifts of compassion and encouragement. Instead I felt deflated and misunderstood. However, his words have stayed with me. And often I also recall the wisdom shared by someone else that often people who feel holy are really just happy. The point is that once a person’s happiness is removed holiness (or lack thereof) is quickly revealed. Winter also I believe is a revealer of these kinds of things. Because we can’t quite get comfortable, the stuff of our character has ample opportunity to show up. Winter reveals the shape of things.

I love this especially as it relates to trees. Early in my life I bemoaned Winter as a desolate and ugly time of year. I was all for foliage, beautiful buds announcing the newness of Spring and the lush, rich depth of Summer leaves shading the heat, singing in the breeze. Even Autumn held a special gift of igniting the landscape with fire. Each of these seasons spun beauty in my eyes. But I believed Winter held no beauty, simply because the trees became so bare, naked and empty of visible life. I only believed the obvious could be beautiful. But in my later years, God has been showing me the deep promise and extraordinary gift of Winter time, especially as it relates to trees.

Trees need Winter after all. The most important growth happens then. This is the season when the roots grow deep, penetrating earth to reach the water and nutrients needed to bring growth and new life. It is also the only time of year that we get a glimpse of the bones of the trees we admire all year long. We see their strength in the thickness of the trunks, the reach of the spindly branches and twigs stretching to heaven, the tenaciousness of new growth that resumes even when branches have been cut off, the provision of hospitality to birds who build their nests and raise their young nestled snuggly in their arms. How sweetly Winter reveals the shape of things.

In our lives with God, we too pass through seasons. How we long for the excitement of Spring, the lush provision of Summer, the glory and bounty of Autumn harvest. Yet it is in Winter time that we send our roots deep into God’s presence, and when everything else falls away, our hopes and dreams, comfort and status. It is here that God shows us where we really are and what we are really made of. I treasure this time for its quiet gifts. And because I am an encourager, I don’t see it as a bad thing. Instead I see it as God’s grace, revealing qualities to us that we never knew we had. He takes the time to show us to ourselves, and the vision is really quite beautiful. We get to see our strength, sustaining ourselves and those in our care from years of trials and trusting Him. We get to see how hungry we are for His grace and glory as we reach towards heaven. We get to see how God’s mercy has allowed new life in those places where circumstances caused an amputation that we thought we could never recover from. We even see the ways that God has entrusted others into our care and how they are safely perched within our love, caring and tending to the life God has given them. How sweetly even our spiritual Winter reveals the shape of things to us and for us.

My dear friends, do not be discouraged. You are a God-song resounding with beauty that only He can give. But sometimes we confuse the world’s song with our own God-song welling up from within. And for this reason God allows the Winter seasons of the soul to draw us deeply into Him and to show us exactly how beautiful we really are. The world cannot sing in Winter; it’s why everything seems to come to a halt and the outer trappings of life come to a standstill. But our beauty has nothing to do with outer things; it has everything to do with that God beauty within. The same beauty we forget and hide in the regular ordinariness of our lives because the world does not understand it and often does not value it. This beauty is the very thing that makes you Holy, and it is the Holiness about you that is revealed when happiness falls away and you realize you are, and cannot be anything but, His.

So here I am with you dear one, in Winter time. Like you I am stretching my hands up and high, reaching for all I’m worth toward heaven. And like you I’m digging deeper, trying to get to that deep, hidden well of God’s living water that will spring forth and quench my thirst. And like you I’m walking by faith, knowing that this life is beautiful, because ultimately this life belongs to Him.

This is me trusting Him,

Sami

Singing Rocks

The headline reads “Opera Company of Philadelphia Rallies Over 650 Singers To Surprise Macy’s Shoppers With A Random Act of Culture.” (See www.operaphila.org/RAC) Apparently it is a regular occurrence to hear an organ play classical music at the Macy’s in Philadelphia. In the middle on one such regular occurrence the organ launched into the opening score of Handel’s Messiah and suddenly hundreds of voices burst into song with a loud “Hallelujah.” Each singer had gathered within Macy’s pretending to get a head start on their Holiday purchases. But soon they became heralds of good tidings to unsuspecting bystanders.

As I watched the video I wept. For all their randomness they had not chosen a random song at all. The lyrics to the Hallelujah Chorus are the most sublime and glorious words of praise that can be uttered. There’s no holding back and no room to mistake exactly Who is being lifted up:

“Hallelujah: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever. King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah!”

It reminded me of the scene when Jesus makes His triumphal entry into Jerusalem: “The whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’ Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out’” (Luke 19:37-40). As I watched the joyful singers interspersed throughout the crowd of shoppers I felt like rocks were singing.

I am so encouraged by the imaginative delight of our Lord who finds creative outlets to display His glory. I can see Jesus elbowing Peter and with a grin saying, “Watch this; I’m about to bless Macy’s socks off!” So what if it is called a “random display of culture.” Hundreds of voices joined in a heavenly chorus while standing smack dab in the middle of a shopping mall, the real estate most dedicated to American greed and idolatry in our culture. Most moving to me was the woman who had her hands raised and face uplifted as she sang along. People were lifting babies over their heads, smiling and hugging one another, and of course pulling out pocket camcorders to take the holy moment home. It was incredibly beautiful. As the song came to a close the whole place erupted into glorious applause. I stood there in my kitchen watching in wonder, tears streaming down my face, my sweet baby in my arms. And as we watched the clapping my sweet baby began to clap along.

I have reflected much over this eruption of God’s glory in the middle of the ordinary. I have come to the conclusion that God has His own mysterious ways of displaying His glory and righteousness to our world. Because it is mystery, we cannot command it. We can only live as receptive vessels, willing to be filled with it and poured out for it.

As I close I want to share the most brilliant outpouring of God’s glory I have ever seen, the most riveting demonstration of human willingness I have ever witnessed. A precious couple I know has experienced an unimaginable loss recently. My heart has been broken for them, I weep for them often, I send up prayers for them daily. The thing is, in the midst of something so unspeakably awful, I see Jesus. Because they are reflecting Him. They continue to love Him, serve Him, and seek through their tragedy to bring a message of His love and hope to those around them. And not because they see themselves as strong, but because they see themselves as His. I am so humbled by their honest and raw desire to simply be His, even when the world as they once knew it has fallen apart. Every time I see them I come away loving Him more.

That is what revealing God’s glory is all about. When we witness it, we come away loving Him more. And finally I have found the thing I have been trying to say all along. The most important thing we will ever do with our lives is inspire someone else to want to know Him and love Him. By grace made perfect in our weakness. By random acts of culture. By unguarded and unreserved willingness to be His.

This is me trusting,

Sami