the drum|rob fairbanks

Behold the Wonders God is Doing with All People?

 One of the Psalms I used this morning for prayers was Psalm 66:4

“Come now and see the works of God, how wonderful he is in his doing toward all people.”

It is obviously an invitational Psalm. Come and see! Behold! As I prayed it over and over, I found myself deeply struggling with the phrase, “…all people.”

• Struggling with myself, with my overcharged emotions and reactivity. Yesterday was a mixed up day for me with a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows, one in which I found out someone was spreading malicious and hurtful rumors about me.  This is someone who has never even met me.
• Struggling with how stuff like this makes me want to return the treatment I am getting with like treatment. An eye for an eye…quid pro quo. Frustrated that after years of attempting to make my first reaction, non-reaction that I still want to lash back when hurt.
• Struggling with the anger and violence in the world. Watching what is unfolding in Baltimore, the latest of upheaval like incidences where standing at a distance confuses and makes me literally weep.    
• Struggling with people who are ok with violence, as long as it is not perpetrated toward them.  Then they speak up. I posted on FB last night… If you are only calling for non-violence now that there are riots, you are sadly late to the game.
• Struggling with the thousands of people who lost their lives in Nepal this last week in a horrific earthquake.  Over 3000 were lost and the number continues to rise.

Honestly, I felt like I could barely will the phrase past my lips, “Behold how wonderful God is in his doing toward all people,” let alone pray it.

As I continued to pray though, my mind found its way to a young 5th grader who wandered into our service on Sunday. He is a kid from the neighborhood. When he realized that we were a church, he innocently asked one of the folks from Immanuel if he could go home and get his sister, which he did.

• I “beheld” as he watchfully joined in our worshiping community with interest and curiosity.
• I “beheld” as he sat with John, one of the leaders from YFC during communion…as John patiently explained the Gospel in the sacrament as he watched each person go forward to participate… “This is Christ broken body, this is His spilled out blood for you.” 
• I “beheld” God’s wonderful doing as he came forward and joined in himself.
• I “beheld” God’s wonderful doing as both of us played Foosball after the service and our communal meal in which predictably I playfully talked trash and he beat me and we crossed the boundaries of age and race and became friends.

As I allowed my soul to exhale from all the troubles of the world and allowed it to reside in the beauty of the one, I actually felt the muscles in my body relax and my heart rise. I felt myself release the surplus of frustration and finally join the Psalmist in his invitation, “Come now and see the works of God, how wonderful he is in his doing toward all people.”

After all, it is the Fourth Week of Easter!

r

Listen Then Act

“Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.” -Hudson Taylor

“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” (Lk. 5:16)

I think the word “often” is there for a reason.

Catholic theologian and mystic Thomas Merton writes, “My life is a listening, His is a speaking. My salvation is to hear and respond.” What a unique and fantastic approach to salvation and communication.

For Merton, the goal of life is to listen to God and then act. Not just in his communication with God. His goal in life! Listen then act.

Just as Jesus did, we ought to listen to God and then launch into his mission, wherever that takes us. An yet, even after we’ve jumped into the mission we ought to pray more, we ought to pray often just as Jesus did for God is moving.

We make millions of decisions each day. (You’re making one right now by continuing to read this!) How many of them do you ask God to be a part of?

Listen then act. It will change everything. (Sounds like Jesus doesn’t it…)

Phil 

Hugging Jesus

    I had a dream when I was child that I will never forget. I was walking on lush, green grass when upon looking up there stretched a perfect, blue expanse of sky like I had never seen before.  Then I saw a man walking towards me, I knew it was Jesus.  At this point I got pretty excited, understandably!  I started running as fast as I could to reach Him, and He started running towards me.  He knelt down to me and said a simple “I love you very much” and then He hugged me.  I don’t remember His face, only His eyes.  They were dark and beautiful, telling of everything He is-Savior, healer, lover of our souls, funny, strong, man, God, King, the list goes on and on and on.  When I looked in His eyes I felt stronger and taller but at the same time a complete vulnerability, that my heart was wide open.  What surprises me about this, looking back years later, is that it was not kindness in Jesus’s eyes that I saw.  Instead, I stared back at a fierce, passionate love that so far extends the kindness which we have been conditioned to expect from our white, blue eye, brown hair-with-a middle part Jesus.  What a one dimensional view of His personality!  I woke up stunned and incredibly loved, feeling an unexplainable peace and joy.

    This world does not need any more of these scenarios depicting either a “white, middle-class, nice Jesus” or a “white, middle-class, unforgiving Jesus.”  What is needed is the “wild terrifying, fascinating, dangerous, Middle-Eastern Jesus” (Michael Frost).  Why would I expect a tame, predictable Savior, or one who is “safe?...Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” (C.S. Lewis)   I am tired of trying to be ‘safe’ in the way I do church and life for that matter.  I want to be all in, to be a part of this awesome Body of Christ, to love the Church, to kill the institution, to dream. To love furiously, with a reckless abandon without a thought of self-preservation.  To be about the Church, we must first be about Jesus and who He truly is, allowing Him in to compel us and change us so that we can further the Kingdom in awesome and radical ways.

Jamie

I know who you are

My mom has had cancer for almost five years.  She prays that she will live to see her three daughters get married.  Last summer, the first one of us daughters had her wedding in our front yard.  My mom wept: It was like God was giving back, gift-wrapped, her deepest desire that she had surrendered fully to Him.

 

One of our friends who had been battling brain cancer died last week, leaving her two sons without a parent.  One of her sons has Asperger’s syndrome and will need to live with and be cared for by her other son.  She told me once her prayer to see her first grandbaby…God didn’t grant her request.

I don’t know why God hasn’t healed my mom from cancer, and I certainly don’t understand why He would take this mother away from her young sons, never realizing her dream of seeing a grandbaby

Yet “sometimes the only way to understand is fall on your knees and say you don’t…Because God knows sometimes there is suffering beyond our knowing.

When we want to know answers, God simply wants us to know Him.

The answer to our suffering is so incomprehensible that it has to be incarnated — the Word must come to us as flesh…He came – because in all our pain, we don’t want some answers like we want a Someone”

                ~Ann Voscamp.

J.J. Heller echoes this belief in her song lyrics: “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I know who you are.”

Yet again, we hear the reverberations of this faith in the powerful words of Oswald Chambers: "Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.”

This I know with all my heart: The character of God is trustworthy and steadfast.

                And I know He knows our pain: He loved enough to lose a child so we could live.

“Since the children have flesh and blood,
[I] too shared in their humanity –

so that by [my] death, [I] might break the power of him who holds the power of death—
that is, the devil—

and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

~Hebrews 2:14-15 

“There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.” ~ Corrie Ten Boom

Jessica

Move It! ‘Cause you really ‘ought to

    There is something heartfelt and immediately piercing about praising God with
movement. There is a part of ourselves, our physicality, that we have neglected in our
worship. And because of it we have lost touch with our emotional souls; our movement
and our emotions are intricately linked. It is hard to lie and keep the world out when you
are engaged in authentic movement. I have found that some of my most honest and
vulnerable moments have been when I have used movement as a form of worship.
    Our bodies, our movements, I think, are that last piece in our worship; the piece
that connects it all together. I cannot express how freeing it is to use dance and
movement to pray and worship God, and at the same time, I cannot express how hard it
was to get to that place. It is not natural for us to be open and vulnerable with each
other. It is not natural to be uninhibited in our emotion and movement. So we have
learned to worship unnaturally: keeping everything inside locked up tight. But I don’t
think God wants us to worship only with our voices; I think we glorify Him most when we
are authentic and honest with each other. And I think that we could do that better if we
all learned to move a little more; to dance a little more. David danced, after all, as did
Jesus. So why can’t we?

Zach

The Church: A Banquet for Your Friends or a Refuge for the Poor?

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

             The great eighteenth-century hymn writer and ex-slave trader John Newton marveled at the far-reaching impact of these words spoken by Jesus in Luke. “One would almost think this passage was not considered part of God’s word, nor has any part of Jesus’ teaching been more neglected by his own people. I do not think it is unlawful to entertain our friends” he says, “but if these words do not teach us that it is in some respects out duty to give preference to the poor, I am at a loss to understand them.” Looking at the current state of the American church, one can’t help but wonder if the “luncheon or dinner” Jesus was referring to could be what we call our church service today. We spend so much time catering our churches to our friends, brothers, sisters, relatives and neighbors, that we completely disregard those Jesus is calling to invite join us in our “banquet.”

            It’s not that Jesus commands us, his Church, to disregard those who we consider being friends, peers or of high economic status, for Jesus himself often ate with his peers and people of wealth. However, his mission was still for the poor. Jesus commanded that his disciples should share their homes and build relationships not with people of their class or higher, people they could profit from or that would pay them back, but with people who were poor and without influence. I believe he is calling his church to do the same; to be for the poor, with the poor, and in pursuit of the poor.

            Although I am unaware of any churches that actively turn the poor away, I am also unaware of many that actively seek out those in extreme poverty as being a part of their community. Most church facilities and services seem to be catered more to the middle-class who drive in from their different neighborhoods to come together with like-minded, similar looking people of their social class for once, maybe twice a week, fellowship and teaching. Although I’m sure many of these churches do really wonderful things to help the underserved and poor, it’s not as easy to make the case that they are designed “for the poor.” The Bible speaks of God as being “a refuge for the poor” (Isaiah 25:4; Psalm 14:6). Therefore the Church, as the body of Christ, is called to stand with the poor as a physical and spiritual place of refuge for them in this world. Is your church a banquet for your friends or a refuge for the poor?

Melissa

Food and Family

    I walked in the front door of my church at 9:55 and headed to a college bible study class. We pored over Romans 6, prayed together, and dreamed about how to serve our church body and the surrounding community. Then, at 11 we wrapped up and joined the congregation in the sanctuary for worship and the sermon. We sang, heard the message, and prayed together, and if the church part of my day had ended here, I wouldn’t have been disappointed in any way. I had learned, praised, and fellowshipped with my church family and now I would head back out into the world renewed by some time with God.

BUT WAIT! DID SOMEONE SAY IT WAS POTLUCK SUNDAY?!?!

    Heck yes! We all headed for the food and sat in the church basement as delicious scents wafted by. I sat at the table with older couples, young families with toddlers, teenagers, and widowed grandmothers around me, and we ate homemade lasagna, meatballs, salad, and cookies, laughing and talking about whatever we wanted. I heard stories about war, about shoveling the snow, about grandchildren and children, and I told about my family, my home, and my hopes. And as I sat there I realized that it was in this context that I truly interacted with this new family of mine. Yes, we had all listened to the sermon together and spent this Sunday and others sitting in adjacent pews exchanging hugs and handshakes, but here we could love each other in a tangible way over a good meal.

    As I left, an older woman I had been talking with walked out with me. She had told me about her husband who had recently died, her daughter who owned a bakery, and her beautiful granddaughter, and as we pushed past the door she turned to me. “I’m going to be your grandmother here in Spokane, Katie,” she said as she hugged me. We said goodbye and all I could think about was how much love she held in her heart for a college girl she met barely an hour before. At times it is easy to forget that our one to three hours on Sunday isn’t always true fellowship. When we invest in the lives of those around us and love our many brothers, sisters, and grandmothers we experience the joy of family. That is why I love the Church; they are my family in the best sense of the word.

Kate

Come to the Table - a Communion Meditation

Below is a short Communion mediation I wrote recently. Imagine as you read it a huge table filled with wonderful food + the communion elements.

Come to the Table

The prophet Isaiah writes,

“Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink— even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine or milk—it’s all free! ² Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength?  Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen to me, and you will eat what is good. You will enjoy the finest food. ³ “Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David… (My dear brothers and sisters) Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near.”

A table filled with great food and drink is always a beautiful symbol for me.  As a matter of fact, it is a symbol of two things.

One is that of anticipation.  I don’t know if you are like me, but the lead up to a beautiful meal is like waiting for Christmas morning for a kid.  You know the feeling.  Kind of a vibration in your stomach because you know that something hoped for is about to happen. I literally can’t help myself from nibbling, kind of like shaking the presents under the tree. Actually, growing up in a family of 5 men, nibbling is probably more liken to a huge bird of prey swooping down on its unknowing victim…there goes an olive, now for those chips, and then back to the olives.  And it’s ok.  It is completely appropriate to long for the meal.  It is something that lines up as “right” in the universe.  I believe that this longing is something that God put in us so that we would at moments crave Him.

Anticipation!

Secondly, for me, it is a sign of welcome.  Open chairs, waiting food, flickering candles all say, come and feast.  Come and be filled!  Come and be with.  And it is not just the food, although there is something magnetic and unifying about the meal.  It is those we gather to eat with.  It has, for me, always meant conversation.  Sometimes pedestrian and silly, other times though, stirring and even unsettling, but always conversation, connection.  It is the lifeblood of relationship. It has been said that the wine and the bread are social lubricants. I agree. 

Welcome!

This morning, we have the metaphor of table…the table of Christ before us and we, if we allow ourselves, can come.  We can put aside our worries, our concerns for a moment and feast…feast on the body and blood of Christ.  We can slide the chair up and enjoy community the way it was ordained, together with the triune God, partaking with Him in his holy dance of life.  There is embrace, connection, forgiveness if you need it, the gift of re-membering.

There are literally scores of reasons you can come up with to not come. 

I’m been hurt by the church…

I don’t like singing…

I doubt that God exists…

I don’t know anyone here well enough to feel comfortable…

I’m tired…

I am carrying with me a secret sin that if everyone knew about, I would certainly be excluded from the table.

Brothers and sisters don’t let this opportunity go by without encountering the sheer life that is found in Jesus this morning.  As Jesus said through John the Revelator to his church:

“The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.”

I’d like to invite you to come to the table now…with a friend.  If you aren’t here with someone else, come with a new friend.  I know, it’s risky, but come.  Stop and linger, pray, maybe even eat a grape, but come as a community in the name of the Eastered Jesus who lived…and died…and rose from the grave, alive…and will come back for us. 

Come to the table.