Galatians: community

Emotions looked like a bad stock market line graph in those days. One day, my joy soared and the next I was sitting in the basement of discouragement.

Fortunately, when the small group asked me, “So how are you doing?” I told them.

I was in the early weeks of pregnancy after two successive miscarriages, and hormones were playing tennis with my emotions.

They gathered around me, put hands on my shoulders and prayed. From that moment forward, those emotional swings leveled out. I still had ups and downs, but not those crazy extremes.

I’m glad I live in a community.

In Galatians 6, we see a few responsibilities of community. In v 1, we are asked to gently restore one overcome by sin. In v 2, we’re told to share each other’s problems. In v 3, we’re told to get off our high horse and help.

Up to this point, Paul’s letter to the Galatia churches urged them to run from legalism. Their salvation did not depend on their rules. But, in chapter 6, he seems to pile on the rules.

Not so. He points the way to valuing relationship. First, in the early chapters, with God and now with one another, Paul describes a healthy community.

Read Galatians 6 and answer these questions in your journal:

Paul describes a healthy community in the early verses of Galatians. What does that look like?

Why is verse 3 important in a healthy community?

Why is verse 5 also important?

Reflect on verse 10. Do you see that happening in your life?

And in the end....

Bob spoke to us from the grave. What would you have said if you have the chance? Bob created that opportunity, writing his own eulogy years before he passed on at age 90.

He had a chance to talk about his retirement, of the places he’d visited and the home he’d built. He had a chance to tout his business success. He had a chance to boast about his community respect.

Bob talked about his family and he talked about God. His family had gathered from Texas and California and North Carolina to honor his life and they heard a warm testimony to his love for all – down to the youngest great-grandchild. Bob knew and loved each one.

Bob closed his own eulogy with powerful words about his Savior. If one thing mattered, Bob said, it was your commitment to God. And he invited those present to make choices and to dedicate themselves to what he had dedicated himself: a daily walk to the Lord.

Bob’s descendants listened raptly, for many had done that long ago. They were Bob’s walking words, pursuing their Creator as Bob had done for 70 years. They had seen his heart and many had followed his lead.

If you could write your own eulogy, what would you write? What’s important to you? And is it seen in the people who follow?

Like Bob, you touch people every day. You’re writing your eulogy day by day. Is it about hobbies and entertainment? Is it about work and committees? Is it about awards and travel?

Is it what you want to say? How’s it going?

Chameleon strategies

Those cartoon chameleons didn’t have anything on us today. Remember how they could blend in with the background, whether it was green, red or polka dotted? The plaid background gave them fits but they managed it somehow.

I wrestle with that question of blending in. I feel like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, trying to balance the issues: on one hand, it is good to be separate from the world. God commanded his new nation of Israel to be holy (separate for a purpose) and not blend in with the surrounding nations.

On the other hand, I see Jesus entering the world as a man, putting on skin to communicate and touch and save.

He did his work and then he left us here to figure out this chameleon thing. I’ve heard the arguments: be in the world but not of the world…our citizenship is in heaven….our battle is different from the world’s battle.

I’ve ministered with people who walked so close to the edge of this “on the other hand” thing that they fell over. Like that chameleon, they blended in so well that they became.

And I’ve ministered with people who so embraced separatism that they had no voice with their friends and neighbors. They became a clanging cymbal, unheard and irrelevant.

How do I speak the language of new and strange cultures without becoming?

There are no formulas here and I’m not a chameleon wrestling with the blue and yellow plaids. I follow Jesus.

Jesus was in the world, offering what no one else was offering: life. Some got it and some didn’t, but he never stopped offering life.

A chameleon focuses on the background but Jesus focused on the goal.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matt. 11:28

Restoration

Her tone was calm and steady but her words chilled my heart. “Mom,” said my newly-pregnant daughter in South Carolina, “I’ve been having cramps all afternoon. Do you think that’s a problem?”

And my heart began to race. I know the agony of miscarriage and the hollow of waiting out the days, hoping for healing and restoration.

We talked. She was already resting and I had little advice. Wait. We’ll all know soon if this is a problem.

When the phone rang the next morning, I saw her name on the caller ID. “How’s it going?” I whispered.

“We called the doctor,” she said quietly. “The pain got worse. He thinks it’s either an ectopic pregnancy or a cyst, but not likely to be a cyst.”

My role changed in an instant to a comforter. We talked about the glimmer of hope but moved to the more-likely scenario. “Do you ever miss the babies you lost?” she asked. “Does it bother you to talk about this?”

Yes. No. I’m here to listen and to share the hurt.

This was the daughter who once wanted me to move away. At age 8, she had lost her mother in a car accident. I was only a smoky substitute, not able to fill her heart. She drifted through her teen years angrily and only after she left for college were we able to begin to repair the rift.

But now…. But now, we shared our hearts as mothers consumed with anxiety over children. “Thanks for listening,” she said finally. “I love you.”

The call came a few hours later. They had opted to go to the emergency room, tired of the hours of anxiety and wanting final answers. An ultrasound revealed her condition.

“The baby’s fine! It was a cyst. We got to see the heartbeat and I have a definite due date now.” Together we rejoiced over God’s grace.

She and her husband will be home at Christmas and I will give her hugs of joy then. We’ll celebrate that God restored children – hers and mine.

Inkblots of definition

It’s the Rorschach inkblot test of Bible studies and I usually squirm when the question pops up from a Cheshire-grinning teacher.

“Who are you?”

I figured out early not to answer with my name. That just revealed my shallowness and self-centeredness. If I could think quick enough to stammer out, “Daughter of the King,” that usually was accepted as proper unless the teacher had spiritual gifts in mind. Then I should have answered with “servant” or “leader.” Or maybe I should have answered that I was a daughter, wife, mother, sister because relationships should define who I am. Or maybe they shouldn’t define who I am. I forget.

The whole thing gave me headaches and I avoided the question for years.

But it is a good question, when separated from expectations, and I come back to it. Who am I?

If it weren’t for the yearnings, I’d say that we can look at God’s nature and see who we are in what he is not. We are not pure or righteous or loving or truth or compassionate or eternal or powerful. I could answer “Who am I?” by saying I am nothing like God.

But we long for what we are not. And that ache, not for what we are, but what we are not, often brings us to God’s throne.

Who am I? I am in a storm, with the wind screaming and the clouds boiling black, when God pulls me out. I am flat on my back with the wall collapsing above me when God whisks me away. I am soaked in bitterness and selfishness when God blasts me clean.

Casting Crowns tackles the same question in their song of the same name, twisting their way to a reasonable conclusion.

Who am I? Their answer: I am His.

I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with loving-kindness.

Jer 31:3

Friday Five: Our Access to God

What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him?

Deut 4:7

The LORD is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.

Psalms 145:18

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.

John 10:9

In him and through faith in him

we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

Eph 3:12

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence,

so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Heb 4:16

Kidnapping a laptop

Who: one 16 year old daughter (names are changed to protect the guilty)

Where: at a summer leadership conference at a local university

What: E-mail updates

Why: we’ll talk later.

The first e-mail was unexpected: “Mom, I’m writing this in our bathroom on Steve’s laptop computer. I can only write until the battery dies because Justin snuck it out of their room and Steve doesn’t know he has it. Justin used it first and I don’t know what he did. We’re having a lot of fun here! Love, Kerry. BTW: Justin says don’t tell his mom what we’re doing!”

I wrote back: “Is this a joke?????? I think you and Justin are having TOO MUCH FUN!”

Later that day, she wrote: “Bad news. Steve found out we borrowed his computer and he is MAD! He threatened to tell Mrs. Blake and then we’d get sent home. So Justin tied him up and gagged him and put him in their tub til he promises not to tell. I miss you! The conference is really good and I’m glad I’m here. Love, Kerry.”

My e-mail probably scorched cyberspace as it screeched back to her with advice: “Don’t let her ship you home in a box. And be sure to FEED Steve. He could get hungry. Offer him some chocolate chip cookies – maybe he’ll forgive you both.”

The next e-mail was slower in arriving, probably because the watched Thunderbird inbox doesn’t boil. “Dear Mom, I’m glad you knew it was a joke! The college has a bunch of computers we can use and I wanted to practice some creative writing. [Where’d she get an idea like that?] I made it all up.”

Do you think God laughs with us? He must laugh at us sometimes. Can’t you just see him shaking his head, “Child, child, what were you thinking?”

Someone said that God must have a sense of humor or he’d never have created monkeys. I’m thinking that he must have a sense of humor or he’d never expect mothers to understand 11-year-old boys (or 16-year-old daughters).

My son recently told me that he likes the color purple unless it looks like pink.

I’m thinking God probably laughs, too.

It’s all about relationship. Remember when Jesus called the Father “Abba,” which means “Daddy.” Don’t we love a tender relationship? It’s the fabric of our lives. We’re torn if it is lost. Whether with family or with God, we love relationship.

Tend to the relationship and laugh with the Lord sometimes.

“He fell to the ground and prayed… "Papa, Father…”

Mark 14:35-36 (The Message)