Up the Sunbeam

-- WWJD?   Widely recognized initials symbolizing the question "What would Jesus do?" Many believers wear it on bracelets, carry it on Bible covers, put it on their key chains, anyplace that will frequently remind them to check their actions against what they think Jesus might do. It's a good question to ask ourselves. Maybe there's another question.  Maybe there's more to it than knowing how Jesus might behave in a given situation.  Maybe that's the end and maybe there's a beginning I need to find first. Maybe it's less about what Jesus would do and more about who Jesus IS. Jesus, the great I Am who confined Himself to helpless infant. Jesus, the King of kings breathing sawdust as a carpenter. Jesus, the Christ wrapped in the frailty of human flesh. Jesus, the Creator of all becoming the servant of all. Jesus, the very Son of God choosing to call Himself the Son of Man. Jesus, the sinless God-man crushed beneath the weight of all humanity's ...

-- I love words. Words are gifts and God-full and made for beauty. But how is it that words can be so ugly? How is it that mouths that sing words of praise and speak words of loving God can, in the next breath, be making racial jokes? What in the world am I supposed to DO with that? I sit, open-mouthed, heart filling with fumes and toxic smoke, and everything in me wants to get up and call to task, or storm out in a showy and conspicuous exit . . . or unhear what I've heard. Have we made so little progress in my lifetime?  Have we moved so little from where we started?  In some ways I'm afraid we're further out than where began. It distresses me that racism is such a common theme that runs through secular places like schools (honestly in Christian schools too)--my children could tell you stories!  It infuriates me when people cry "RACISM" where there is none!  But racist talk breaks my heart when it comes from the mouths of people who are in positions of Ch...

-- I don't know whether I'm relieved . . . or numb . . . or just quiet.  I'm glad it's over.  It had better be over. There is just so much to process.  I want to do like I always told my kids about playground politics at school and "be a duck"--to just let it all slide off my back like a drop of water off a duck's feathers.  I want to . . . but it's hard.  The tape in my head keeps looping on the words they chose and threw at him--words that charged, tried and convicted . . . words without understanding . . . or grace.  I keep seeing my mind's video of the superior expressions, the smiles that felt cold, the judgmental, down-the-nose looks, the moments of thinly veiled aggression that felt so out of place, there of all places. It felt like a room full of fences that divided us from each other. I recall too that there were words of real understanding and reaching out from one who sounded genuine.  Finally a moment that felt like love. I tr...

 "It is through the Son, at the cost of his own blood, that we are redeemed, freely forgiven through that full and generous grace which has overflowed into our lives and opened our eyes to the truth." Ephesians 1:7 (Phi) Remember when you were little and you would fall and skin your knee and your mom or dad or some loving grown up would come and "kiss it better?" I'm not sure the pain in the knee was really better, but the pain in your heart sure was! As little children, there was something so unexpected about falling down and getting hurt. One moment you were running along with the wind in your face and the world by the tail, and the next, you were on the cold hard ground, bloody and bewildered, wounded inside and out. I fell down on my proverbial hands and knees yesterday. To add insult to injury, the thing that tripped me up was my own fault. I made a stupid and costly, but very UNintentional error. Doggone it, I so want to go back and unmake that ...