Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

The men at the table said among themselves, “Who is this man, that he goes around forgiving sins?”

And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

-Luke 7:48-50

Who is this man?

Who just goes around forgiving sins?

Who says to the guilty, ‘go in peace.’?

Who holds nothing against me?

Always, when I am forgiven by humans, I walk away with suspicious, reluctant relief. As if the anger is appeased for now, but only for now. I owe something. The issue isn’t over.

I do not go in peace. When is the issue EVER settled among humans?

But with You, it is, just like that.

When You forgive, the disruption is over, so that the one given forgiveness (for it is a gift), may walk away unruffled, unconcerned, knowing they have lasting peace with You.

We are held to a standard of grace, not perfection, that we may walk away at peace when forgiveness readily crosses your lips.

You are still the one that goes around forgiving sins.

Lord-

Thank you for offering me grace over and over and over. Thank you for setting aside my shame, for stripping it of its grip on me.

Show me how to offer this grace to other people. Show me how to hold others to this sweet standard of ‘I will forgive you, no matter what.’

Show me how to accept it for myself, and so live,

happily imperfect,

shameless,

free of burden,

delighting in a good, good Savior,

intriguing others to ask,

‘Who is this, who goes around forgiving sins?’

“So the people asked him saying, ‘what shall we do then?’ He answered and said to them, ‘He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.’ Then the tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, ‘Teacher, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Collect no more than is appointed for you.’ Likewise, the soldiers asked him, saying, ‘What shall we do?’ So he said to them, ‘Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages.'”
-Luke 3:10-14

I stared at this set of instructions for a long time trying to find a common thread.

Caste after caste asked the Voice in the Wilderness what they must do, and he was not afraid to call them out on how things really were.

Don’t ignore people who don’t have what they need.

Don’t take more than you should from people.

Don’t use your power to take advantage of people.

But the last answer caught my attention most: “Be content with your wages.”

Perhaps because that is the root of all the others. When you don’t think you have enough, you treat other people badly. You misuse your position. So this was John the Baptist’s answer:

Do you have two tunics?

Then decide you have enough.

Spend your energy taking care of other people instead.

I have more than two tunics. But I have been discontent with my wages, and fearful of the school bill looming. I am quick to decide I don’t have enough. Do I even think about how that translates into my treatment of others?

Guarantee I haven’t given away as much as I should, if only because I haven’t been paying attention to who might need it.

Self-absorbed people handle others poorly. They are running blind, frantically driven to meet needs that are already taken care of, rushing past and bulldozing over the real needs before them.

Lord-

Help me to start with the root. Help me choose to be thankful for what You have chosen to give me-to be “content with my wages,” and so ready to fight for others, instead of pushing them down to reach for what I think I need.

Do I have two tunics?
Then help me decide that I have enough.

“A certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word…

“…Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, tell her to help me.”

And Jesus answered, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken from her.”
–Luke 10:38, 40-42

Martha invited You into her home, but she did not sit at your feet.

Mary did nothing else, and it was enough.

One thing is needed.

Many things distract my mind, many things gnaw at my heart, but ONE thing is needed. That means the rest is optional.

I can do much work, much serving, much that is honorable, and miss the one thing that was NEEDED.

I can invite you in and then totally ignore you.

Or, I can lay aside my many priorities, lay down my many worries and tend to that one thing; it will not be taken away. Nothing else will swoop in and become more important. I will not look back and regret how I used my time. I can choose one thing, no matter how confusing and in pieces the rest of life is, and rest easy knowing I made the right choice.

“The human spirit can endure a sick body, but who can bear a crushed spirit?”
–Proverbs 18:14

A broken spirit, who can bear?

Not me.

Again and again I drop here, exhausted, exasperated, discouraged, and ask you for help. I cannot handle it out there.

Just when I start to feel like my bubbly self again and I’m noticing the sunshine and breathing in sweet friendship and finally feeling my tentative roots sink into the warm earth and settle; I am blind-sided by another blow that knocks the wind out of me and bowls me over, leaving me raw and exposed.

I cannot wait for things to stop hitting me to feel grounded and content. Life is a storm, always blowing, always hitting hard. I cannot afford to wait for a lull to be ok.

It is better to leave the house and my life a mess and sit at your feet, leaning forward into what you will say, than to waste away inside as I attempt to make sense of things and fix and clean and polish, all the while casting dirty looks toward those who don’t seem to notice I need help. They are the wrong ones to ask.

When I feel exhausted and frustrated and beat down, I must decide this: I need help. It is not beautiful to push forward, tired, hopeless, steps dragging with many worries and troubles, because I “should.”

Hope is found at your feet.
Help is found at your feet.
Rest is found at your feet.

One thing is needed.

I cannot bear a broken spirit. So teach me that it’s ok to drop the ball and leave the mess and come running for help.

One thing is needed.
It’s you.
And it will not be taken away from me when I need it most.

I’m so frustrated with where I’m at.

So churned up, eyes so blurry with stored-up storms that I can’t see where I want to be; can’t even work on how to get there.

I am a cup always filling with unspilled anger, precariously balanced.

I am a city holding fire.

I am so preoccupied with external assaults, I offer poor management to the internal blaze. In the end, I will be an intact wall with nothing left to guard. I will have swallowed up anything that was worth protecting in my own collapse.

I am in ruins.

I was mad that my knee has been getting worse, then as I paid for physical therapy this morning, I looked over to see a man smiling about some candy he’d just found, as he stood at the same counter as I, with one less leg.

I explained how frustrated I was about our finances to my physical therapist this morning. She told me she’s working on paying off over $200,000 in student loans.

I was upset that we’re down to one good car and can’t afford new windshield wipers for it, when the old, brittle ones cleared enough of the windshield for me to see someone walking home in the snow.

For all the tension I feel over what I don’t have…I have SO MUCH!!

Lord- You have always taken good care of us. It is a choice to think that I have enough. It is a bad decision to give in to feelings that I don’t.

To feed a fire that only burns my own heart.

“Devote yourself to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.”

–Colossians 4:2

NKJV uses the word “vigilant,” another version says, “being watchful and thankful.” I think it takes a measure of watchfulness to remain thankful.

Perhaps it is not to the outside I must be alert and vigilant, but toward my own heart.

I must be quick to put out the fires on the inside, for what lies outside these walls is not the only danger.

“I was pushed back and about to fall, but the Lord helped me…I will not die, but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done.”

–Psalm 118:13, 17

“Be earnest and unwearied and steadfast in your prayer [life], being [both] alert and intent in [your praying] with thanksgiving.”

–Colossians 4:2 (Amplified)

So I will not become weary in asking for what I need; I will not grow dejected when I feel pushed back again and again. I will not say you have abandoned us when I am teetering. I will trust in You still.

I will not look at the money, I will look at You.

I will not look at the conflicts, I will look at You.

I will not look at the damage, I will look at You.

You will steady me. You will douse the flame.

Help me develop a watchful mind that is aware of small fires I have allowed to burn. Help me be diligent to talk to you often, faithful to tend to the inward battle, assured that you will handle the outside threats, slow to worry, purposefully thankful.

Time to move on from what I don’t have, what I can’t do. Onward to what is still possible.

Shape me into someone who is thankful, looks forward, speaks gently, and is not consumed with what is lost, because she knows all losses have purpose when they are brought to your feet.

You have a way of taking pieces and doing things I’d never expect with them. There’s a lot that’s in pieces for me right now…help me to let go. To trust you with them. To thank you for them.

Help me to let go of what I had and push into who I am. To see that who I become is a gift you give with hard experiences-a gift to thank you and ask you for. Take whatever you must, to get to who I am and work on that. It could really use your attention.

Yesterday in small group, we spoke of New Year’s Resolutions. The majority of them had to do with reading your word. Some wanted to read more; some more often. Some wanted to follow a plan…many voiced their dread of failure in the same breath.

“I always get way behind, and by March it’s like ‘well, I tried…’ ”

It brought to the table the thought of how we approach you when it’s been a while.

I think much of the wall that bars me into stagnancy, even when I KNOW the clear, cool spring of connection with you is waiting on the other side, is guilt over the times I never showed up.

But I don’t think you ever check the attendance record to determine how sweet the time will be or the criteria for me to come. The attendance record is only in my head. If it is sin-the record is wiped clean at the cross: no one’s referencing it but me. If it is lack of commitment…this has never been about MY commitment to you. You are unflinchingly faithful. I have never been that, and you knew that getting into this.

Besides, consistency on my end grows stronger as I gaze into your faithfulness to me through my failures; not as I gaze upon my failures and determine to do better. As I look at YOU, not at ME. Hearts are driven further by affection than by disgust.

And so I would like to learn to think about time with you less in terms of ME.

Simply put: you cleared the way for me to come and you wait there for me.

You are so worth visiting. So worth the thought process. So worth the mental effort to push away the vines of obligation and the cobwebs of worry and to clear my way through the tall grass of distraction and other responsibilities.

To push forward and push aside and push into the clearing where my thoughts are finally still and I may see you. I may know you.

You are worth this and I will always feel that as I approach that meadow. I will always know that as I let the cool water sink in and the bitter poison of my anger and fear and guilt drop from my tightly clenched fists. As you whisper, “I will handle this-you don’t have to drink that anymore.”

Your answer to my questioning eyes when I raise them to yours is not,”Where were you?”

It is, “I’m still here.”

It is not “Why would you drink THAT?”

It is, “You look thirsty.”

“If you knew the gift of God…you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

–John 4:10

“And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires. let him take the water of life freely.”

–Revelation 22:17

Because…in the end, the meadow, the clear pool, the fresh air, and the calming whispers of the Almighty-they are not for the disciplined readers and the New Years Resolution keepers;  the dutiful worshipers and the ones who are reliable about keeping their commitments.

They are for whoever desires.

Whoever needs. Whoever is desperate. Whoever is thirsty.

 

Lord-

YOU do the disciplined, perfect, always keep your promises part. It is my part to come to you, aware that your faithfulness covers where I am unreliable, and you do not greet me scolding. You rush to me with open arms-a Father overjoyed to see his child, regardless of how long it’s been.

“So Gideon took ten men from among his servants and did as the Lord had said to him. But because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city too much to do it by day, he did it at night.”

–Judges 6:27

I tend to latch onto “he did it at night” and think coward.

But here’s a consideration I’ve never chewed on: Gideon ALSO “did as the Lord had said to him.”

He was afraid, but HE OBEYED. It’s not like it was an anonymous act. Everyone knew who had torn down the altars by morning. Gideon knew he’d still get the flack. Yes, he could have obeyed during the day, and been a marvelous spectacle, and You would have helped him. But it’s significant still that he obeyed. Also…he chose a time he wouldn’t be interrupted and wouldn’t face interference, perhaps so that he knew he could obey and finish…

…and also because he was afraid.

We all aspire to act without fear. But down here in reality, I think it is a very good thing when we are afraid and we still choose to do what You say. Many never venture there.

So Lord-

May you take me past this…to where I see the danger, and I fear YOU; I do not fear it. But in the meantime, teach me to be obedient because I fear you MORE than I fear it.

Teach me to obey even while afraid, and in that, to learn that I didn’t have to be.

 

 

“So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the LORD their God, and served the Baals and Asherahs.”

–Judges 3:7

When you allow yourself to forget the Lord, you will replace Him.

Often, evil does not start with a clear-cut decision to join darkness, but with the slow, subtle inattention to what is good. Often it is not a choice made in proximity to the Lord, gazing off at evil and judging it superior, but a leaning after one has drifted and forgotten how good the Lord is because it has been so long since one has tasted His perfection.

You lose touch with who He is – the wonders of His presence fading and forgotten, and so you lean into what is right in front of you rather than approach the mountain. For you have lost the vibrance of the memory that it is worth the walk.

Evil is not just the result of deliberate rebellion, but also of inaction to maintain closeness with good. It is the natural propensity of forgetful souls who allow themselves to starve.

Lord-

I must learn that it takes diligent effort not to forget You. It is not a passive process to stay close. You are the highest treasure; teach my heart to put in the effort to remember.

“Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those cities, but the Canaanites were determined to dwell in the land. And it happened, when the children of Israel grew strong, that they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out.”

-Joshua 17:12-13

And so it was in Judah and Ephraim before Manasseh. Tribe by tribe, they receive their long-awaited land. And tribe by tribe, once they have it, they ignore God’s instructions.

How normal this is-to follow directions to a “T” until we have what we want, and then drop all the effort once we feel secure.

This choice, across Israel, would come back to haunt them: uprisings, idolatry, comparison…our hearts can generate all these things without the extra help. But how tragic when it is OUR CHOICE and we allow factors in our life to remain when we know they defy You, and that, in time, they will lure our hearts away.

Lord-

Show me my own heart. Show me harmful inhabitants to whom I have chosen to offer sanctuary, thinking presumptuously that I can enslave them to perform MY will, when all the while, they shackle my heart to deeper darkness and whisper that the light is now too far away for me to reach.

Daily, you reveal in me things I would prefer not to see; choices I would prefer not to see in that light.

But it is love that tells me the truth. So help me, Lord, to cherish the truth, even when it is uncomfortable, humbling, and calls for change.