- It’s ugly out there (6/29) – Instead of creating ugly with comments, can we make beautiful in person?
- Nothing but zeros? Put a 1 in front (6/26) – Do it out of guilt or love? Excerpt from Jerry Bridges’ True Community
- When I am embarrassed to be white (6/24) – When Mrs. WL asked why did that boy kill those people, I was embarrassed to be white
- Books I’m reading – June 2015 (6/23) – Mini-reviews of books I read in June
- What if you believed all the good things are true? (6/18) – How would we live if we believed, really believed, that everything God promises is true?
- Are you justified in your anger? (6/17) – Do we have a right to be angry? Excerpt from Brant Hansen’s Unoffendable
- Are we scared of the wrong things? (6/15) – We waste mental energy worrying about our safety
- If you need to catch your breath (6/11) – Guest post at Do Not Depart on spiritual breathing
- Take an inner vacation (6/10) – Spiritual disciplines for an inner pilgrimage from Christine Valters Paintner’s The Soul of a Pilgrim
- Stay hungry (6/8) – Lessons learned when the homeless man didn’t eat my Pringles
- When Mockingbirds Sing – Book Review (6/4) – Review of Billy Coffey’s novel
- Links & Happenings for June 2015 (6/3) – Links, happenings, and pictures from the month
- Your time with God? It’s not just for you (6/1) – As Jenna heads to Guatemala, we connect through a scripture
It’s ugly out there
It’s getting uglier out there. Have you noticed, too?
Online stands and rants and counter-attacks. Blow-ups and boil-overs and arousing each other’s anger.
We’re raising hell, alright.
But is that what we’re supposed to do?
Would we hatefully comment the same words to a friend (or foe’s) face that we’ll type beneath a blog post or a Facebook link?
Whatever happened to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8)?
Maybe instead of feeding our fires with the fierceness online, we look aside from the screen, and into the face of a real person, right here, right now.
And lay out some love.
Contribute some kindness.
Extend some encouragement.
Just for today. Just to one person. Just this time.
- Maybe we’ll win less arguments,
but we’ll kill fewer relationships. - Maybe our opinion won’t be validated,
but our presence will be valued. - Maybe we’ll drop a degree as a faith-defender,
but we’ll up our standing as a Jesus-lover.
Just for today. Just to one person. Just this time.
Then tomorrow, begin all over again.
Yes, it’s ugly out there.
But can we make it beautiful right here?
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Please share your thoughts in the comments. You always do it kindly here. Thank you.
Nothing but zeros? Put a 1 in front
Doing things out of guilt is not the same as doing them out of love.
I still struggle with this. Sometimes it’s the guilt that gets me going, before love takes over and sustains the action.
I’d rather start out with love in the beginning, love in the middle, and love until the end.
It is love that brings value to our efforts, our gifts, our knowledge (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
This excerpt from Jerry Bridge’s True Community brings this to life. Without love as our motivation, we have nothing but a row of zeros.
“Write down, either in your imagination or on a sheet of paper, a row of zeros. Keep adding zeros until you have filled a whole line on the page.
What do they add up to? Exactly nothing!
Even if you were to write a thousand of them, they would still be nothing.
But put a positive number in front of them and immediately they have value.
This is the way it is with our gifts and faith and zeal. They are the zeros on the page. Without love, they count for nothing.
But put love in front of them and immediately they have value.”
– Jerry Bridges (adapted from J.D. Jones’s illustration in An Exposition of First Corinthians 13)
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When I am embarrassed to be white
It was Saturday morning, only days after the Charleston shootings. As part of the Huntsville Dream Center, believers from different churches were spreading out in the community to celebrate fathers in the housing project, to mow grass for elderly widows, to hand out quarters in laundromats.
And to visit the lonely in nursing homes.
That’s where I found myself. I walked into Mrs. WL’s room where a visit was already in progress by two teenage ladies in our group, Shelby and Bella.
They were talking with Mrs. WL, an elderly African-American woman stretched out in bed, still in her nightgown, her breakfast tray untouched. But she was wide awake and talkative.
She told us about her tall son-in-law who could reach the top of the TV. She explained why she took organ lessons growing up in Birmingham. She insisted Shelby open a cabinet to see her stuffed dog.
But between these ordinary things, she’d ask us a question:
“Did you hear about that boy that killed all those people?”
Ugh. “Yes, ma’am. We did. So awful.”
Then she’d change the subject. Talk about her children. About her husband working at the post office. About receiving so many birthday cards she couldn’t count them all.
But then it would rise up again, clearly on her mind, something she couldn’t quite put to rest:
“Did you hear about the boy that shot those folks?”
Nervous sighing. “Yes, ma’am. Such a tragedy.”
By the third time, she didn’t let go so easily. She followed up with:
“Why? Why did he do that? Do you know?”
Ouch. “Well, not exactly.”
And then it fell, her final question, the zinger:
“Were those people black?”
I wanted to lie.
Would it be easier to take if it had been a white-on-white crime? Or black-on-black?
But it wasn’t, and even Mrs. WL, secured away in a nursing home with her short-term memory, could figure this out.
So we had to answer, honestly, “Yes, ma’am. They were black.”
Now she knew. She said what we hadn’t wanted to, visibly hanging her head as her words came out:
“Then I know why he did it.”
Wham. I wanted to crawl inside my pale skin and turn inside out.
I was embarrassed to be white.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid you’re right. He had hatred in his heart. It was horrible what he did.”
Then Mrs. WL led us in a conversation about how skin color doesn’t matter. About how we’re all alike on the inside—or as she put it, “We all have the same guts.”
We all have the same heart. We all have the same God.
“Yes, the same God,” she repeated.
How many times have we all offended our God? Not by our skin, but by our hearts?
Maybe it’s not really about being white—or black—but about being human. About being flawed. About being offensive, whatever our color, whatever our prejudices.
We’re not all prejudiced against skin shade, but there are other things. There are always other things.
- Maybe we’re judgmental towards a neighbor we deem lazy.
- Or are disgusted by a sister’s poor relationship choices.
- Or bitter about a church system that hurt us low.
The object of our prejudice may differ.
But the verb is the same.
Our only solution is to let God determine our identity. Starting from the inside. Scrub us clean with his righteousness, until we’re declared perfect through his Son.
No one should feel disgust with how God made them on the outside: red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in his sight.
But our true identity—in Christ—goes far deeper. Shame can’t reach there.
Mrs. WL moved on to tell us about her cat Hazel. About liking the new Pope. About her pink “#1 Mom” pillow.
And about how pretty our two young ladies were. Over and over and over she told them.
Even more times than she’d asked about the boy killer, she complimented Shelby and Bella on how beautiful they were.
“You’re the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen,” she told them. “I hope you remember that!”
I hope they remember, too. Fearfully and wonderfully made. Exactly as they are. Exactly as we all are.
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When have you been embarrassed about who you are? Let’s talk about this in the comments.
Important reading:
- We need to talk about white culture by Joshua DuBois
“But if we’re serious about preventing future tragedies, we must confront some very old demons. . . . My brothers and sisters from the majority culture—White Americans—need to have the courage to drive this dialogue, and help us find some answers.”
Books I’m reading – June 2015
Once a month we share what’s on our nightstand at 5 Minutes for Books.
Here are the books I’m reading now and the ones I finished in June.
BOOKS I’M READING NOW
1. Unoffendable
How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better
by Brant Hansen
Do you get angry and stay angry too often? Are your feelings easily hurt? Then let this book mess with you. Hansen uses scripture to show us that the goal is to release our anger as quickly as possible while still staying motivated by love to do what needs to be done. I share an excerpt here.
2. Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
Written in 1875-1877, this is one of Leo Tolstoy’s two greatest novels (the other is War and Peace). You’ll see it here for the next several months because it’s long (almost 1,000 pages, sigh) and I only read a little each day. But so far, so good, because Tolstoy stays on track far more than several other classic writers of his time.
3. To Sell Is Human
The Surprising Truth about Moving Others
by Daniel H. Pink
Surprisingly, Pink says that we’re all in sales. I don’t like to consider myself in that category, but I see what he’s saying. We try to sell education to our kids, better nutrition to our families, good habits to ourselves, etc. Pink writes in such a clear and interesting way that I love reading his books, regardless of what they’re about. Including A Whole New Mind, one of the favorite books I read in 2013.
4. True Community
The Biblical Practice of Koinonia
by Jerry Bridges
How are believers to interact with each other? Bridges walks us through several ways that we are to enrich each other’s lives. Every book I’ve read by Jerry Bridges has been good. No exception here so far.
5. Some of My Best Friends are Black
The Strange Story of Integration in America
by Tanner Colby
Colby, a white man, set out to discover why he didn’t have black friends. He ended up writing a book on integration. The book starts with the history of integration in Birmingham, Alabama. Very interesting; very relevant; very sad in many ways.
6. The Untethered Soul
The Journey Beyond Yourself
by Michael A. Singer
This one is about how to stay present in the moment. It’s turning out to be a great companion book to The Power of Now, and great practice for my One Word 2015: Now.
BOOKS I FINISHED FROM MAY’S LIST
7. The In-Between
Embracing the Tension Between Now and the Next Big Thing: A Spiritual Memoir
by Jeff Goins
An inspiring book by Jeff Goins about how those “in-between” moments are just as valuable as the “big moments.”
8. Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
Surprisingly, I really enjoyed this classic novel about Frankenstein. (I finally decided on reading the 1818 version instead of the 1831 one.) It was quite different than the stories I’d seen in movies through the years, actually a better one. This was my pick for the “19 Century Classic” category in the Back to the Classics 2015 reading challenge.
9. When Mockingbirds Sing
by Billy Coffey
This is a poignant novel about 9-year-old Leah’s mysterious paintings dictated by the Rainbow Man, and the havoc the paintings cause with the townspeople and the preacher. Enjoyable reading but also enough conflict to keep you going and make you uncomfortable at times.
4. The Marriage You’ve Always Wanted
by Gary Chapman
I didn’t really learn much new, but it was still helpful to remind myself of certain truths for keeping a healthy marriage. I’ve passed the book along to my daughter Morgan to apply in her own marriage.
11. The Westing Game
by Ellen Raskin
A fun mystery novel to figure out a murder, revolving around the reading of the will of the millionaire, Samuel W. Westing. I enjoyed it, but I struggled to keep up with the huge cast of characters. Thankfully I read it on my Kindle and I could do a name search within the book to remind myself of who was who. This is a great summer read for kids (or adults) out of school. I read this for the Newbery through the Decades Challenge, the 1970s.
12. The Catcher in the Rye
by J. D. Salinger
This novel from 1951 felt like I was reading a blog post from today. It was written in a rambling style from the perspective of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield. Honestly, I’m not sure if I liked it or not. It had a lot of bad language; sometimes the ramblings were interesting, sometimes not. I have a feeling maybe it would appeal more to boys than girls?
13. The Creative Habit
Learn It and Use It for Life
by Twyla Tharp
Some interesting guidelines in this book on how to stay creative throughout the years, regardless of what your art of choice is. Tharp gives lots of examples from her life as a ballet dancer and choreographer, but she makes them applicable to practices you can experiment with in your own life.
14. The Art of Stillness
Adventures in Going Nowhere
by Pico Iyer
A sweet little TED book about the unexpected things we can learn about ourselves when we choose a life of intentional stillness. Ironically, the author Iyer is a world-renowned traveler and writer, but it makes his lessons even more poignant. Watch his TED talk about it here.
15. The Invention of Wings
by Sue Monk Kidd
Read this novel! It’s about a slave girl Hetty “Handful” Grimke in Charleston in the 1800s and her master family, the Grimkes, particularly the 11-year-old daughter Sarah. Sue Monk Kidd weaves lots of historical facts into this (you find out which ones at the end of the book), including Denmark Vesey, one of the founders of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
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What are you reading this month? Please share here.
My books on Goodreads
Previous reading lists
What if you believed all the good things are true?
“You can trust this: Every word that God speaks is true. God is a safe place for those who go to him. ”
Proverbs 30:5 (ERV)
What if you believed . . . all things really will work out for your good?
What if you believed . . . God can do anything?
What if you believed . . . Jesus is with you right here, right now, in this very thing?
What if you believed . . . you are more loved than you can imagine, just as you are?
What if you believed . . . God is more, better, greater than you thought?
What if you believed . . . you will always have everything you ever need?
What if you believed . . . every promise of God will come true?
What if you believed . . . the Spirit will empower you every time in the nick of time?
What if you believed . . . your decisions are being guided by divine wisdom?
What if you believed . . . miracles still happen?
What if you believed . . . goodness and mercy follow you every day of your life?
What if you believed . . . gifts of grace are already in place for your future?
What if you believed . . . the best is yet to come?
What if you believed . . . all these things are true?
Think about that.
Imagine that.
Believe that.
Jesus answered, “If you only knew what God gives and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask him, and he would give you life-giving water.”
John 4:10 (GNB)
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What would you add? What if you believed . . . ? Please share in the comments.