:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

As Jesus prepared to depart from this world, he gathered his disciples for a meal that he asked them to duplicate when they gathered together in the future.

For the Jewish people who had put so much stock in showing up at the synagogue each week and traveling to the temple for the major religious festivals, Jesus re-centered his community around a meal at a common table.

One may approach a temple with elaborate prayers and pretense. It’s quite another matter to do the same at a community meal.

Just as his followers shared wine and bread in common, they were expected to share their lives with one another. In the setting of a home, there is little room to hide.

There are plenty of ways to keep in touch with our friends and family, but there is something about sitting at a table together. We fall into traps when we speak in terms of the shallowness of text messages or the internet, forgetting that these things can tie into physical community—even if it remains true that gathering at a table with friends is a superior way to share life together.

I admit that it’s far easier to settle for an e-mail or a note on Facebook rather than going through the trouble of welcoming people into our home. However, that effort to meet in person pays off so significantly in friendships, encouragement, and blessings.

The meal Jesus shared with his disciples is meant to jump off the page at us. The writers of the Gospels stuck the story of his last supper at the center of their narratives. This is what God wants us to be—a community formed around a table.

The Greenhouse

In the next month, consider ways you can be more present with Christians in your community. Can you share a meal with another family? Can you join a small group?

What does it look like for you to balance online community with physical community?

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

The first time we moved, I remember feeling really awful about asking some friends to help out. Once they arrived to help us load the truck, the older guy, who had managed a few of his own moves in the past, took control and helped us organize the truck.

I don’t think I can ever thank him enough. He knew really basic but important stuff for moving, like stacking light boxes on top of heavy ones. I thought this was brilliant.

We moved five times after that. Each time we had to rely on friends and family. Sometimes we’d accumulated too much stuff at yard sales and hadn’t thought of thinning out before moving day.

Each time we depended on friends and family to move us, I felt terrible about asking for an entire day of labor that only included a free lunch as payment. I used to think that I should be self-sufficient enough that I didn’t have to always ask my friends and family for help.

There’s this myth that a lot of us have about becoming self-sufficient the day after graduating from college or when we’re old enough to drink or whatever artificial milestones we set up. The truth is that almost everyone I know has lived with their parents at some point after college or while in between jobs, many with a spouse and kids along for the ride.

Whether it’s moving, taking care of children, or providing a temporary place to call home, we need the support of our friends and family. Some may need more support than others, but a big problem with the American dream is an individualized notion of owning everything and never depending on anyone because you’re self-sufficient.

We know that Christianity is all about living in community and depending on one another. However, it’s hard to shake the American dream of self-sufficiency and radical individualism. It’s coursing through our environment.

We breathe it in and out, over and over again each day.

Depending on others goes against the grain of our culture. Aren’t such people lazy freeloaders?

Most of us have experienced the opposite—where we often need help for a day or a brief season of life. Freeloaders aside, it’s not out of the question that we may need to trust and depend on one another in our Christian community. We may need to ask for help, and other times we may need to step out and be inconvenienced for the sake of others.

Jesus talked about lending freely to those who could not repay and sharing meals with those who cannot invite us to their own homes. One of the first acts of the early church was sharing possessions and selling extra resources in order to share with the poor.

The Christian life includes both learning how to give and also how to depend. I spend a lot of time trying to learn how to generous, but I give very little thought to how I receive from others.

Life among God’s people pushes us to give generously and to receive graciously. While our culture glorifies the individuals, the family of God glories in the blessings we share with one another.

The Greenhouse

Do you find it harder to receive or to give blessings?

Ask God to open your eyes today to the blessings you can give and receive.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

When I changed to a freelance career, I began walking to cafes and libraries in order to work. Up to that point in my life, I’d always commuted between thirty to sixty minutes to work.

As I walked through my neighborhood, which used to be a blur on my way to the office, I began to notice trees, flowers, and even some nice parks that I’d overlooked. Honestly, after spending so much of my time driving from one place to another, I knew next to nothing about spring blossoms on trees or perennial flowers.

That soon changed as I began to walk more each day. There were some times when I needed to drive, but I found that my walk could become an important time of prayer, reflection, and restoration. If my day felt busy or out of control, a walk often helped me reconnect with God.

While some days I craved the convenience of hopping into my car and speeding into my day, there were other days when I began to recognize a need for a different pace.

Different times and seasons of life require different paces.

The more I thought about my days and my schedule, the more I realized that I needed to pace myself a little differently each day. Some days I needed an extra thirty minutes so I could sprint through my work better.

Other days I needed a slower pace in order to stay on the same page with God. Always charging into my day at full speed left me worn out and often a bit disoriented. It was like I’d been running a marathon without a break, became disoriented, and then wandered off course.

We need to know what the right pace is for particular moments.

Too Fast at a Slow Time Misses Important Stuff

Sometimes my family needs me to be fully present and the last thing I should do is multi-task my work. Other times I’ve been pushing to get my work done all day and I need to just take a break.

As someone who tends to keep pushing to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of a day, I often need to just close my computer and declare myself done for the day.

Too Slow at a Fast Time Misses Opportunities

Sometimes we need to kick our lives into high gear and jump on opportunities. It’s not always wrong to push hard to get a project done, provided we slow down or stop at a certain point in order to recharge.

Sometimes we just need to focus all of our energy on something that’s really important, whether that’s something for our family or our careers. The hard part is figuring out the right time to bump up the pace and when to let up.

There is an art to finding the right pace for life. It requires wisdom and reflection. Going fast well means learning when to slow down.

The Greenhouse

Do you find it hard to slow down or hard to speed up? Are there particular times when slowing down or picking up speed is tough for you?

God promises to give us wisdom generously, and figuring out the right pace for life is one of those times when we should take five minutes to quietly ask God for more of it.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

The first hour of your day is described by some research studies as the most important. You set the tone for the rest of your day in those early hours. I find that no matter what I have scheduled or what has happened, I often wake up feeling anxious.

Some people need difficult circumstances in order to feel stress and anxiety. That’s just my natural default most days. If I don’t stop to sort out what’s going on, there’s a chance I could let that morning’s stress guide the rest of my day.

I’m sure you know that feeling some days when stuff starts to go wrong, and you catch yourself losing your temper or feeling stressed. It’s always tempting to say that things aren’t going my way, but the truth is that I’m placing myself at the mercy of my circumstances and my inadequate mental resources.

Anxiety doesn’t usually yield to frontal assault. We need to stop ourselves, breathe deeply, and let God guide us. We need worship. We need God to renew our minds.

The sooner we root ourselves and our days in the presence and peace of God, the better.

The longer we allow ourselves to veer off course during the day, the harder it will be find our way back on track. There’s a very good reason why Christian monastic communities begin each day with prayer: what they call the morning office.

Cultivating prayer early in the morning provides us a tool for counteracting anything that sets itself up against what God wants to do in us.

Anxiety uproots us, preventing us from stopping and resting in the goodness of God. If the Spirit of the Lord brings peace and freedom, the spirit of this world brings chaos and bondage.

We can’t work ourselves out of anxiety. However, we can say no to it and even opt out of it by letting God guide us into his peace and freedom. The best time to block anxiety is early in the morning before it has time to change the course of the day.

The mercies of the Lord are new each morning, no matter what yesterday looked like.

The Greenhouse

How do you feel at the start of each day? What circumstances are particularly hard to handle each day?

Set aside ten minutes for prayer or prayerful meditation during your first waking hour tomorrow, even if you need to get up ten minutes earlier.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

We planted our first garden in the thick, unforgiving clay soil of southeast Pennsylvania. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that my wife planted it. I was more of an occasional sidekick. The clay soil just about crushed our seeds as we pressed them into the ground.

We grew a few things that summer, but by the end of August we were shocked at how few vegetables we had grown and how many weeds had sprung up. In hindsight, I certainly didn’t invest enough time and energy into the garden to warrant those expectations.

I had every reason to think our failed garden was the end of gardening for our family.

I was wrong.

Each year we tried something else in the garden, slowly building upon each success.

One year my wife’s parents planted a few tomato plants behind our house, and we enjoyed tomatoes all summer.

The year after that, we planted lettuce and some other greens outside of the kitchen.

After enjoying so much lettuce that year, our gardens grew more ambitious for the years that followed, only thwarted by blight, critters, or drought, not a lack of effort or enthusiasm on our parts.

Friends would stop by and look at our garden and say something like, “We could never do that. I can hardly keep a house plant alive.” They didn’t realize that I started in the same place.

Each year I tried new vegetables, learned about fertilizers, and worked on improving the soil in our garden. Some years I failed, such as the time I tried growing sweet corn. Many other times we enjoyed significant success such as sugary sweet heirloom carrots and epic eggplants.

It’s easy to look at our garden and to forget that every gain we made came through failure, learning from mistakes, and cultivating better growing practices. We started with a small garden and grew it each year, adding to our knowledge about how to grow the different vegetables we found in the seed catalogue each winter.

Learning how to garden is a process, and it isn’t always a pretty process to behold. Process really shouldn’t be all that hard of a concept for us to understand.

I often think about what it would be like to meet myself at the age of 15. Like a garden packed with rugged clay soil, I had issues with pride, anger, and combativeness that I would have never admitted. God was working in my life, but I had so many problems.

To say the least, my spiritual growth since then has been a process.

I also wonder what I’ll think of myself fifteen years from now.

Spiritual growth is a process where we may not see all that much progress at first. There is a lot of failure along the way. This doesn’t surprise God.

He’s committed to us and the process because he knows that we have so much potential. He sees the goodness possible in us.

We could focus on the ways that we have failed, or we could repent and begin to believe that God sees that we are a people in process. Better yet, we are in a community with fellow Christians in the same process. While one of us falls down, the others can provide prayer and encouragement.

Paul says, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2) because being formed into loving people takes time. Love is not our default.

Thankfully we belong to a God who keeps returning to us one season after another. A failure isn’t the end of the process. It just means we need to spend more time with the one who cultivates holiness in our souls.

The Greenhouse

Think about process in your own life. What is something that you have learned to do over a period of time?

Pray for 5 minutes today about one area where you need God to cultivate more holiness in your life.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

People are searching for you.

They want to know what you care about.

They want to know how you spend your day.

They love learning every little detail about your life—your birthday, your vacations, your favorite restaurants.

These people who care so much about you are called advertisers. They are hungry for data—anything from your personal life they can use to sell products to you, to make you interested in their brands, or to prompt you to talk to others about their brands.

There are plenty of statistics that suggest that many of us feel lonely and disconnected. We create profiles online in order to connect more. In the meantime, advertisers want to sift through this data to get to know us.

I read marketing sites from time to time for my writing clients, and the language is disturbing. Advertisers know we’re lonely, looking for distraction, and willing to share a lot of information about ourselves that they can use. They’re designing games, promotions, and other tricks to capture our attention and sell us products.

On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong taking advantage of a brand’s promotion or game for the sake of getting a sale. However, we need to remain wary of the motives. Brands want to become fixtures in our lives, friends that we integrate into our identity.

Brands want me to think of them when I ask, “Who am I?”

If we start to identify ourselves by linking together a series of brands, we may have an identity problem. We’ve been found by the wrong tribe—the tribe that wants our money, not us.

I’m always struck by the fact that Jesus founded a community of disciples instead of writing a book or even organizing himself out of a physical headquarters. He wanted the identity of his people to be rooted in their relationships with one another under God’s caring rule.

The narrative of God’s people is that we have been found by God and integrated into his family.

The alternative of being found by brands and integrated into their customer base is a terribly sad and lonely story that can’t compete with a people who are united by God’s Spirit.

When Jesus finds us, he welcomes us into his Kingdom and gives us everything that he has. He empties himself for our sake. God’s economy is one of generosity and family. God’s family isn’t dependent on money or brand identity.

You have been found and accepted. You’re not just another data point or customer with a wallet. You’re a beloved daughter or son in God’s family with a place at his table.

The Greenhouse

Try to avoid ads for a set period of time, either a few hours or a whole day. How hard is that?

Are there any brands that you particularly identify with? What are the things you value about them? How rooted is your identity in these brands?

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

If there’s one thing that gardeners dread, it’s tomato blight. It’s almost a supernatural phenomenon. I didn’t watch the X-Files, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they covered tomato blights in an episode.

Tomato blights seem to arise from nowhere in particular, and they inflict irreversible damage to tomato plants. A plant with blight has received a kind of death sentence. It’s like bubonic plague for tomatoes.

I think we all fear spiritual blight at one time or another: a kind of lapse in our relationships with God that we can’t overcome. Maybe a persistent sin derails us, a big sin knocks us out, or the persistent tapping of doubt finally starts to resonate with us.

Spiritual blight is worth fearing because we don’t really know how to repair it on our own. When we’ve messed up so completely and horribly, what can make things better?

There is one sure remedy for spiritual blight that I know of, and it may surprise you. In a sense, repentance has a part in it, but not quite in the way you think. You don’t have to sit before God and merely wallow in your state of spiritual blight.

You need to sit before God and worship.

Spiritual blight occurs when we focus too much on ourselves, on our sins, on the wrong people, or the wrong priorities. We can’t fix it on our own because too much of ourselves is the problem in the first place. It’s like taking a plant infected with blight and rubbing it on a plant already suffering from blight.

Worship repairs us because we were made to focus on God, not on ourselves or our sins. Worship leads us to repentance and better choices. Worship grounds us in God’s reality, and in worship we can find the sacrifice for our sins, the hope of resurrection, and the peace and joy of God’s Spirit.

If you read enough of the Old Testament, you’ll find that the problem God’s people confronted over and over again was purity of worship. They always found something else to trust, something else to praise, and something else to guide their lives.

Worship was always the place where God began with his people. It fights off the false gods we trust, the priorities that threaten God’s place in our lives, and the sinful practices that alienate us from God. When we are worshipping God with all of our hearts and minds, we don’t have anything left to give to our sinful desires.

When we worship, we are repaired. When we worship, we tap into the hope that God promises us.

We don’t live holy lives by avoiding sin. We live in holiness by worshipping.

The Greenhouse

What do you think is keeping you back from God today?

Take 5 minutes to listen to worship music or to read prayers of worship (such as the Psalms) in order to restore God to his central place in your life today.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

I used to drive from my mom’s house to my dad’s house along this huge, busy road in Philadelphia called the Roosevelt Boulevard. There were six lanes in each direction, with three express lanes in the middle and three local lanes on the side.

I always tried to improve my time and fuel efficiency by pushing my limits in the express lane.

My one obstacle to fuel efficiency and optimal speed was the first traffic light I hit on the Boulevard. If I was the first car, I could make it if I gunned it to 55 MPH right away. However, if I was second or further back, I crept along, giving my car minimal gas so that I rolled into the light without having to tap on the brake.

The stakes here were either a few minutes of waiting at the next traffic light or a few pennies of fuel. However, the game of hitting that first light perfectly took on an overblown significance over the years. Rather than driving safely, focusing on the cars around me, I carefully managed my speed and position relative to the light.

It’s a bit of a miracle that I didn’t plow into any of the cars in front of me.

Of course this wasn’t necessarily a huge risk, but after driving by that light on a trip to Philadelphia, I finally realized how foolish I can be, taking completely unnecessary risks. My friend, who is a police officer, has all kinds of stories of accidents that result from people taking risks in their cars, such as putting on makeup, texting, or running red lights.

I’ve tried to cross streets only to be nearly run over by someone on the phone or just trying to make the turn first. I know I’ve felt that tension in my car while waiting at a crosswalk and drumming my fingers as I wait for each pedestrian to meander to the opposite sidewalk.

“Just… move… faster…” I practically growl to myself.

What’s at stake if the person doesn’t hurry across the street?

Will I really gain anything if I can turn faster?

I don’t even think I can understand what goes through my mind when I feel rushed or competitive about my time in the car. Is it boredom? Is it misplaced priorities? Is it an obsession with time as a commodity?

I’d rather not think about it. I’d rather just move faster and more efficiently.

We have the means to travel fast, but we can’t always do it. When I’m denied the ability to get what I think I should be able to do, I get grumpy. It feels better to avoid personal reflection than to confront the ugly reality behind my desire for greater speed.

The possibility of speed does not mean I’m entitled to it.

Life gets in the way of what we think we deserve. God slams on the brakes like an overzealous driver’s ed instructor who yells, “Woah there buckaroo!”

The next time you’re frustrated about losing your speed or momentum, whether it’s with the kids at home, a project that falls apart, or a traffic jam, you have an opportunity to examine your expectations and what’s really at stake. You may not like what you find, but you may also find what you need to confess to God.

You may not finish in first place during rush hour, but you may find enough peace in the presence of God that coming in first no longer matters.

The Greenhouse

The next time you feel rushed or frustrated, stop to thank God for one good thing that has happened that day.

Ever lose your temper while out on the roads as a driver or pedestrian? If you feel anger at someone, you have an opportunity to pray for that person. He/she may have bigger problems than you can imagine!

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

During Thanksgiving, my wife’s parents gave us a Christmas cactus. It’s not more than a foot tall in its small pot, and when it first arrived in our home, it became a dark green, unassuming centerpiece in our dining room.

Every day, I’d sit down for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the table, never noticing the cactus. Who notices a cactus anyway?

A cactus is part of the scenery… like in a western.

One morning I walked down the steps, and something pink on the table caught my eye. In fact, it wasn’t just one pink thing. It was several pink flowers in full bloom on the cactus. In fact, some had already wilted. How could I have missed those flowers when they were blooming right in front of me for the past few days?

I think we all have a moment like that at one time or another. There is something beautiful and perfect right in front of us, but we miss it. After a busy season, we realize we’ve drifted from a spouse, from a friend, from a child, or even from ourselves—forgetting what brings us joy and defines who we are.

When we were newly married, I spoke with an older couple in our church during a retreat who seemed like they had their act together. However, when I asked them how they were, she sighed and very frankly said it had been a tough month. They both had been so busy that they had drifted from one another.

I kept my mouth shut, but I thought to myself, “But you guys are amazing together! How could you ever drift from each other?”

Apparently, we can miss out on the obvious all the time. If someone had asked me how I felt about flowering plants, I would say without hesitation, “I love flowers. We grow tons of them at our home.” Then an episode like my neglected cactus would throw my statements into doubt.

It’s so easy to miss the obvious, to neglect what’s supposed to be important, and to avoid things that are well within our power.

Though God has asked me to stop and pray regularly, you’d think he’d asked me to run a marathon each morning. The path for a disciple is so simple and obvious—stick to Jesus. And yet, I sometimes act like it’s this big mystery I can’t figure out.

We all have an invitation from Jesus to look and listen. He’s looking for people with functioning ears and eyes—which is another way of saying: people who can think a little.

If Lent has been a struggle for you, keep this in mind: God doesn’t necessarily want you to be stuck. Sure, there are some seasons that will be more difficult than others, but we have scriptures, prayers, songs, and Christian meditation practices that have been handed down to us. If one thing doesn’t work for you right now, try another.

God wants you to enter into his rest today, to experience his love, and to know his presence. You may be stuck in a sense, but he wants you to spend that time with him. That may require some time and effort on our parts, but we have been given all that we need in his indwelling Spirit. Our Christian community has provided the tools we can use.

God has given us something beautiful. He doesn’t want it to be hard to find. The hard part is just slowing down long enough to look at it.

The Greenhouse

Take some a minute to meditate on this verse from 1 Peter 1:3, NIV:

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

As you pray today, ask God whether you’ve been neglecting anything in your life.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

I’ve heard that fresh cucumbers from the garden are excellent. I wouldn’t really know. All of the cucumber plants from our gardens over the years withered before the cucumbers grew larger than a clementine.

We tried to water and fertilize them. We gave them nice hills. We provided a trellis for them to climb. After three years of trying, nothing.

The first year or two, I can look back at specific things we did wrong. However, during the third year I’d like to think that a heat wave at a critical point in the growing season knocked out our young cucumber plants.

We drove out to our community garden plot to water them, but it seemed that we could never give them enough water. They just turned yellow and wasted away.

It’s frustrating when you realize how little you really can control in life. If I ever lose my temper, it’s usually linked to plumbing or car repair. I usually can’t find what I need, the part I need to remove won’t budge, or things just won’t piece together like they should.

Sometimes people frustrate us when they don’t pick up on how we feel or they flat out ignore what we’ve asked them to do. From a colleague who fails to follow up on an important project to a child who has to be told “no” for the thousandth time, we have daily reminders of how little control we have over our lives.

Unhealthy anger springs up in my life when I try to control the wrong things or when I expect that anything I try to do should be easy. I demand a right to something that I have no business expecting.

There’s no reason why I should expect to have my way all of the time. Who can? Control is given to us in small doses. Faith comes into the picture as a seeming consolation prize.

We can plan. We can act responsibly. Nevertheless, we can’t plan for everything. Life has a way of slipping through our grasp. Problems sneak up and then pounce on us.

In the book of Job, God replies to Job with one of the most dramatic dressing downs anyone has ever received. At one point, God mentioned that only he can tame the Leviathan—a sea monster of some sort that lurks in the story eerily undefined.

Whatever a Leviathan was, God pulled on ocean imagery because the Jews were not known as sailors. They were terrified of the ocean. Maybe 400 years of slavery in Egypt robbed them of a taste for the salty ocean breeze.

When Jews thought of the most out of control place, it was the ocean. In many respects, it still is. And yet, God declared his dominion over the worst thing in an ocean.

Sometimes God will declare “peace be still” in the chaos of our lives and other times we may end up shipwrecked but still alive. Either way, God passes through the uncertainties of life with us.

It’s pretty startling to think that God sends his Spirit to dwell in our lives and then walks through the uncertainties of life with us. Even as we struggle with doubt, fear, uncertainty, frustration, and anger, he is present with us, waiting for us to rely on him.

Much like the disciples who called out in fear during the storm while Jesus slept, panic and anger usually feel a lot more productive than bringing our cares to God. And yet, he’s with us in order to make that possible.

The crazy part about following Jesus is that having less control can actually bring us more peace—that is, so long as we’ve entrusted control in the right place.

The Greenhouse

What do you want to control most in life?

As you pray today, ask God to show you the right way to let go of control in that area.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.