Encouragement

"Take no heavier lift of your children, than your Lord alloweth; give them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your bairns. If your Lord take any of them home to his house before the storm come on, take it well, the owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off his own trees, before the midsummer, and ere they get the harvest sun; and it would not be seemly that his servant, the gardener, should chide him for it. Let our Lord pluck his own fruit at any season he pleaseth; they are not lost to you, they are laid up so well, as that they are coffered in Heaven, where our Lord's best jewels lie." ~Samuel Rutherford

A Quotidian Saturday

Saturday Mornings for the Boards gang usually find us heading out to the Farmer's Market downtown to do our weekly shopping. Due to various schedule issues I had not had the opportunity to go yet this year, and this past Saturday was my first for the growing season.

Our Farmer's Market is a small, but busy affair and it was exciting to see all of the same faces I saw last season, albeit a season older. It was also the first Saturday for a couple that we have gotten to know who are taking a stab at organic farming. The last time we had seen them Kelly was about to pop with a baby. So naturally, their first question was "How is the baby?" So we filled them in on what had transpired over the past few months that we had not seen them. They were sympathetic and sorry for what we had lost, and so the went the conversation. And on the conversation continued, turning next to how the season was starting for them, the frustrations of too much rain too soon, the question of whether to start raising livestock, etc.

What occurred to me during our conversation and during the rest of the time at the market was how much I enjoyed shopping here. And it occurred to me that my enjoyment came from much more than the fresh food, my enjoyment was coming from the relationships I was developing with the farmers who grow my food. It was the human connection that I was craving. We tend to live in a very detached culture that feels it is largely independent of the need for relationships to get by. And so, I was reminded from this very mundane, normal Saturday morning that people indeed matter and that we are created with the need to know and be known. It is a joy to share your trials and tribulations with another human, even when you are shopping!

The Longest Saturday

The Greeks have a wonderful little adjective, kairos, which describes time in a qualitative sense. Not the kind of time that your watch measures, but the kind of time that is characterized by a feeling such as "this is a good time", it is time for a beer, or, as the ancient poet remarked: there is a time to weep and a time to laugh. Have you ever thought about how absurd it is for us to attempt to describe God, who is outside of time, with language that exists only within time?

Consider this: in between the days of Christ's death and his resurrection there was Saturday, the day when nothing happened at all. Christ was dead, and that was that. The Gospels have little to say about it, the Disciples themselves simply rested as they were commanded. But imagine such rest, they were most likely scared out of their skins and doing more of cowering in the dark corner of their flat than resting with a good drink and a pleasant book. And waiting, for what they were not even sure.

So too for us, Saturday is the day that we know best. We too are waiting, waiting for God knows what. Maybe we are waiting as a pessimist for the government to finally fail, maybe we are waiting as the typical American Evangelical for that supposed thousand years of peace, or maybe we wait as the good humanist for human kind to finally reach a perfected state of being. This is certainly one way to wait. It makes us feel brave as we laugh in the face of the dark night; it also tempting because as Buechner says; "despair is often easier than faith."

The other way however, is to say "to hell with the dark." The other way is to say "thanks be to God" because the darkness is not the end. Sunday morning came, and with it life. Life everlasting. As sure as the light has already broken into the darkness and will break through again, so will our Sunday morning come and put an end to our Saturday.

my little beach buddy

Mac kept us busy, running from camp down to the water, and finally lay right down beside me; we listened to the music from tiny speakers by that bag in front of us, appropriately playing the country song "Blow Wind, Blow."

We girls had a great time at the beach yesterday while our guys were hard at work, flying somewhere around the same coastline. Since the water is still chilly, we did no more than wade in the waves, choosing instead to burn ourselves up on the beach. You know you've gotten an overdose of sun when you get home groggy from doing nothing more than lying on a beach towel.

Siesta in Tuscon

As one of my friends puts it, being professionally unemployed frees me to "live the life" and traveling with Boards on business trips is one of those rare pleasures. While the husband was enduring lectures on the hidden art of bomb building, I spent each morning writing for hours in the outdoor nook of an Italian style cafe the first morning and a more business like Panera style cafe the next two mornings. Sipping coveted lattes followed by rich, in house-baked chocolate chip cookies was an indulgence I allowed, with the hour invested in the hotel gym later that afternoon. We ate dinner at a friendly little Guatemalan restaurant, where the chile rellenos are excellent, stuffed with spinach and walnuts--not the standard gooey cheese. The impression of the desert cities to me is always one of brown rubble, coming from the overpowering green of the east. And always after only a day or two, one begins to enjoy the ever sunny blue skies, and every piece of green cactus, each bright cluster of flowers catches the eye like no one tree will ever do in North Carolina.

The Hungering Dark

We live in a world that though dark, hungers for something to fill it, to light it, and make it right. Some days we may find that we come close to making things right ourselves: the car remains clean for the weekend, a perfect summer afternoon ends with barbeque and beer, your kid scores the winning touchdown, you might even find a way to say the right thing to your wife. But like all things here, the good passes and we are left with the dark once again, hungering for something more.

Upon our loss of Beau I have found the dark to be hungry. The darkness wishes to be filled with something that is substantial. Fortunately, for those who are in Christ Jesus, the dark cannot remain hungry forever. In eternity it will indeed find its fill. In the meantime, before we taste eternity, we receive grace. And in this grace, the darkness retreats with the knowledge that it will get its fill.

The sweet taste of grace that filled my darkness today came in the form of a visit to the hospital for our final follow up check with the doctor after the events of the winter. Walking into the NICU, where we spent eight wonderful days, fills me with the sensation of being home. I feel close to my son once again, as if I am visiting his room to tuck him in. I can once again smell his smells, and hear the sounds he heard during his time here on earth. I see once again the nurses and doctors who cared for him, who remember him, and I am reminded through their testimony that he did matter.

And what is more, I am reminded that he is risen with his Christ. His life did matter. It was ordained by God. He changed us, he changed the lives of his nurses. Though he could not speak, his voice broke through the darkness of our hearts and proclaimed the reality that Christ is risen, He is risen indeed. And in that all darkness, mine, his, yours is broken and filled, never to be that hungry again.

the gardeners awake

Today is the day of mild 60's, chilly to touch, but the sun calls all the neighbours out to their scruffy yards, pale with winter's faded grass, moist around the muddy edges from recent rains. A green glow vibrates from grass roots up to the trees' swelling limbs, which bud with ruddy red leaves mirroring the cheeks of children hollering in the blue, blue air. The Carolinas are known for their blue skies, a peculiar quality of robin's egg colour highlighted by the white fluffies that drift on our coastal breezes.

I woke to the gruff whine of leaf blowers, answered the door to questions of "where do you find your truck loads of horse manure?"--which we had tried to hide under secondary loads of mulch--and felt a slight nod of pride towards the lord and master of the place who insisted upon doing all our spring yard cleaning a whole month earlier, before the March rains set in. A glance at our sad seedlings, pale and weak from--what? too little sun, no fertilizer in their peat pots, over watering?? --resets my gardening pride barometer; no largess of motivation substitutes for long term experience of growing and tending year in, year out.

A Case For The Liturgy - Take II

Language Has Consequences ~ Dr. George Grant

How does one settle a dispute that has been raging since. . . well, since Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians. At Least. The Church has argued for centuries now over what the best way to worship is. Should we go with the high church mentality and have a full blown Liturgy that requires a class to decipher which book you are to turn to next for the responsive reading? Or, on the other hand, is it wiser to go with the emergent/charismatic model and just let the spirit move you individually and without constraint.

I wonder if we are asking the wrong questions. After all, if God had wanted a specific liturgy, wouldn't He have set it out somewhere in the New Testament? Perhaps the question we should be asking is this: In what manner has God called me to worship Him and therefore in what manner would be most pleasing? I would offer up to you that me, an Anglo-Saxon male who was raised in the Mid-South would worship in a different manner than an African male raised in Zimbabwe. However, if our worship is truly Christ centric, it will be pleasing and acceptable unto God.

As I think through this particular issue, I am leaning more toward the idea that there is not one particular liturgy for worship, but several. And the idiosyncrasies of each particular liturgy are both culturally driven yet biblically informed. With that being said, there are tenets of a true liturgy that must be met in order for the liturgy to be true worship. 1) God calls His people to worship - we do not call ourselves. 2) God speaks to His people through His word - the Word is exegetically proclaimed. 3) A corporate confession of Sin 4) A response to God's Grace 5) A corporate confession of our faith, and finally 6) God sends His people out - the Benediction.

These particular marks can look different depending on where you live, what language you speak, or perhaps even more significantly, if you live in the rural south. But seriously, the tenets mentioned above are spoken of throughout both the Old and the New Testaments and though they may look different depending on local, they follow a specific model that has been placed before us.

Questions are good. If we ask the right questions. I want to continue asking questions, but my prayer is that my questions are biblically informed and not snobbishly mis-guided.

65 degrees and sunny

The beauty of the day says that all is well, but there's fear in the air.
God comes to a virgin girl and says, fear not,
I am with you, even overshadowing you,
My power will produce a child in your frame,
A man child who will know you as mother,
To the wonder of the world, he will take up his cross,
Deny his parents and follow a trail of tears,
Pursuing the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb,
Victims of a darkened world, an unholy planet,
Lost beneath the ruins, he digs up the fallen,
Restores to the brokenhearted their brother,
Children receives he to bless and speak in parables
The sleeping children of Israel to awake,
With stories that confound these men and those who walk
With him on the path of sorrows he brings his friends.
Fear not, and walk to him on the water,
For with God, all things he wills will be possible.

Upon reading The Faces of Jesus, Frederick Buechner.

The World Spins Madly On

"I think of your face, wonder where you have gone, and the world spins madly on" ~ The Weepies

The world spins madly on. How we wish we could stop it. In many ways we feel like for us it is stopped. We see transactions occur, people flash by like apparitions. Work, merciless in its dogged pursuit of fallen goals, relentless in its tugging at our shoulder, leads us with chains of iron.

I believe that God granted us a protection in our grief that shields us from returning too soon to the normalcy of life. In fact, I would go further to say that as we walk with the "crook in our lot" we are reminded that what we lived before is not normal, and what we are living now is more normal. I do not want to go back to the man I was before the birth of my son. My son has changed me, or rather, the hand of God through the death of my son has changed me.

But grief is like a chameleon, it changes. It matures. And this is necessary; grief is healthy, but when it leads to depression, the positive aspects are stripped and we are no longer transformed for the better through our grief. I have felt a tearing as of late. A desperation to run as fast as I can to the physical location where the memories of my son are is tempered by a peaceful beckoning that calls me to venture beyond his leaving. I know that his leaving led to his life, in a small temporal way my leaving will also contribute to my life.

Like a crippled man taking small steps, I tasted the breath of new life lived through friendship this past weekend. It was sweet and it was real. Electra and I, like two Canadian trappers stepping out of their cabin during the first semi-mild day of Spring, stuck our heads out into the life of our local community. The breath was sweet, and for a moment the world stopped spinning madly on.

Stories

We all love them. Whether they come in the form of a movie, a song, or in a book there is an intrinsic draw to the drama, tragedy, and even beauty of living life.

All of us that live yet have a story that is already written, those who lived before us had a story, just as those who will come after us have one. The point is that the Author of life cared enough for us that He wove us into the poetry of drama that makes up His creation.

One of the anticipations I had in having a son born unto us was the opportunity to tell him stories. In my mind I pictured telling him of the tall tales that made room for Hrothgar, King Alfred, Henry V, and of Jacob. Instead, his mother and I told him a story that had the makings of an epic. A story I never would have been able to tell him had he not been with us in the manner that he was. We told him of how he was a son of Adam, fallen and yet redeemed. How that he was born into sin, but through a Mercy we can not fathom he was born into the Covenant of Grace. And of how he would leave our arms and be taken up into the arms of his Father and carried Home to a place where he could run, play, learn, and rule as a prince.

It was a great joy to be able to explain to him that this was no mere fairy tale, but a story that was in the process of being lived out and died in, and that we all would be there to see it through.

Snow In New Bern

Today we had a great treat! Snow! Coastal North Carolina is not known for great snowfalls. Due to old man Gulf Stream, which flows so close to the shoreline, our winter weather is moderated accordingly. Today, however, was the perfect mix for a grand snow fall. With cold air aloft and plenty of moisture thanks to the aforementioned Gulf Stream, snow was in abundance.

We celebrated with sledding in the street and romping with Herbie. Sweet Pea was not amused.