Archive for July, 2020

Then He said to them all: “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me.” Luke 9:23

“Since you desire so earnestly that I should communicate to you the method by which I arrived at that habitual sense of God’s presence, which our Lord, of His mercy, has been pleased to vouchsafe to me; I must tell you, that it is with great difficulty that I am prevailed on by your importunities; and now I do it only upon the terms, that you show my letter to nobody. If I knew that you would let it be seen, all the desire that I have for your advancement would not be able to determine me to it. The account I can give you is: Having found in many books different methods of going to God, and diverse practices of the spiritual life, I thought this would serve rather to puzzle me, than facilitate what I sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly God’s. This made me resolve to give the all for the All.”

Brother Lawrence (c. 1614-1691) in The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life (Grand Rapids: CCEL) 15.

Today’s excerpt comes from the first of fifteen letters that comprise the second half of this classic little book. By his statement, “show my letter to nobody,” we learn that Brother Lawrence is not sharing these priceless insights for any focus to be drawn to Him.

He states, in plain terms, that becoming wholly God’s came not from engaging in a variety of spiritual practices, which might leave him puzzled, but rather by resolving to give the all for the All. This path to God’s presence sounds strikingly similar to an obedient response to this statement of Jesus. Interestingly, our Lord does not say that the pathway to being His disciple is to read Scripture, pray, or perform any other practices.

Jesus keeps it simple and so does Brother Lawrence. In so doing, an ironic twist linked to generosity comes into view. Brother Lawrence gives everything (“his all”) and discovers the joy of the habitual sense of God’s presence (“the All”). What results is not a transaction, such as a total loss, but rather a transformation, which amounts to unfathomable gain.

Perhaps it’s best to conclude today’s post with the words he uses to conclude this first letter. In so doing, I pray his humility causes every reading it to give like Brother Lawrence gave. Give the all for the All.

“Such has been my common practice ever since I entered into religion; and though I have done it very imperfectly, yet I have found great advantages by it. These, I well know, are to be imputed to the mere mercy and goodness of God, because we can do nothing without Him; and I still less than any. But when we are faithful to keep ourselves in His holy Presence, and set Him always before us, this not only hinders our offending Him, and doing anything that may displease Him, at least wilfully, but it also begets in us a holy freedom, and if I may so speak, a familiarity with God, wherewith we ask, and that successfully, the graces we stand in need of. In time, by often repeating these acts, they become habitual, and the presence of God is rendered as it were natural to us. Give Him thanks, if you please, with me, for His great goodness towards me, which I can never sufficiently admire, for the many favours He has done to so miserable a sinner as I am. May all things praise Him. Amen.”

If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. Luke 16:10

“That we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. That we should not wonder if, in the beginning, we often failed in our endeavours, but that at last we should gain a habit, which will naturally produce its acts in us, without our care, and to our exceeding great delight.”

Brother Lawrence (c. 1614-1691) in The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life (Grand Rapids: CCEL) 12.

Long before Mother Teresa proclaimed “do small things with great love,” Brother Lawrence made this similar statement about doing little things for the love of God. The older I am getting, the more I am realizing that life is a series of little things.

And notice his clarification for those of us who are growing in our showing compassion with generosity. If you fail at first. Don’t give up. Over time, you will gain a habit so that the compassionate generosity will become a natural and regular part of your life.

Such good news brings me great delight and hope. I pray it encourages you today too.

But be sure to fear the LORD and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things He has done for you. 1 Samuel 12:24

“That in the beginning of the spiritual life, we ought to be faithful in doing our duty and denying ourselves; but after that unspeakable pleasures followed: that in difficulties we need only have recourse to Jesus Christ, and beg His grace, with which everything became easy.

That many do not advance in the Christian progress, because they stick in penances, and particular exercises, while they neglect the love of God, which is the end. That this appeared plainly by their works, and was the reason why we see so little solid virtue.

That there needed neither art nor science for going to GOD, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but Him, or for His sake, and to love Him only.”

Brother Lawrence (c. 1614-1691) in The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life (Grand Rapids: CCEL) 9-10

Brother Lawrence reminds us that God desires wholehearted and faithful service. In so doing, we must not get stuck in penances. What might this look like in modern times?

To much of giving, for many people, looks less like generosity and more like paying taxes. God does not need our tithes (law language) or tax payments! He wants our hearts.

For our generosity to be mixed with compassion and for grasping unspeakable pleasures, let us deny ourselves and nurture our love for God with all we are and all we have.

Father, by your Holy Spirit, make our hearts resolutely determined and focused on loving you. As we do this, may your cares become ours and may our generosity and compassion look like Jesus. Amen.

Do everything in love. 1 Corinthians 16:14

“In his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of GOD, and with prayer, upon all occasions, for His grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy, during the fifteen years that he had been employed there.”

Brother Lawrence (c. 1614-1691) in The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life (Grand Rapids: CCEL) 7.

Brother Lawrence did His kitchen work well and with ease by doing it for the love of God and with prayer. The rest of us would undoubtedly benefit from taking note of this.

If you want to see a living example of this, look at my wife, Jenni. Today marks our 28th anniversary. She does everything in love and by prayer. Happy Anniversary!

My word for today appears 28 times in Scripture: “Hallelujah!” It means “God be praised.” That’s how I feel about the generous gift of a wife who does everything for the love of God and with prayer.

Hallelujah!

Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed Him. Matthew 20:34

“That he had always been governed by love, without selfish views; and that having resolved to make the love of GOD the end of all his actions, he had found reasons to be well satisfied with his method. That he was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of GOD, seeking Him only, and nothing else, not even His gifts.”

Brother Lawrence (c. 1614-1691) in The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life (Grand Rapids: CCEL) 6.

In modern times, we tend to be governed by God’s gifts rather than the love of God. The end of our actions has become acquiring things rather than a deep relationship with the God who supplies those things.

For the next few days I want to explore this classic work because I am learning that growing in compassion and generosity is understanding more deeply the love of God, and becoming governed by love.

When Jesus came across people who could not see, governed by love, he touched them. Join me if you need His touch to see what we cannot and so as to follow Him more closely in the way of love.

And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be My disciple. Luke 14:27

“The old joke says that the Englishman takes pride in being a self-made man, thereby relieving God of a fearful responsibility. The urge to be creators of ourselves, though, is not restricted to any one nation or class. Whenever we set our feet on the road to the impossible…We fear the other kind of burden because carrying it means that certain things are decisively out of our control and we can only respond in trust or faith…

Jesus says in Matthew 11:30 that His yoke is easy – but we can hardly forget that He also tells us to pick up and carry the cross. To see – to feel – the cross as a light load is the impossible possibility of faith: letting our best loved pictures of ourselves and our achievements die, trying to live without the protection we are used to…It is only very slowly indeed that we come to see why the bearing of the cross is a deliverance, not a sentence; why the desert fathers and mothers could combine relentless penance with confidence and compassion.”

Rowan Williams in Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert (Oxford: Lion Books, 2004) 48-49.

Until we let go of what we think we want our generosity and compassion to look like, we won’t grasp what it could be in Christ. The cross of Christ is a light load but it requires trust and abandonment.

The picture of the Englishman makes us smile, and maybe that is because only the Archbishop (Williams) can get away with saying it. We may think we are growing in generosity and compassion but are we?

I’m realizing today that the path of growth in these areas may rather be this narrow little trail that few take that is marked by daily dying to self and carrying a cross that, ironically, is a light load.

This leads us to the practice of penance. Many are averse to but might benefit from it. Think of it as retraining yourself in how to live. And what should that look like. It should appear with a sense of “confidence and compassion.”

Confidence is rooted in the fact that denying ourselves and carrying our cross daily is the impossible possibility of faith. When we do, we realize it is a light load that releases us to live, give, serve, and love compassionately like Jesus.

The alternative is to try to sort things on our own as self-made people. Let’s not go that route!

“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19

“These words, which Jesus took from Isaiah, are rooted in the prophetic vision of the Hebrew Year of Jubilee. In His message and person Jesus was, in effect, announcing the perpetual Jubilee in the Spirit. The social ramifications of this were profound indeed: the land was to be healed, debts were to be forgiven, those in bondage were to be set free, capital was to be redistributed…In the Beatitudes we see the Jubilee inversion in which Jesus takes all those kinds and classes of people that in the natural order of things are thought to be unblessed and unblessable and shows that in the forgiving, receiving, accepting life of God’s Kingdom they too are blessed…

Notice His compassion in cleansing the leper and healing the paralytic, people who were outcasts of His day…Notice how Zacchaeus embrace this Jubilee life, accepting the call to generosity. Notice too the Jubilee attitude of the widow who puts her two copper coins in the offering, giving out of her poverty… Jesus’ living out of justice and shalom challenges our vested interests. It rebukes our rugged individualism and selfish hoarding. And it invites us to be the kind of people in whom justice and compassion flow freely. Jesus, who lived in the virtue and power of that Jubilee life that pulled down the kingdoms of the world, points the way.”

Richard Foster in Streams of Living Water: Essential Practices from the Six Great Traditions of Christian Faith (New York: HarperCollins, 1998) 12-14.

We are living in a time in history when God has shaken the earth. In response, we can hold on more tightly to our “vested interests” or the proverbial baskets in which we have put our eggs. Or we can live out the compassion of Christ and proclaim Jubilee through our human interactions: sharing when others hoard and forgiving when others condemn.

This is, admittedly, hard. It’s otherworldly. This is precisely why Jesus puts the Spirit within us. Read today’s Scripture again. The same Spirit that was upon Jesus is upon us. If we live by it, our giving will look like Zacchaeus and our compassion will appear like Christ. This kingdom around us will pass away. Let us live in light of Jubilee today.

Speaking of light, the sunset a couple days ago was stunning. I snapped the new header photo while walking the dog. In these challenging times, don’t miss how the heavens are declaring the glory of God. While things seem uncertain all around us, may the consistency of the sunrise and sunset reminds us of God’s sovereignty and generosity.

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. 1 Peter 3:15

“If I, as a Christian, am going to debate someone who is a non-Christian, I want to be able to put my arm around that person’s shoulder and say, “We are looking for truth together, and if you can show me where I am wrong, I’ll take your side.” I’m not there to beat someone into submission. Jesus never worked that way. The only people he rapped on pretty hard were precisely the people who were positive they were right, when in fact they were totally blind to the truth,

Apologetics isn’t intellectual bullying, it isn’t belittling, and it isn’t a way of getting people saved without God’s grace. We work with the Holy Spirit in gentleness and reverence. We surrender our powers of reason to the Holy Spirit. We expect God to enhance those powers and use our words, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to relieve the burden of doubt from a troubled heart. Doubt is a truly terrible thing. Some of us have been Christians for so long that we haven’t really struggled with itm but doubt is a terrible thing.”

Dallas Willard in The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 2015) 50.

We are living in days when gentleness and respect are lacking.

In hard times, people are asking questions and looking for answers. The trouble with many of us, me included, is that if we think we are positive we know the answers, we often lack gentleness and respect.

And we may be totally off base in our thinking! I am learning that gentleness helps release the burden of doubt. Whereas the lack of gentleness causes people to become more deeply entrenched in their opinions.

The key, as Willard notes, is to surrender our powers of reason to the Holy Spirit.

This makes total sense for me as gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit. So one of the most generous things we can do today, tomorrow, and the next day is to surrender our powers of reason to the Holy Spirit.

When we do this, gentleness surfaces. This creates a context where generosity (another fruit) can also emerge. It makes us safe people who can help those with doubts and fears to let go of them.

These are pretty profound ideas, and for the most part, I feel I am just understanding them. I have a long way to go in living them out. There’s hope because I’ve learned to surrender my mind.

As for the saints who are in the earth, They are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight. Psalm 16:3

“The saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else. It gives them a clarity of compassion that can find good in the most terrible criminals. It delivers them from the burden of judging others, condemning other men. It teaches them to bring the good out of others by compassion, mercy, and pardon. A man [or woman] becomes a saint not by conviction that he [or she] is better than sinners but by the realization that he [or she] is one of them, and that all together need the mercy of God.”

Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions Books: New York, 2007) 57.

I am shifting my attention to look at compassion linked to generosity in other writers. Today I turned to Merton and was gripped by this idea, the gift of sainthood.

In a time when the world is in crisis and there’s lot’s of finger-pointing, we must recall that saints are not perfect. There are no perfect people.

Saints are people who have experienced “compassion, mercy, and pardon” and so they extend it to others. This is how to stand out as majestic and as the object of God’s delight.

When we combine generosity and compassion we actually work to bring out the best in others. We multiply the impact of our living, giving, serving, and loving.

The Apostle Paul labeled the recipients of his letters as “the saints” in their cities. God has distributed us all over the earth. Let’s generously live out our identity.

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Romans 12:12

“A growing intimacy with God deepens our sense of responsibility for others. It evokes in us an always increasing desire to bring the whole world with all its suffering and pains around the divine fire in our heart and to share the revitalizing heat with all who want to come. But it is precisely this desire that requires such deep and strong patience. The painter Vincent van Gogh powerfully expresses the disicipline of patient prayer when he writes this to his brother Theo:

‘There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by only see a wisp of smoke through the chimney, and go along their way. Look here, now, what must be done? Must one tend the inner fire, have salt in oneself, wait patiently yet with how much impatience for the hour when somebody will come and sit down near it—maybe to stay? Let him who believes in God wait for the hour that will come sooner or later.’

One of the most powerful experiences in a life of compassion is the expansion of our hearts into a world-embracing space of healing from which no one is excluded. When, through discipline, we have overcome the power of our impatient impulses to flee or to fight, to become fearful or angry, we discover a limitless space into which we can welcome all the people of the world. Prayer for others, therefore, cannot be seen as an extraordinary exercise that must be practiced from time to time. Rather, it is the very beat of the compassionate heart.”

Henri Nouwen in Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life (New York: Image Doubleday, 1983) 107.

Today is my last post from this book. As one who appreciates the paintings and the limited writings of Vincent van Gogh, I love that Henri quoted Vincent on this topic of patient prayer.

This may well be the greatest gift that we can give to a broken an hurting world to show that everyone matters, no one is excluded. We can practice patient prayer. As believers in God, we can wait patiently with Vincent. Why do this?

Many of the troubles around us relate to systemic issues. The human temptation is to fight back, to revolt, to point fingers, or to throw stones. But does that really get us anywhere? Do we really make any progress?

In his paintings, Vincent tried to capture the beauty and brokenness in the world simultaneously, so I can picture him waiting patiently. Hoping. Praying. Sadly, I think many have given up waiting on God. They appear to be taking matters into their own hands.

Let’s be different. Let’s be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer. Let’s do this in a word lacking in hope, angry in affliction, and that seems to have abandoned patient prayer. These are neither the first hard times in history nor the last.

So, as God stretches us and fills our hearts with compassion for all that is not right, let’s generously give ourselves to patient prayer if, that is, we believe in God.