A Missed Message

The evangelical Christian community is divided over many things these days, but one message is loud, clear, unified, and ubiquitous:  Christians should be caring for the poor. I’ve heard this message drummed loudly in just the past four days. The guest speaker at our weekend church service started a church in inner-city Kansas City and exhorted us to form relationships with people who don’t look like us. The Christian radio station is raising money for vaccines in Africa. My college alumni magazine focused on microfinance as a means of solving the problems faced by the world’s 3 billion people who live on less than $2 a day. And the lead story in Christianity Today this month was on giving up alcohol as a way to stand with the poor who are enslaved by their addictions to it.

It is not surprising that this message is coming from every nook and cranny of the Christian world. The Bible contains more than 300 verses about the poor and God’s concern for social justice. The only surprise is that Christians were so quiet on this topic for so long. Somewhere between the Civil Rights movement and 9/11, the message was drowned out by louder voices. Was it the consumerism of the ’80s and early ’90s? Was it the rise of the “me-generation” baby boomers and busters? Or was I simply in the wrong places at the wrong times to hear the message? I don’t think so.

I was admittedly out of it in the ’80s. Barely a Christian and completely absorbed in my own teenage world, I appreciated “We Are the World” much more for Cydni Lauper’s screechy high notes than for any social awareness it attempted to raise. But I was at a respected Christian college in the early ’90s, and I did not get the memo about helping the hurting world. Be not conformed to the world? Yes. Save sex for marriage? Got it. Love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself—absolutely. But where were the classes about microenterprise in third-world nations? Did I just miss those because I wasn’t an econ major, or were they not there? What about opportunities to serve at local shelters and soup kitchens? I remember our student government organizing concerts, but not vast outreach to the poor. There was an annual missions trip to Mexico over Spring Break, but I don’t remember one person ever making a compelling argument through the Scriptures about why I should go.

When I arrived at The Navigators in 1993, no one was talking about the poor. We were making disciples left and right, but they were on military bases and college campuses, in office buildings and churches. This has changed significantly over the years, but during my 20s, our ministry was not focused on the poor, at least not in the United States.

I don’t know what opened the eyes of evangelicals in the new millennium, but we got the message. The road to the center of God’s heart leads directly through the poor and disenfranchised, and if we want to know Him, we have to know them. I get it. I love it. But sometimes I feel like I got it too late.

The decisions we make in our 20s in large part chart the course for the rest of our lives. So if you missed out on the message back then and made decisions that led to a nice middle-class suburban life twenty years later, what do you do about it? It’s not that you can’t do anything. I can give money for vaccines. I can look into microenterprise. I can support Compassion children and volunteer at the Salvation Army and read books about changing the world. But I can’t do the things I could do when I was 20. And for that reason—as much as I loved growing up as a child of the ’80s—I am disappointed that I wasn’t born 20 years later. We were a Christian generation focused on what we shouldn’t do (drink, dance, swear, vote Democrat) instead of what we should do—engage with the world, especially the poor and the outcast, and love them with reckless abandon. 

Parents like me—those who are at this moment in the trenches raising tomorrow’s 20-year-olds—let’s do a better job. Let’s place the message front and center before our kids. Let’s focus on that above soccer practices and piano lessons and birthday parties and college entrance exams. Let’s get this right. It may be the most powerful thing we 40-somethings can do.  

Wedding Wake-Up Call

Before last weekend, I hadn’t been to a wedding in almost nine years. We’re in that stage of life where there’s a famine of weddings and baby showers. Our friends are too old for such things, and our kids are too young. At least they were until this weekend. The wedding I went to was for my friend’s daughter. The mother of the bride—aren’t you picturing a buxom woman in a matronly dress?—is younger than I am and the least matronly person I know.

I had not been to a wedding in the modern age, i.e, since the dawn of Pinterest and mywedding.com. Things have changed. Weddings have personality. Decorations have moved way beyond hurricane lamps and fake ivy. Bridesmaids dresses are actually cute. I thought my wedding, way back in ’95, was pretty cool, but by modern standards, it seems downright frumpy.

The interesting thing about the wedding I went to last weekend—besides the fact that the entire wedding party remembers nothing more about the ’90s than Teletubbies—was that the bride and groom met at the school my children currently attend. A slideshow played virtually unnoticed at the reception, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. There was a little blond boy with a toothless grin, dressed in his school uniform. There were kids dressed in costumes for fourth-grade Medieval Day. And the scary thing was, they looked just like my kids. They weren’t wearing high waisted pants or sporting mullets or anything else that normally dates a photo. These could have been my own kids in pictures taken a year ago. A half-second ago those kids were playing on the monkey bars at recess, and today we’re calling them the “bride and groom.”

The racing of time is not lost on me. I’ve mentioned it in this blog several times. But when you see it in a slideshow, one picture after another—a baby on a tractor, a preschooler holding her birthday cake, a kindergartner toting a backpack for the first time, Halloween costumes, music concerts, football games, homecomings and proms, and suddenly an engagement picture—you get a whole new perspective. You get some serious motivation for being intentional and thorough with your kids today. Yeah, those two wrestling around in the next room. Or that one with popsicle juice running down her face. She’s gonna be someone’s wife—in what feels like a couple of minutes. I better go teach her how to guard her heart, put others’ needs before her own, and make a decent meal. Time is ticking.   

What I Remembered on Our Road Trip

Ten days. Eight states. Hundreds of corn fields. Non-stop memory making. A very, very good trip—and a few things it helped me remember:

1.     Humidity is not my friend. When we made our first stop in Kansas, I got out of the car and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t breathe. Having not been east in the summertime in more than twenty years, I had forgotten completely about humidity. My kids have never experienced it at all, so we stood in the rest stop parking lot trying to explain it to them—and that, strangely enough, this is how most of the world is. The air was so thick in St. Louis that I finally had to ask a woman at the museum we were visiting if she noticed the humidity. She looked at me like I was a preschooler and said, “I’m from Memphis.” Not a helpful exchange. I will take our cracked skin, nosebleeds, and static electricity any day over weird hair, soggy clothes, and all those blasted insects. (Please don’t let it get out that Colorado doesn’t have many bugs. Pot, yes, but not bugs.)

2.     Breakfast is the best meal of the day, especially when it’s free. I love the trend toward free hotel breakfasts, especially when traveling with a party of six. We can go a long way on a bowl of Raisin Bran and a mini muffin. At the Drury Inn in downtown St. Louis, we even got free “snacks” in the evening, which included hot dogs, chili, salad, baked potatoes, chicken nuggets, and veggies. Very few things make me happier than watching my kids scarf down “free” food.

3.     Nothing makes a day go by faster than good fiction. I normally keep myself on a diet of non-fiction reading because I know it’s good for me. On this trip, I finished one non-fiction book and two great novels. One was about Nazi Germany and the other about slave trade during the Revolutionary War, so not complete rot. Just enough to make me feel like I was journeying along with some fascinating characters, in addition to the characters in the car with me. (This is when it comes in handy to have a husband who correctly believes that I’m not a great driver.)

4.     Getting together with family needs to happen more often than every 11 years. When you spend every birthday, holiday, and regular old day with all of your children, it’s hard to imagine that some day they won’t all be in your face—or at least in the same place at the same time. But my mom had not ever had her two kids and six grandkids together. The last time we were all together she had three rambunctious, whiny little grandsons and just one granddaughter who couldn’t even walk. I’m convinced that nothing blesses an empty-nested mother more than having all her chicks in one nest again. And the chicks all got along so well together, which was the icing on the cake. I hope my children will do this for me some day. 

Road Trip

Remember road trips in the ’70s and ’80s, before seatbelts and portable DVD players? My earliest memories are of sprawling out on a quilt in the back of my parents’ station wagon, eating snacks, wrestling with my brother, and flopping over the seat to talk to mom and dad. We listened to Johnny Cash on eight-tracks, slept hours more than we usually did, and stared out the windows for entertainment.

In the ’90s, my friend Eric had a truck with a topper on the back, and he’d haul college kids up and down Highway 101 on road trips. One time we learned from a California Highway Patrol officer that it’s not OK to interrupt your road trip with a back-of-the-truck siesta by the side of the road.

Kevin and I made great memories driving across nine New England states in eight days. We drove unencumbered and with only a rough agenda, and when we were tired, we landed at any hotel we could find. That’s as close as I ever came to Bohemianism.

That trip through New England was my last road trip. I think it was 1997. When I got pregnant for the first time in 1998, the road trips came to a screeching halt. See, we are those rare people who don’t have to take road trips. Unlike nearly all of our friends, we are natives in this state full of transplants. (Have I mentioned I’m a fifth-generation Coloradan? Yeah, probably so.) Our children are the lucky ones who wake up every Christmas morning in their own beds, who have grandparents at every Grandparents Day, and who need only make a 15-minute trek across town to spend the night with grandma and grandpa. The other grandma lives a mere two hours away and almost always comes to us. As a result, our road trip muscles are weak. Maybe more like non-existent. We have children who fight and whine and cry, “Are we there yet?” on the hour-long trip to WaterWorld.

But this week, that all changes. We’re going to work those road trip muscles and prove to ourselves that we’re just as hearty as the rest of you. (Yes, even you Jamie, my Road Trip Superhero, who drives to Pennsylvania with your nursing babies, toddlers, potty-trainers, and preschoolers.) Our kids are 7, 10, 12, and 14. We have a Suburban, three Kindles, and a portable gaming system. How hard can it be?

But I have to admit, as I stare down this 40-hour round-trip drive to Toledo, Ohio, with a bulky family of six, I’m intimidated. A little excited, yes, but also a little anxious. Are road trips an acquired skill? Do we have what it takes? Will I be able to fulfill my commitment to be my best self on this trip—filled with grace and patience toward my husband and kids—or will I be ready to get out and walk by the time we hit Kansas?

Only time will tell. Lots and lots and lots of time.

A Well-Timed Day for Mothers

On May 9, 1914, Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation declaring the first national Mother’s Day. Thank you, Woodrow. I’m guessing this act just happened to land on your desk in May, but what foresight you had to act on it so soon. A June Mother’s Day would be lovely, I’m sure, but by June, we mothers have almost recovered from the horrors of May. We’re starting to feel like ourselves again and recapture some of that vision and passion that made us want to be moms in the first place.

But in May? The vision and passion have been squeezed out of us. We are empty. We are tired—beyond tired—more like catatonic. We are at the end of our ropes. We need a day where we can sleep a little longer, eat a good meal we didn’t prepare ourselves, consume a few extra calories, and sit on the couch with our feet propped up while we open our sweet homemade cards. Yes, bless you, Woodrow Wilson.

In honor of Mother’s Day, I am posting a link to my favorite tirade of all time. Jen Hatmaker’s treatise on the end of school shot around the online world last year like a bullet, but it’s every bit as funny this year. Read it again. (I think she secretly lives in my house, or maybe even in my brain. Her world is my world, except with one more kid and maybe not so much soccer.)

Bless you Woodrow Wilson, Jen Hatmaker, and all you sweet, tired moms everywhere.

http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2013/05/30/worst-end-of-school-year-mom-ever

And I Thought Teaching Them to Tie Was Tricky

In the world but not of the world. It’s the classic line for how Christians are to reconcile living out their faith with living in a fallen world. It was the theme of our teaching at church this weekend with Daniel, a young Jewish man taken political prisoner in Babylon, as our example. The teacher pointed out Daniel’s purity—his faithfulness to the things of God—as well as his proximity. Daniel didn’t try to escape the Babylonian culture. He didn’t complain about it or rage against it. He lived right in the midst of it, took a stand when he needed to, and became a great leader with a faithful testimony.

As I raise my own young “Daniels,” I see lots of success in the purity part—probably because that’s where 99 percent of my effort goes. My children know the Bible better than any other book. They roam through the house singing praise songs and turn up their noses at Katy Perry. They dress conservatively and have no interest in the latest fads. They stay true to themselves and are not the least bit swayed by the winds of their culture. These are good things. Things I love. But what about proximity?

Am I teaching them to live in the world, or just to resist it? Am I instilling vision in them to lead well in the world, or just to fight against all that’s bad with it? Part of leading well is fighting and calling out what’s wrong. It is daring to take a stand, even when it’s an unpopular stand. But we can plant ourselves so firmly in what we believe is right that we will not move toward others who are different. This seems to be the bigger issue with my kids. They know well how to be “not of the world.” It’s the being in it part—being in it well—that needs some work.

We laid some groundwork by living at the shop and experiencing the culture of the poor and the hurting and the addicted. Our commitment to being involved with the poor will keep the kids around that part of “the world,” but what about the suburbanites who wear bikinis and listen to rap and party on the weekends? Will my children love them, too, or just avoid them like the plague? Worse yet, will they feel compelled to judge them? In the midst of all the other instruction, have I remembered to teach my kids that self-righteousness is one of the ugliest sins going? And am I doing more than teaching? Am I modeling for them how to love people who dress, pierce, worship, parent, and vote differently than I do? 

As an adult Christian, I feel the constant tension between knowing when to stand up and fight and when to shut up and love, when to resist the culture and when to engage with it. I have no regrets about focusing first with my kids on how to be different, set apart, from the ways of the world and how to cling always to the things of God. But before they leave this nest, I want to be sure they also have the skills to discern which battles are worth fighting and that they know those battles can often be won with humility, kindness, and gentleness. 

Help me, Lord, to teach my kids something that I'm so far from mastering myself. 

Passion Week

“I don’t understand.” “This is not how I thought it would be.”

Those words have probably never been spoken more than during the first Passion Week. Have you ever had your dreams soar to their greatest height, only to come crashing down, dead and buried, five days later?

As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday, the Jews surely thought the end was near. This man could well be their long-awaited Messiah. Although he had come to earth the same way the rest of us do and had spent the bulk of his life as a carpenter, a lot of them were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He could draw a crowd, for sure. He could also heal them, feed them, and raise the dead to life. No one else had ever done those things. He also talked in an entirely different way. He spoke of the kingdom of God like it was something urgent, something near. And wouldn’t it be just like God to unleash His glory and topple the Roman government at the time of Passover, when all His people were gathered together for their biggest celebration of the year?

Think of the excitement in the air. Their day was coming! They had suffered and waited expectantly for centuries, and it looked like this this Jesus could be the answer to all of their problems, the fulfillment of all their longings. They couldn’t help but throw their cloaks down before him, to wave palm branches at him, to give him a victor’s parade. “Hosanna!” they cried at the top of their lungs. “Save us. NOW!” It was as much a command as a plea. They were tired of living under the paradox of being God’s chosen people yet enduring harassment and oppression for generations. Tired of being merely tolerated and not respected. They were tired of being afraid. Sick and tired of losing. And this man, one of them, could be the game changer. I bet you could feel the air crackling with anticipation that week.

Except the week ended with his arrest. Unexpected, but surely this was part of the plan? He would pull out one of his miracles, overcome his captors, and break free. What sweet satisfaction to see the Roman guards humiliated by the likes of one of them. Except he didn’t escape. He actually started to look weaker by the minute. Why didn’t he resist them? Why was this man, full of words that could raise the dead, suddenly so quiet? Why would he stand there and take that beating, almost willingly? Had he given up? And if the one we thought would save us gives up, where does that leave the rest of us?

Hopeless. The despair of hopelessness must have moved in so quickly. What was worse—watching Jesus trudge up that hill, unable to even carry his own cross, or watching the faces of thousands of people realizing their dreams were dead? “I don’t understand.” “This is not how I thought it would be.”

Some of them gave up right there. They couldn’t bear to stick around and watch the end. Others held onto hope until the last breath, but when Jesus himself said, “It is finished,” what more was there to believe in? This Passover, full of such promise, would be like all the others—a remembrance of an ancient time when God cared enough about His people to rescue them. Except surely this one would be sadder.  

Don’t you wish we could tell them? “Hang in there! Hold onto hope! Sunday is coming! Your dreams aren’t dead—they’re just delayed! And what you’re about to see will be so much more than what you could have dreamed yourself. Jesus didn’t come to overthrow a government. No, not such a small thing as that! He came to overthrow death itself.”

This is why we hope. When children die, when jobs are lost, when bills are due and money is scarce, when terrorists threaten, when things don’t turn out the way we thought they would—we still have hope. God doesn’t do what we think He’ll do. Our dreams go unfulfilled or even sometimes die. But His dreams for us are so much bigger. They’re resurrection big.

Hang in there. Hold onto hope. Sunday is coming.