Hallowed

It is your name

Your name alone

that calls out to me

even as I call it out.

Not to me, not to me,

but to your name

be all the eyes and ears,

cries of joy, thankful tears.

Let the burden roll off my back

Into an empty tomb:

that weight off my frame,

that drudgery of my empty name.

When the sound of your name

fills my breath, passes my lips,

It is not just words, but your heart,

that entrances me into self-forgetfulness.

Your name, your name,

never the same.

Always teaching, always healing

always commanding, always walking beside.

Let it be your name,

your name alone,

that haunts my house

with its unseen presence 

of joy.

I dropped my name.

I let it fall,

when yours came by

and filled my sky 

with hope.

It is not the syllables, the sounds,

the tunes, the rhymes that make it live,

but finding you never more 

than a breath away

in your name.

I bury my face in your robes,

I touch the hand that touches me.

Can I say it without shame?

Can I speak it with truth and love?

Your name.

Life According to Jesus

Faith is not " believing in spite of evidence," nor "believing what you know isn't true," as some have cynically suggested.  Rather it is an open-eyed adventurous affirmation that in and through things is a Good Will, and that Good Will is God.  Therefore faith relates itself to that Good Will by betting its life on it.  (E. Stanley Jones, Is the Kingdom of God Realism?)

WORRISOME STORIES ABOUT LIFE

Two false stories about life cause a great deal of worry.  The first is that life is about sowing and reaping.  Planning and results.  Doing and getting.  Although we do know that life has definite cause/effect chains, this is not what life is about; it is not the whole story.  "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy."  (Ps. 126)  There is an incongruency about life.  We do not always get what we deserve.  We thank God for it.

Another false story is that life can be "stored away in barns."  Somehow we can save up for later.  We work so we can retire.  We save so we can spend.  We do good so that good will be done to us.  Although we are encouraged to "store up our treasures in heaven," the reason is not so we can get to them later, but because where our treasures are, that's where our heart is.  "I said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."  (Ps. 16:2)  Life must be lived and cannot be kept for later.  Many things are best left behind anyway.

THE BIRDS' STORY

The birds live the true story of life by instinct.  "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them."  (Mt. 6:26)  Life is about being fed.  The birds are not fed if they remain still, but they do not worry.  They do not live the "sowing/reaping" story nor the "storing away in barns" story.  They live the story of being fed.  What the birds do naturally, we must do by faith and choice.

Life is more important than eating and drinking.  It is more important than sowing and reaping and storing away in barns.  Life is about hungering, but not for food.  Life is about thirsting, but not for drink.  "I am the bread of life." (Jn, 6:35)  "The water I give to him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  (Jn. 4:14)  Life is about hungering and thirsting for Christ and being satisfied by him.  Not just by what he said or what he did, but by him.  It is about our daily bread.  It is about the heavenly manna that spoils if it is not eaten that day.  (Ex. 6:13-23; Jn. 6:32-33)

The systems of human life set up against Christ promote sowing and storing up.  Both stories are about a world of scarcity.  In such a world the first thing we think in the morning is how we didn't get enough sleep and the last thing is how we didn't get enough done.  Shame is the whip that keeps us going.  (Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability)  Conversely, life according to Jesus is set up on trust (faith).  We trust that there is enough time to finish what God has given us.  We trust that he will give us the resources to do so as we ask him.  Massive systems of propaganda speak against such trust.  Part of us rebels at the thought of such trust.  But it is before us, as plain at the birds in the air.