Getting off the Boat

Tonight, after Alpha, I walked back to the labyrinth to walk in the fading light. Pastor Debbie was there watering the plants, and she was kind enough to turn the water away from me as I walked the path. I was thinking a lot about the events of the day. My morning began with the exciting news that I had been officially admitted to Asbury Theological Seminary.

And I had spent most of the day thinking again about leaps of faith and how I keep taking these steps as if I were walking across a vast expanse of nothing but air and rocks below. There’s simply no way to walk across nothingness and yet with each step I take, God puts a solid foundation beneath my foot. I can’t see the path ahead, but I keep trusting that He will make the way for me.

As I left the labyrinth and made my way across the parking lot to my car, I noticed a man trying to leave the church. There had been another meeting in the church tonight, and when Marty left to help with the plants, he had locked the church doors behind him. Now this man could have unlocked the door from the inside, but I noticed him struggling a bit and I thought, since I have a key, I might open the door for him from the outside.

Just as I made that decision, though, he opened the door and I headed back to my car. Something told me that he wanted to talk, and even though I’m not much of a talker when it comes to strangers, I left my car door open and waited for him to pass me by.

He asked me what I had been at the church for and I told him about Alpha.

He knew the Alpha course well and I invited him to join us. And then, I think because he seemed so attentive, standing there in the twilight, I told him an abbreviated version of my story. I told how I first did the Alpha course when I had only been at the church a few months. I told him how important building trust is in Alpha and how the people who were there with me that first time mean so much to me.

I told him how before I came to Hope, I was never the one to try anything new, but now, because I trust everyone here, everything I do is new and it is amazing.

“So you got off the boat,” the man said.

It wasn’t until I pulled out of the parking lot a few minutes later that his words really began to sink in.

“So you got off the boat,” he had said.

I had written just that only a few weeks ago in my May 29th post on this blog. I had written about leaps of faith and specifically, I wrote about Peter, getting off the boat and walking on water when Jesus called for him.

There is something mystical and ethereal and altogether spiritual when complete strangers seem to know the inner workings of your heart. There are absolutely no coincidences and without a doubt I know that man was there with a message.

And that message I think is this: Life isn’t that complicated. We make it complicated but it’s not. That man knew me for all of five seconds and he was able to sum up my past year in six words.

So you got off the boat.

Life is not complicated. God’s demands are not complicated. They are not harsh. They are not cruel. They are beautiful in their simplicity.

Trust in the Lord.

Trust.

Faith.

Hope.

And when He calls you, get off the boat.

Get Up

This past week, two people, Pastor Debbie and (via video) Nicky Gumbel, have cited the same verse Revelation 3:20, and it has stuck with me. It reads: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come to you and eat with you, and you with me.”

This strikes me as slightly different, in an important way, from Matthew 7:7 which says, “… knock, and the door will be opened for you.” In Revelation, the person doing the knocking is Jesus. In Matthew, we are the ones knocking. What is required of us in the two verses is distinctly different.

Matthew requires us to be much more assertive in our pursuit of Jesus and his grace. We must ask. We must seek. We must knock.

The verse in Revelation, however, implies an action that is much more passive. Jesus knocks. All we have to do is open the door. So simple. There’s no pursuit of Jesus. He’s already there, waiting. We just have to let him in.

When I look back on my own life, especially this past year, I tend to think the verse from Revelation is more applicable to my life. Despite everything else I had already accomplished and done in my life, it was something so simple that changed it completely.

It was an open door—on Easter Sunday—at a tiny church.

And I didn’t even have to open the door. I’m pretty sure the door was already open, literally, and all I had to do was walk through it.

Coming to Jesus (and I know how overused that phrase is) is actually a blessedly simple step.

When Jesus knocks, open the door.

Don’t be startled, don’t turn back to the TV and think if it’s important they’ll come back later. Don’t turn off the lights and pretend you aren’t home. Don’t bother looking through the peep-hole. You know who’s there.

Don’t worry about letting the cold out, or letting the cold in. Don’t bring the dog with you.

Open the door and let Jesus in.

He’s not a bad guest. He won’t eat all your food. He won’t put up his feet on the coffee table. He always uses coasters.

What he will do, though, is bust through the walls and tear down the curtains. He’ll throw the furniture out to the curb and rip up the carpets. He’ll remake everything and rebuild from the ground up. For about two seconds, the whirlwind of change will be the scariest thing you have ever seen and then for the rest of eternity, it will be the most wonderful thing.

Come on … open the door already.

Forgiveness

In an article for Time Magazine, Amy Sullivan writes of meeting a survivor of the Rwanda genocide named Chantale Ukebereyinfura. It was 2006 and the man who had killed Chantale’s father had approached Chantale, begging for her forgiveness. Chantale had refused it, basically saying that whether she forgave the man or not, it would not take away her pain.

But three years later, Sullivan writes of seeing Chantale again and this time Chantale and the man were seated on a bench together. Chantale had decided to forgive him, and when he took her hand, there on the bench, she didn’t recoil, she didn’t run away.

Instead, she smiled.

Sullivan writes that the act of forgiveness had transformed Chantale.

But how do we forgive? Let’s face it. It’s hard to forgive the little things, the slights that we hold onto some days for no good reason, how in the world do we pull off what Chantale did? How do we forgive murder, abuse, or betrayal? How do we let go of pain that has bedded down in our soul?

The Bible is frustratingly clear on the subject. Luke 6:27 says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

Here’s how I’ve tried to work it out for myself. First, I’ve admitted to myself that forgiving someone is not just something you say with words, it’s an action and sometimes it’s a repeated action. Sometimes forgiving someone is not something you say once, sometimes, it is something you say repeatedly every day, throughout the day, and honestly, sometimes true forgiveness takes years.

Sometimes true forgiveness may take a lifetime.

I used to get discouraged with myself if I couldn’t forgive someone right away, like it was a failing on my part. Why couldn’t I let go? So, I started praying, asking for God’s help. Just working toward forgiveness, just being in the process of forgiving was enough to get me by until I could heal enough for God to take me the rest of the way.

But what if you don’t want to forgive? What if the pain is too great and like Chantale, you feel that either way, forgiveness or not, you will still be in pain?

Well, I would start by asking that you remember the rest of that story.

Forgiveness is transformative.

Forgiveness will transform you. It will transform the people around you and there is no greater gift than the gift of forgiveness, no greater gift than to show grace and mercy to someone even when they don’t deserve it.

It was, after all, one of the last things Jesus did on the cross before he died. He asked his father to forgive the very people who were murdering him.

Don’t ever feel guilty for feeling pain, for feeling hurt. Jesus felt pain. Jesus was hurt.

But remember too that forgiveness is freeing. It frees yourself and frees those who hurt you and that was why Christ came to earth, to free us from the bonds of sin and death and pain and revenge that keep us from him.

And honestly, I still have problems forgiving others, but the key is to never stop trying, to never stop asking God for help.

He does work miracles.

The Hope Inside You

Last summer was my miracle summer. It was the summer that I finally woke up and realized that the dream God had planned for me was no dream at all.

It was the summer in which everything was new. I had to be at the church every day. I was compelled to experience everything, and everything I experienced at Hope filled me so completely, I wondered how I had survived all these years when I had been spiritually starving.

This summer is different. I told someone the other day that I didn’t feel that need to be at church every day and yet somehow found myself there most days anyway. There are still moments of newness, but, in general, I feel like I’ve finally caught up, that I’ve finally made up for lost time.

And while I do miss that almost feverish joy at all things new I experienced last year, I find that what I feel now is not necessarily less joy, just different.

This morning, I arrived at church to do some work around the labyrinth. Because of the path, the labyrinth is somewhat difficult to mow, so Pastor Debbie had asked if I would come out and cut some of the grass that had grown up around the rocks, obscuring the path.

I arrived at the church before Pastor Debbie and decided to walk the labyrinth while I waited. I had barely made it through the two outer rings, when the side door to the church opened and out stepped Pastor Debbie.

She told me where she wanted me to cut the grass and then she handed me the smallest clippers I had ever seen.

It wasn’t like I expected to cut the grass with a lawn mower. There just wasn’t enough room for that, but I did expect something that had a larger blade on it than the length of my little finger.

Remembering last summer when I tried digging a hole for the lantana with a trowel, oblivious to the shovel propped up against the church, I held up the clippers to Pastor Debbie.

“We don’t have anything bigger?”

She shook her head. “No.”

I sighed as she left me to go back inside the church. I sighed again as I knelt by the first patch of grass and considered that maybe there was a lesson on futility here. I could probably pull the grass out with my bare hands quicker than cutting it with these clippers.

It was labor intensive and when I stepped back from that first patch of grass I had cut, I wasn’t all that surprised to see that I could barely notice any difference.

I worked my way along the labyrinth, patch by patch, and I wish I could say that I learned something profound by the experience. But the lesson wasn’t to be learned in the cutting, it was learned in the resting.

Between each patch of grass, I took a rest, sometimes to get water, sometimes to sit in one of the Adirondack chairs by the water. During one rest, I noticed a Great Blue Heron lounging by the shoreline.

As slow as possible, I moved closer to him. And with each step I took, he too took a step, bending one knobby knee and moving a little bit farther from me. I knew he was watching the fish in the water, but I also knew that he was watching me just as intently.

For a while, I just stood there, unmoving, caught up in the moment.

I think I could have stood like that all morning. When I watched that heron, I didn’t feel tired, I didn’t feel winded. I didn’t feel the pain in my knees from kneeling to cut the grass. I didn’t feel anything but awe.

Here is an example of how this summer is different than last. I’m no longer surprised when God’s creation takes my breath away. Now I just live for those moments and embrace them and stand in them, not wanting them to end.

This summer is different than last. This year will be different than last. But one thing has not changed.

I still have this overwhelming desire to share with all of you all the hope that I have found, all the hope that I know is out there waiting for all of you.

Peter writes in 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”

I hope you know by now that this blog is my answer.