Dear friends, grace to your and peace from Abba-God and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Way back in mid-August, I introduced our Emotionally Healthy Relationships series imagining our spiritual lives as a marathon—a long, long race, or facetiously, a five-year mission to explore strange new feelings, seek new life in Christ’s civilization, to boldly go where Christ has gone before!
Since then, we’ve leaned into our biblical roots and drawn insights and tools from modern psychology, deepening our discipleship and growing in loving relationship with God and each other. And it’s been good!
To varying degrees, we’ve practiced…
· Anchoring ourselves in the love of God by sitting quietly with God at least twice a day, beginning our mornings with God’s voice in scripture and looking back at night to notice God’s touch;
· Then working the program: checking in with each other—staying connected through affirmations, puzzles, what we notice and prefer, hope and dream;
· We’ve stopped mind-reading, clarified our expectations, and expressed our wishes gently and patiently;
We’ve…
· explored our families of origin—Jesus may be in my heart, but how does Grandpa (or Grandma!) still live in my bones?—
· and looked beneath the surface of our lives to recognize the emotions in our bodies, minds, and hearts, letting them move through us instead of stuffing them down to come out sideways as illness or irritability.
With growing awareness of what’s going on in ourselves, our EHR group participants have begun to…
· quiet ourselves to listen more deeply and fully to others;
· clarify our values using a tool for self-examination and awareness called the “ladder of integrity;” and
· put all these learnings together and become peacemakers who “fight clean.” We’re learning to stand calmly, with “patient endurance” in our own God-given places, and to move through conflict in Christlike, calm, healthy ways with family, friends, and colleagues.
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality lives the Jesus Way of Resting in God’s Love and Following God’s Lead.
It isn’t easy. But it is life giving and good.
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Dear friends, grace to your and peace from Abba-God and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Way back in mid-August, I introduced our Emotionally Healthy Relationships series imagining our spiritual lives as a marathon—a long, long race, or facetiously, a five-year mission to explore strange new feelings, seek new life in Christ’s civilization, to boldly go where Christ has gone before!
Since then, we’ve leaned into our biblical roots and drawn insights and tools from modern psychology, deepening our discipleship and growing in loving relationship with God and each other. And it’s been good!
To varying degrees, we’ve practiced…
· Anchoring ourselves in the love of God by sitting quietly with God at least twice a day, beginning our mornings with God’s voice in scripture and looking back at night to notice God’s touch;
· Then working the program: checking in with each other—staying connected through affirmations, puzzles, what we notice and prefer, hope and dream;
· We’ve stopped mind-reading, clarified our expectations, and expressed our wishes gently and patiently;
We’ve…
· explored our families of origin—Jesus may be in my heart, but how does Grandpa (or Grandma!) still live in my bones?—
· and looked beneath the surface of our lives to recognize the emotions in our bodies, minds, and hearts, letting them move through us instead of stuffing them down to come out sideways as illness or irritability.
With growing awareness of what’s going on in ourselves, our EHR group participants have begun to…
· quiet ourselves to listen more deeply and fully to others;
· clarify our values using a tool for self-examination and awareness called the “ladder of integrity;” and
· put all these learnings together and become peacemakers who “fight clean.” We’re learning to stand calmly, with “patient endurance” in our own God-given places, and to move through conflict in Christlike, calm, healthy ways with family, friends, and colleagues.
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality lives the Jesus Way of Resting in God’s Love and Following God’s Lead.
It isn’t easy. But it is life giving and good.
Today we wrap it up—how will we finish well? Every year I’m more aware how hard life can be, especially toward the end. When I was marathoning, I learned that at mile 20, the body runs out of available energy: either you refuel, or you crash. And no matter how prepared you are, I’m gonna say those last miles hurt!
Jesus talks about the end of the race in today’s Gospel. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include what’s known as “The Little Apocalypse,” Jesus’ words about wars, persecutions, the fall of Jerusalem and its temple. The word apocalypse means “revealing,” “unveiling.” I think we apply it to hard times and end times at least in part because crises reveal what people are made of, they strip all our facades away. (rpt) So we read this passage every autumn, as the season turns and mortality presses, and we consider how we might bear our hard days, our last days. (Podcast: Read Luke 21:5-19 now)
Jesus is clear: Hard times are always coming. Temples crumble, people suffer. War and persecution send soldiers to topple and bind—as Rome conquered Jerusalem its people, as armies still move in Palestine, Ukraine, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen and more. Spiritual forces like fear, rage, greed, and enmity assault and bind us with envy, bitterness, disillusion and despair. And most surely, time and age topple these bodily temples of ours and every earthly government and institution, including churches.
I hear Christians complain that we’re persecuted, losing our rightful influence and power in society. But Jesus didn’t expect to be powerful or influential: Everyone will hate you because of me, he said, and they will put some of you to death. Don’t be surprised. Don’t be frightened. Make up your mind not to worry how you will defend yourselves. I will give you words and wisdom your adversaries will be unable to resist or contradict. Not one hair of your head will perish.
Jesus does not promise God will protect believers from actual famine, epidemic (pestilence), or sword. He doesn’t promise we’ll win wars, but that as we abide in his love and follow his Way, even though we die, yet shall we live. “By patient endurance,” he says, “you will save your lives.”
This reminds me of when Jesus tells the disciples in John 15 that he’s taught and shown them everything, and now as they hear and follow his way, they (we!) are Jesus’ friends, becoming like him. It makes me think of how Jesus walked through his last days, how he finished his race—sharing dinner with friends, walking to a favorite garden to pray, weeping his sorrow and fear, rising to patiently endure his own end. As I worked on this message, I heard “learn from Jesus Christ to die,” in my mind. Our crosses are bearable as we keep company with Jesus, our friend.
So what does that look like?
I met a woman in the hospital on one of my chaplain visits. She was sick, immobile, in pain, and facing rough diagnoses. “I can’t die,” she told me, “my babies need me!” She told me about her kids—grown—how she’d birthed some and adopted others. Eventually I suggested that maybe now wasn’t her time, but that her death would surely come. I wondered if her work as a loving mother in this season might be to face her own death well. We prayed together, and ended a special visit.
I saw her again months later. She said immediately, “I changed my directive.” She told me how she was considering her children as she planned her medical care, and how grateful she was—even though she was once again in pain—for all the people who were caring for her in the hospital. I was amazed, frankly, and grateful that she seemed to be coming into a place of trusting the God who gave her such fierce love for her kids to care for her and family even through her life’s end.
I think that’s one version of patient endurance saving a life. Have you seen others?
I also want to say that thinking of Jesus as my friend has been both hard and helpful for me. Some folks seem real cozy with Jesus, but I always felt he’d be mildly disappointed in me: “If only she’d live up to her potential.” But I’m realizing that judgement is part of my childhood baggage (more EH stuff!), and as friend after gracious friend offers me compassion, encouragement, and even delight in who I am, I’m beginning to believe that Jesus and Abba-God simply love me as I am and not as I think I should be. My relationship with God is getting more friendly at last.
So how is your friendship with God? Your human race? Your five-year mission of growing closer to and more like Jesus?
This last week in Emotionally Healthy asks us to pause, consider what we’ve learned about following Jesus in this course, and tweak the structure of our lives. Out of all these great EHR ideas for receiving and sharing God’s love (each is a study in itself!), is there one you’d like to focus on for a while? If so, can you set up one really small, really doable step—something you’ll even ENJOY and not have to force—that you’d like to take?
This new twist on an old quote is great: “We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.” (James Clear, Atomic Habits, adapting Greek ancient Archilocus) So keep it simple, happy, and natural!
And the simplest practice is still the most powerful: To begin and end our days like Jesus and with Jesus, resting silently in the love of God, held by and filled with the Spirit, whether we feel it or not. Day after day. Good and bad. Beginning to End.
Let’s hold two minutes of silence now to close:
God says: Be still, and know that I am God.
Jesus says: Do not be afraid. Patiently endure, and you will win life.
Amen.