Category: Christian Spirituality Blog

Remember

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

remember you are dust

Here’s a thought for your mind to consider: Remembering is a spiritual practice.

It doesn’t take any effort to forget.  But it does take an intentional plan to remember.  If you have a habit of losing your car keys, you make the effort to build some ritual in your life to not lose them.  Maybe they always live on the same hook just inside your back door or are always with you in your pocket.  That way you never have to “remember” where they are.

I look at my planner every day.  Every morning it’s a ritual.  Before doing any work, I access my planner and go over my schedule and my goals.  I will forget my best laid plans unless I review them each day.

Christians are about to enter the season of Lent.  Lent is a 40-day observance of journeying with Jesus to his cross.  It’s a time for believers to remember their baptisms, that is, to remember that they belong to God – to remember and to never forget that our primary identity is in Christ, known and loved by God as his people.

We even have an entire book of the Bible dedicated to remembering: Deuteronomy.  The book of Deuteronomy is a restating of the Law for a new generation of Israelities about to enter the Promised Land.  They were to remember why they existed as a nation, and to whom they belonged.  The Israelites needed to remember through restatement and ritual that God delivered them with power from the mighty Egyptians.  God is their trust – which means there is no need for a trust supplemental insurance policy with another deity in case he doesn’t come through for them.

dont-forget-to-remember

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” (Deuteronomy 5:15, NIV)

“Remember the long road on which the Lord your God led you during these forty years in the desert so he could humble you, testing you to find out what was in your heart: whether you would keep his commandments or not.” (Deuteronomy 8:2, CEB)

“Remember the Lord your God! He’s the one who gives you the strength to be prosperous in order to establish the covenant he made with your ancestors.” (Deuteronomy 8:18, CEB) 

“So all your life you will remember the time you left Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 16:3, NCV)

“Remember a time long ago.
Think about all the past generations.
Ask your fathers to remind you,
and your leaders to tell you.” (Deuteronomy 32:7, GW)

We cannot expect the next generation to simply know God because we do.  If it’s so easy for you and me to forget about God in our workaday world, then how much more do we need to be intentional about passing on the words and ways of Jesus with routines and rituals which help us to remember?

On Ash Wednesday the minister applies the sign of the cross to the forehead of the penitent with the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It’s not meant to be a downer, or a morbid display that we are going to die someday.  The ashes are to be a reminder that we only have one life to live on this earth, and it is to be lived knowing, trusting, and finding our truest identity in the Holy Trinity whom we serve – Father, Son, and Spirit – the God who has orchestrated salvation for his people.  Remember, and do not forget, your life belongs to God.  He cares for you, and you can trust in his goodness.

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“The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” (John 14:26, NKJV)

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:35, ESV)

“Then he broke it in pieces and said, ‘This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.’  In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood. Do this in remembrance of me as often as you drink it.’  For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord’s death until he comes again.” (1 Corinthians 11:24-26, NLT)

“They only asked us to remember the poor, and that was something I had always been eager to do.” (Galatians 2:10, CEV)

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.” (2 Timothy 2:8, NRSV)

“Remember, then, what you were taught and what you heard; obey it and turn from your sins.” (Revelation 3:3, GNT)

If you think about it, caring involves consistency.  Others know what to expect from us.  We continually show up with the grace and kindness given to us in Christ.  People don’t have to wonder what kind of mood we’re going to be in.  We’re there for them.  We have provided for them a history of consistent rituals they can remember – a history of patient assistance and quiet strength on their behalf.

We’ve been given one life to live.  It is to be a life dedicated to practicing remembrance. We’re to live in the remembrance that Christ has delivered us from brokenness to be an agent of healing in a world in need of remembering who they are.  There’s no need to invent new rituals for remembrance.  We just need to remember to show up and participate in the rituals the church has practiced for centuries.

Generosity as a Way of Life

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

generosity - John Wesley

Generosity is at the heart of any good family, neighborhood, workplace, organization, church, and individual.  To be generous is to reflect the image of God, who gave of himself on our behalf.

We often associate being generous with giving a handout or money to someone or some organization in need.  It is that, but much more.  Generosity doesn’t have to do with the size of our check or the amount of our contribution.  We can be generous with our time, abilities, words, and with what little or much we have of money, as well.  Generosity means to go above expectations – to give with magnanimity, or to go out of your way to do good when no one is looking – and experience giving as its own reward.

Jesus with outstretched arms

Jesus embraced generosity as a way of life while he was here on this earth.  No one expected him to go out of his way to call the least, the lowly, the lost, and the last of society.  The people on the margins of respectable culture had no expectations that the Messiah would head their way.  But he did.  Christ the Lord even went so far as to hang out with the despised tax collectors, and freely talk with sexual deviants.  The high brows of society couldn’t raise their eyebrows high enough for Jesus.  It was just too much for them.  Not only was Jesus making them look bad with his generosity as a way of life, he was, in their minds, giving to the wrong sort of people.

The generous person follows the Master by surveying the landscape of human need and giving to people in places where no one expects a handout.  Let’s keep in mind an interesting tidbit of Gospel trivia: we don’t have the Lord Jesus giving money to anyone except his taxes to the hated Roman Empire.  The Lord lived a simple life with little to no money.  He largely depended on the generosity of others.  Yes, my friend, generosity is a two-way street.  Being generous to others is the easy part for many people; receiving the generosity of other people is often much harder.  Yet, Jesus did both – give and receive.

Jesus gave in ways which were according to his Father’s will.  He gave of his time, his divine ability to heal and forgive, and he was perhaps the most magnanimous person of all-time in his generosity of compassion, kindness, love, and humble service to others.  The height of Christ’s generosity was in giving his life so that you and I could live a life free from the power of sin.  Such deliverance through the cross is offered and given, free of charge.  That’s over-the-top generous.

You don’t need to be rich to be generous.  A large and expansive heart always finds ways to have a generosity of spirit wherever it goes.

Think about some ways you can embrace, like Jesus, generosity as the true path of living your life.  Waiting for someone to ask you to serve or be generous betrays a heart that still needs some softening.  Jesus warned against being generous to be noticed:

“When you do good deeds, don’t try to show off. If you do, you won’t get a reward from your Father in heaven.  When you give to the poor, don’t blow a loud horn. That’s what show-offs do in the meeting places and on the street corners, because they are always looking for praise. I can assure you that they already have their reward.  When you give to the poor, don’t let anyone know about it. Then your gift will be given in secret. Your Father knows what is done in secret, and he will reward you.” (Matthew 6:1-4, CEV)

Instead, take some initiative and give because that’s what genuine generosity is about.

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To get you started and take some steps, here are some suggestions that might resonate with you:

  • Offer to babysit (for free) so that a young couple can have a date night. If you really want to be generous, give them money for dinner.
  • Donate a service or product, and don’t mind alerting the media about it.
  • Next time it snows, shovel or snow-blow your neighbor’s sidewalk and driveway.
  • With Lent almost here, commit to giving one possession away each day of the 40 days leading up to Easter.
  • Make small packets containing water, a protein bar, dry shampoo, and other food or products for the homeless. Keep them in your car, and hand them out when needed (got this one from my daughter).
  • Look for ways to help your struggling co-worker with his/her responsibilities.
  • Instead of looking for your boss to give you an “at-a-boy,” give a generous word of encouragement to him/her.
  • Walk across the room and meet a new person and spend time in conversation, instead of looking to shmooz with someone well-known and/or respected.
  • Make a meal for the most unpleasant person on your street. Go above and beyond with several courses of food.
  • During the 40 days of Lent, write a note of gratitude to a different person each day. Be generous with your words.
  • Find a person you think has lots of potential but few resources. Get to know them better and be generous with your experience and help.
  • Volunteer at the local hospital or nursing home in whatever capacity they need.
  • Yes, tip your server! Give just as much or more to the person who gave you poor service; you don’t know what kind of day they had (you could ask!?).
  • Read a book on simplicity this year.

You get the idea.  There are dozens of ways to live a generous life and bless others with your unique combination of gifts, abilities, time, and money.  Generosity usually doesn’t just happen by chance; it’s an intentional giving to another based on the disposition of your heart, which seeks to go above human expectations to glorifying God with everything you have.

The Morality of Caring

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

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Every individual person I meet is interesting.  Everyone has a story.  Each person has values which are important to them, and you can usually tell what a person treasures.  For example, my wife cares about kids.  Children are a high value to her.  You can tell immediately when meeting her that that’s true.  When engaging a family for the first time, she will inevitably talk to the child before addressing the parents.  Mary cares about any kind of issue in the world which has to do with children.  She has a strong sense of morality for all of them.  She loves kids.

Have you ever thought about what is of most importance to you?  What we care about most is where our sense of morality lies.  Jesus put it this way:

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)

Perhaps you have discovered, like I have, that everyone is moralistic.  That is, each one of us live by a certain code of ethics.  There are morals which we will live and die by.  These are values we esteem above all others.

Although there are hundreds of laws in the Bible, the highest standard of ethics and morality is contained in just a few chapters of Holy Scripture: The Ten Words (Commandments) found in the Old Testament chapter of Exodus 20; and, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount found in the New Testament chapters of Matthew 5-7.  Furthermore, these few chapters can be distilled into a few short ethical phrases: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and, love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). In other words:

Every moral teaching found in Holy Scripture comes down to love (Mark 12:30-31)

Throughout the history of the church, the highest ethical values have always had to do with knowing and loving the Creator, Sovereign, triune God – Father, Son, and Spirit – and the majesty of his creatures, humanity, created in his image and likeness.  The imprint of that image is deep within us, even if marred or forgotten.

The movement and trajectory of Holy Scripture is a good and benevolent God making and keeping promises to his creatures.  Even when they fall and try to create small petty worlds of their own, a gracious God is active, wooing lost people back to himself.

The Bible is an unfolding drama of redemption in which a loving God goes far out of his way to bring back straying, hurting, helpless people. (Luke 15)

prodigal son

Which is why, for me, attending to the inner person of the soul, teaching people the words and ways of Jesus, and providing spiritual care to others is a high value.  I love God, and I love people.  It’s easy to understand, then, why I: treasure times of retreat in which there is solitude and silence; connect with God daily in contemplative prayer and meditative Bible reading; pay attention to hurting people and seek to bring them grace, mercy, faith, hope, love, and gentleness; seek to act with civility and respect toward others I disagree with, or just don’t like very well; and, actively engage others who don’t share my values of faith in God, hope for healing and wholeness, and love for the common good of all people, no matter who they are.

I have a deep conviction that the care of the soul is just as important as the care of the body; that attention to exercising the mind with Holy Scripture is just as important to overall health and well-being as cardio workouts and sensible eating; and, that the ultimate hope of the world resides with knowing Jesus Christ, and not with a lesser hope that wishes things will work out in the end if I’m sincere to my personal ethical beliefs.

The rub to all of this is that I have my ideals and ethics, my morals and mores, my values and convictions, yet I don’t consistently live by them. *Sigh* I’m sure you relate.  The Apostle Paul certainly did:

“I don’t know what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate…. I don’t do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do.  But if I do the very thing that I don’t want to do, then I’m not the one doing it anymore. Instead, it is sin that lives in me that is doing it.” (Romans 7:15-20)

moralvalues

If honesty and being real is of high value to you, then you and I can admit that we blow it, a lot!  But we can come back to the love of God which is there waiting for us to confess our need and receive grace:

“I find that, as a rule, when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me…. It wages a war against the law of my mind and takes me prisoner with the law of sin that is in my body.  I’m a miserable human being. Who will deliver me from this dead corpse?

“Thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:21-23)

It simply isn’t helpful to tell other people to “get over it.”  All people need deliverance from the power and presence of their inner (and outer) brokenness.  A person cannot remove destructive vice and heal their own soul any more than someone could remove their own cancerous tumor and heal themselves.  We all share the common human condition of needing the living healing water of Jesus Christ.

living-water

Which brings me back to God and the care of souls – being with Jesus has led me to grace and faith, hope and love, mercy and encouragement, forgiveness and reconciliation.  These are values for which I embrace and will not deviate from.  Even though I live them imperfectly, there is a perfect God who has my back.  He loves me, and He loves you.  I’m okay if that’s labeled as moralistic.

What Forgiveness Is, and Is Not

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

Forgiveness

We forgive a person for what he/she has done – not for who they are.

You and I have had times when we needed to forgive, and times when we were the ones needing forgiveness.  Sometimes we need both at the same time.

Forgiveness is nothing more, and nothing less, than choosing not to hold another person’s sinful words or actions over their head.

Several years ago, when I was experiencing a major depression, I had trouble doing what were normally simple tasks for me.  I found it hard to focus on reading for any length of time.  It was difficult to get out of bed and even to move, at all.  I don’t even remember some of the terrible things I said to my wife during that awful time – things which she in no way deserved.

To the credit of my wife, she forgave me for such instances of the occasional lashing-out at her.  It took her awhile, but Mary began to understand that it was the depression talking.  She didn’t hold it over me when I was a repeat offender.

Yet, before my wife got to the point of forgiveness, she learned something important.  You can’t forgive someone for being depressed any more than you can forgive someone for getting cancer or for dying young.  You can only forgive words and behaviors which hurt.

lewis smedes 3

Far too often we have expectations for others.  We want them to live-up to our desires for them.  But when they don’t, that’s not in the arena of forgiveness – that’s in the scope of needing to let go of our pre-conceived forecast for their lives.

My lovely wife has A.D.D.  It’s not possible to forgive her for that.  Now, if she has an impatient outburst on her slow-moving husband – that’s something I can say hurt me and for which I need to forgive her.  I have had to learn to let go of my expectations that she will always pay attention and focus well on everything I say and do; that she will never lose her car keys; and, that she will consistently complete tasks on time.

I can’t forgive Mary for any of those things, any more than I could forgive a person with a broken leg for not running in the local community’s 5K race.  I can’t use forgiveness to manipulatively maneuver my way for perfect order.  When we try to forgive someone for their actual personhood, it only breeds resentment on our part.

Being sick and missing work doesn’t need forgiveness.  We don’t need to feel guilty for stuff like that.  God doesn’t jerk us around trying to use the cross of Christ as the way to make us feel bad for being stupid, silly, sanctimonious, or even sinners.  Rather, God forgives us in Jesus Christ because we have all sinned against him with hurtful words and unfeeling actions which have grieved his heart.

“But, what”, you might ask, “do you do with heinous, intentional, and/or egregious evil which one person commits on another?  Do you mean we should forgive Larry Nassar? Because I want to be like the Dad in the courtroom who wanted to beat the ba-jeebers out of him!”

I’m right there with you.  I’ve been a real victim of terrible sin, and I’ve seen loved ones go through awful grief from perpetrators.  I have fantasized more than once about the eye for an eye.

forgiveness lewis smedes

Rather than talk about my own junk (which I’m not really at liberty to do, anyway), let’s think about Jesus.  He did nothing wrong whatsoever.  In fact, he only did good, all the time.  Yet, he was the ultimate victim of both individuals, groups, and an entire Empire.

His only crime was that he did not live up to certain people’s expectations of what Messiah should be.  He is the King of a spiritual kingdom, and that was too threatening to the powers that be.  So, he was betrayed by someone close to him and killed – more than killed – tortured, beaten, spat upon, mocked, and publicly shamed.

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” (Luke 23:34)

One of the greatest followers of Jesus, Paul, who was beaten more than once and left to die, had no resentment and no bitterness.  Paul took his cues from his Savior:

“Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving to each other, in the same way God forgave you in Christ.” (Ephesians 4:32)

Both Jesus and Paul forgave the persecuting acts and the horrible words, while seeing the personhood behind their perpetrators’ hate.

“But how? I’m not them.” Neither am I.  That doesn’t stop me, however, from dying to myself and striving to live up to their example and teaching.

You can’t forgive someone for failing to live up to what you want them to be.  You can only forgive their bad words or actions.  Jesus and Paul longed for people to connect meaningfully with God.  But when the people didn’t do so, they just kept plugging along without resentment, even when it hurt them deeply.

forgiveness lewis smedes 2

I think we tend to believe that forgiveness has to be immediate, like a one-time event.  It rarely is that.  Forgiveness is much more a process, elongated over time.  And just when you think you’ve licked it and gotten over the hump, a bitter feeling rears its ugly head and bites you in the butt.

The late Christian writer and psychologist, Lewis Smedes, in his insightful book, Forgive & Forget, said:

“Ordinary people forgive best if they go at it in bits and pieces, and for specific acts.  They bog down if they try to forgive people in the grand manner, because wholesale forgiving is almost always fake.  Forgiving anybody is a minor miracle.”

Indeed, it is.  We have enough on our plate trying to forgive another for specific words and actions.  We don’t need to compound it by making it into the full repentance of the other as a prerequisite to our forgiving them.