It Doesn't Have to Look a Certain Way

One thing I am continually struck by in the vocational work of formation that I do is that life with Christ does not look one particular way for everyone. 

Each person is unique. Each person’s story is unique. The way each of us were formed by God to be is unique. The way each of us were formed by our own particular lives is unique. 

Jesus wants to walk with you in your own particular life. 

He wants to be with you as you are.

If you are an extrovert, he wants to connect to your extroversion. If you are musical, he wants to connect to that musicality in you. If you are quiet and introverted, he wants to know you in that quiet, introverted way that you are. 

You don’t have to be someone else.

You don’t have to be other than he already made you to be. 

This is exciting for someone like me, whose life’s work is to walk alongside others and pay attention with them to their lives and the presence and movement of God in their particular life.

Every conversation is different. It is absolutely glorious and beautiful and amazing. I love to see how God is speaking and forming each person in unique and utterly creative ways.

What are the particulars of your one particular life? How can you invite Jesus into those particularities today?

He Has All the Time in the World

I’ve shared with you that I’ve been walking through a season of difficult questions. I keep bringing those questions to Jesus — sometimes in anger, sometimes in grief. And I shared yesterday that I’m aware through all this struggle that Jesus values me and the struggle. 

I shared that he values you in the same way, too. 

This morning, I became aware of yet another aspect of Jesus in the mix of all this: his infinite patience. 

At this point, it feels like Jesus and I have been talking about this struggle for forever.

Really, it’s just been about a month.

But every time I join him on the beach in a time of personal prayer, this is the immediate place I go. Sometimes we’re walking into the sunset. Sometimes we’re sitting on the shoreline crest. Sometimes we’re stopped in the sand, facing each other, and I’m waving my hands wildly about, bumping up against the limits of my human understanding. 

He just keeps being with me in it. 

A lot of times in the struggle, I’m talking so much that I won’t let him get a word in edgewise. He’s fine with that. He keeps listening. 

Sometimes in the struggle, my heart is pained so much that I don’t want to listen to him, even if he did have something to say. I put a wall between us as I look out at the ocean and contemplate the waves and my struggle. He’s okay with that, too. He gives me my space. 

So far in this struggle, I have received his ongoing infinite patience.

He has all the time in the world with me on this.

When I did finally give up one day and surrender my stymied questioning, at least for the moment, he didn’t try to talk back to me about it. All he did was hold me and sing over me. 

This morning was perhaps the first time in all of this long struggle that I actually listened to him.

I made my case yet one more time, and then I listened. It was morning, perhaps around 8:30, and we were walking south on the beach. The sun was not yet warm. The sand was cold and wet beneath our bare feet. 

I had stopped talking, and we walked quietly for a few moments. He knew I was listening. 

And do you know what he did? 

He looked up at the sky for a minute. He looked over at me and smiled. And then he looked back up at the sky and started, slowly, talking to me about the creation story. 

He took me back to before the beginning of time. 

It was a long story. We are still, in fact, talking about it. And I became so aware during this morning’s walk that he will take as much time as is needed to do this conversation justice. 

There were several times in the conversation when I grew impatient. I had things to do and people to see today. I couldn’t take the fullness of time needed to cycle through the entire creation story, attendant with all my noticing and my questions along with it, all in the space of one morning walk. 

That was okay too. We’ll still be there tomorrow. He’ll still be there. Ready to pick things up right where we last left off. 

How might you receive the patience of God toward you right where you are today?

He Values You

Earlier this week, I shared a peek into a struggling season with Jesus I’ve been living through. It doesn’t dominate my every waking moment, but some days and hours are harder than others. 

One of the greatest gifts from Jesus through these difficult patches is his valuing of me.

As we sit on the shoreline crest and I sputter out my confusion or anger or sadness, I’m aware that I have his full attention. He’s not trying to sweep my struggle under the sand. He’s not telling me not to question or feel the things I do. He’s listening. He values what I feel and think and say. 

This morning, as we were walking on the beach again, I asked him what he would say to you today. 

He said he values you. 

Whatever you’re walking through today, he values you. You have his full attention.

He will walk with you and listen. He will look fully into your eyes. He will hold your hand if you’d like him to. He will put his arm around your shoulder. He will give you space if that’s what you need. 

This is a relationship of full and dignifying value. He values you completely. 

What is receiving value from Jesus like for you today?

What Would You Say to Him?

Last week we talked a lot about the posture of Jesus toward you, and at the end of the week, we talked about taking Jesus up on his offer to simply be with you. We said it was the beginning, and that it was prayer. 

Did you say yes to Jesus? 

If not, the offer still stands. It always stands. 

And the very next step is conversation. 

What would you say to Jesus right now? 

As I’ve shared with you already, my conversations with Jesus happen so often on the shores of the beach lately. Could you imagine walking with Jesus on the beach, too? What does the beach look like? What are the two of you doing? 

Or perhaps another place feels more natural to you — a living room, your kitchen table, perhaps your favorite chair. 

Where can you imagine meeting Jesus? Take a moment to be with him in that place. What would you like to say to him there?

He Will Sing Over You

I have struggled with Jesus quite a lot the last few weeks. He has my heart, and he is the most beautiful, glorious vision in my life … and yet we have struggled. 

I have hard questions for him. Questions that plague my heart and soul. Questions that disrupt my days. Questions my mind can’t answer. 

My mind swims and swims, searching for answers, looking for sense, wanting to know God’s grace and truth in places that seem wanting. 

Where are you here? I ask. Where were you there?

I go round and round with him on this. I keep following the trail of questions. I notice almost imperceptible answers, and I follow them, too. 

At times, I think I have understood, and so I follow the trail back to the source of my question and begin the path again, seeing if the answer has come clear. But it still eludes me.

As much joy and life as I carry with me most days, there is a quadrant of my heart that suffers and grieves and weeps before Jesus, unable to know his heart toward me in these questions that I ask.

I’ve been weary. I’ve felt sad. 

This morning, I curled on the couch with my Bible to spend time with him. I opened to the psalms and read about his love. It is a love that never ends, I read. A love that never ends. 

And yet in these places of questions I hold, I have questioned his love. 

My mind started the litany of questions and possible answers again. I started to review them over and over again. And I felt weary. 

Eventually, I stopped.

I stopped talking and asking and positing and just laid my head against him. We were sitting on the beach, at the crest of the shoreline, shoes off, facing the waves. He sat on my right, and I just stopped talking and put my head against his shoulder. Rested my heart and mind. Rested all that work. Gave up, at least for the moment.  

And the next thing I knew, he was singing over me. 

He had his arm wrapped around my shoulder, and he sang quietly over me. It felt like being enfolded in his arms, fully safe and secure. Almost like a small child held in her mother’s arms, full of trust in her mother’s care.

And it was enough. 

In that moment, I felt his God-ness and my human-ness.

I saw that my questions mattered to him because I matter to him, but I also saw that he holds all things. Though I have been rattled, he is calm. He knows what he is doing. And if I don’t know and can’t comprehend, that is okay. He is God, and he knows.

He always knows.

He Wants to Make You Whole

From the very outset, the aim of Jesus is to make you whole. 

It’s written all over the Gospels. He came to bind up the brokenhearted, give sight to the blind, restore the ears of the deaf. Everywhere he goes, he’s bent on healing those he meets. He tells the Pharisees, “Those who are well have no need of a doctor. I didn’t come for the well, but for the sick.”

This morning I read a line of Scripture that speaks so much tenderness of this each time I meet it: 

Then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and villages. He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives.

— Matthew 9:35-36

When you walk with Jesus, this is what he’s about in you. Healing. Wholeness.

He wants to do this with your life: Orient you in truth. Establish you in strength. Root you in love. Blossom you in joy. 

In what ways might he make you whole? 

This Is the Beginning, This Is Prayer

This week we’ve been talking about what Jesus has to say to you.

We heard him say that you don’t have to clean yourself up first before coming to him. We heard him say that he can handle all your truth. We learned that the main thing — the most blessed, precious thing — that he wants is simply to be with you and to know you. We explored one picture of what that kind of knowing can look like. 

Today, he is standing on the shoreline with this offer. 

And the offer is himself.

He is offering himself to you for a lifetime of receiving what it means to be deeply known, deeply loved, always guided, never alone. 

This is where it begins: stepping up to him on the shoreline and saying yes.

Choosing to walk with him. Choosing to let yourself be known by him. Choosing to walk in silence with him sometimes. Choosing also to listen.

This is prayer. This is the beginning. And we choose it again and again. 

Will you receive the offer of Jesus — the offer of himself, the gift of being known, and known, and known — today?

What Does It Mean for Him to Know You?

It’s such a valid question.

If God already knows everything, then what does it mean that he wants to know us? Doesn’t he already know us?

This actually has more to do with us — with the experience of being known that we receive by opening ourselves to him.

Here’s an example. 

Let’s say you are a thirteen-year-old girl trying out for a theatre production. You’ve practiced and practiced your audition for weeks, and the part is hard. You have to sing and put a little personality and even choreography — if you’re brave enough — into your performance of it. The scripted lines require you to take some bold steps out of your usual reserved self and to be a bit brash, even a bit comedic.

The day of the audition comes, and you nail it. You give the best audition you could possibly give. 

Your mom was in the audience while you gave the audition. She saw how well you did. She knows how hard you worked. She’s been with you through every practice and every fear. She’s been with you on this whole long journey to the stage that you’ve taken all these years. 

She knows what this audition meant to you.

But afterward, in the car, she wants to hear all of it again. She gladly lets you bubble over and replay every single moment out loud — several times, if you want to. She nods and smiles right along with you through every play by play. She celebrates. She joins in. 

In this moment with your mom, you feel deeply known and know that you really are.

That’s how it is with Jesus. 

He may already know everything about you. He may already know the highest heights and lowest lows of your life. He may know the mundane details of your daily life and the struggles and questions you are holding right now. He may know all of it. 

But his knowing it already isn’t the main thing. 

The main thing is his sharing in it with you.

His great joy is the conversations he shares with you about every single bit of it and the being in it with you. 

That’s your great joy too: Being known. Being loved. Being celebrated and enjoyed and comforted and held. Being given every single thing you need. 

This is Jesus knowing you. This is what he wants.

He Wants to Know You

Yesterday, when Jesus said out loud that he can handle all your truth, the very next words out of his mouth were: 

“I want to know them.” 

And I thought, “Yeah. I guess that makes sense. I guess that is pretty clear.”

For him to say first thing that we don’t need to clean ourselves up and then to say he can handle all our truth, it becomes clear he wants mainly — more than anything — to just know us. To be with us. 

Don’t worry about getting clean. Don’t worry about whether your truth is too hard or too dirty or too much. 

Just come. 

He wants to know you. 

He Can Handle All Your Truth

Do you know that moment when sunlight hits a person’s eyes and their eyes become so clear you feel you can see straight into their soul? 

That is what I saw in Jesus’ eyes this morning. 

We were on the seashore, walking into the rising sun of mid-morning. I was a few steps ahead of him, turned to face him as he walked straight ahead, and I was waiting for the next words out of his mouth after those he spoke yesterday regarding you. 

The sunlight hit his eyes, and he said it: 

“I can handle all their truth.” 

What is it like for Jesus to be able to handle all your truth?

I think it’s kind of like a young child in the presence of their parent, scared to tell them the truth of something they’ve done. To them, it is the worst possible thing they can imagine having done in the small sphere of their whole wide world that they’ve experienced up to this point in their little life. 

But to the parent, there is nothing the child could have done that the parent can’t handle.

Why? Because the parent has a larger sphere of knowledge and experience. The parent’s scope of life is broader and deeper and stronger than the child’s. They can handle truth from a child-sized view, whatever that truth may be. 

That’s just a small glimpse of the way Jesus is with us. 

His scope of knowledge is broader and deeper than we can imagine. He knows all things — he is the source of all that exists, after all. He created it. He created us. And he has complete knowledge of us already.

So whatever we tell him isn’t a surprise. It doesn’t break him. He is too strong to be broken. 

If Jesus is strong enough to handle all of your truth, what truth would you speak to him?

You Don't Have to Clean Yourself Up First

In my prayer times with Jesus the last few months, we’ve been walking on a beach, going back and forth along a sandy shore, sometimes walking into the sunset and sometimes walking the other direction into the sun as it’s rising in the morning hours. Sometimes we stop and talk intently about something. Sometimes we play in the waves. 

A lot of the time, he’s enjoying me enjoying him. 

But today was different.

Today it wasn’t about my relationship with him and how he’s speaking to me personally. Today it was about you and what he wants to say to you in this space. 

I have a feeling he has a lot of things he wants to say to you. 

And so this morning, I was watching him as we walked and listening hard for what he had to say. “What do you want to say, Jesus?” I asked. “I’m listening.”

I listened and I listened, occasionally looking at him as we walked, waiting expectantly for him to share what was on his mind. 

The first thing he said was, “They don’t have to clean themselves up first when they come to me.” 

I thought of Peter and James and John and Andrew, how Jesus met them at their fishing nets while they worked in the afternoon sun, doing what they always did. He met them in the midst of their normal routine. They didn’t have to clean themselves up first before they followed him. They didn’t have to wash their hands of that fishy smell and stickiness. They just followed. 

I thought of the woman caught in adultery. Who knows how much clothes she was wearing when she was dragged out of that house, caught in the act? Maybe she had only a blanket draped over her as they cast her onto the ground at Jesus’ feet and accused her of wrongdoing. But Jesus didn’t freak out. He didn’t tell her to get dressed and come back when she looked presentable. He dealt with her accusers, and then he knelt down in the dirt and talked quietly to her. 

I thought of the woman at the well. She’d had five husbands in her life and was now living with her boyfriend. She was a social pariah with no friends, and Jesus knew it. But he didn’t tell her to get her act together before she followed him. Instead, he showed himself to be who he was — the Messiah — and she ran into town telling everyone. Even in her ministry of the truth of Jesus, her life was still in a bit of a shambles. 

That wasn’t the point for Jesus. The point was his knowing them, and their knowing him.

They didn’t have to clean themselves up first. And neither do you. 

Will you let Jesus meet you right where you are right now? What does that mean for you personally?

Where Is the Strength in Your Life?

In the early days of dating Kirk, he shared something that really stuck out to me. He said:

“If you’re the strongest person in your whole world, you’ll get really exhausted.”

It’s so true.

Think about it. If everyone else looks to you for strength and you’re the one propping your own self up, when do you get to rest? Where is the place you get to go to let go of holding it all together? Where can you just be held in someone else’s strength? 

I’m certainly familiar with this paradigm. I spent the whole of my life being a strong one — both for myself and for other people — without even realizing that was my guiding compass for life. And once the lightbulb turned on and I realized my whole existence teemed with that unrelenting dynamic, I got really, really tired. 

It’s like I suddenly realized I’d been holding up the whole world, a self-chosen and self-made Atlas, and I really didn’t have the strength to do it for one more minute. 

Would anybody ever hold me?

Thankfully, I found Jesus. He now gets to be the stronger one in my life. 

And learning vulnerability with other people — trusting them to carry strength they can offer to me if needed, too — has been a saving grace in my life more and more these days. 

Even though I often slip back into earth-shouldering Atlas mode still today, it’s such a relief to realize I can let go of that burden once I realize I’m doing it and choose, instead, to find strength that holds up the world elsewhere.

Who or what is shouldering the strength in your life right now? Is it God, yourself, other people, something else? What is it like for you to live in that reality?

He Is Laughing With You

Today, in the place I am with Jesus, I see him laughing with me. 

And when I’m laughing with him in this moment, it’s on the shoreline of a beach. Sometimes we go into the water, get our feet and legs all wet in the surf and play around in the waves, but other times we’re standing on the wet sand, talking and laughing together. 

It’s that laughter that arrests me today.

He’s got such a beautiful smile. Joy is in his eyes. His laughter comes from the deep. His enjoyment of the present moment with me is full. He enjoys me, he enjoys the sand and water, he enjoys the sun, he enjoys himself, and he enjoys our laughter. 

Every little thing we notice together, he enjoys. Even the funny-looking sandpipers and seagulls strutting about in all their antics. 

What are you enjoying today? Where is laughter emerging? Will you allow Jesus to join in that laughing moment with you?

With You in the Storms

It seems everywhere I’ve looked in the last 24 hours, there have been reminders of storms.

But in each storm, God has been present to still and overcome them with his mere presence or a word.

For example, last night I recorded a lectio divina exercise for a small group of friends, and the passage selected for the exercise was taken from Matthew 14. This is the passage where Jesus walks on the water and then invites Peter to walk on the water, too.

Did you know that in that story, Jesus came walking on the water in the midst of a great storm? The passage says that it was an evening when the disciples were being “battered by the waves.” Also, when Peter walked out on the water to Jesus, it was a glance at “the waves churning beneath his feet” that made him lose his nerve and start to sink. 

Jesus reached out a hand to keep Peter from sinking further into the tumultuous ocean. And once he and Peter climbed back in the boat, the ocean became as still as glass. 

Here’s another example. Later in the evening, Kirk and I listened to the daily Pray as You Go podcast, which we like to do together as a devotional way to end the day. The sacred music selection for this weekend’s recording held the following words: 

Calm me, Lord, as you calm the storm

Still me, Lord, keep me from harm

Let all the tumult within me cease

Enfold me, Lord, in your peace 

And the Gospel reading for the podcast was yet another storm-related story — that of Jesus being asleep on a boat while a great storm came and assailed it on all sides. Here is another place where Jesus, once woken by the disciples in their fear, spoke a single word to the storm and made it calm. 

And then this morning, the psalms offered yet another encouragement concerning the presence of storms: 

Sea storms are up, God

Sea storms wild and roaring,

Sea storms with thunderous breakers.

Stronger than wild sea storms,

Mightier than sea-storm breakers,

Mighty God rules from High Heaven.

— Psalm 93:3-4

Our God is mightier than the storms. Though the storms may rage around us, turning us toward fear, the presence of God and a mere word from his lips is enough to slay them and bring back calm.

What storms do you face in life today? In what ways are you assailed and battered by waves? How does the near presence of Jesus or a mere word from his lips bring the size of the waves down to mere calm?  

Maybe, Just Maybe, He Wants to Hold Our Cares for Us

It’s no secret this week has been a rough one for me. And if you read two posts I wrote in one of my other blog spaces this week, you’ll learn even more of the context for why that is. 

So this morning when I woke and still found myself battling “the heavies,” I sat down for a while in my small hallway — back against one wall, bare feet propped against the wall in front of me, and a heavy blue yoga mat adding cushion to my seat upon the hardwood floor. 

I sat in tucked in that little hallway space for a while, plenty far from the distractions of my computer and my cell phone, and just stared at the wall in front of me and prayed. 

Inside that prayer time, I could see Jesus and me at the beach.

We were thigh-deep in the ocean water, and we were smiling and laughing with each other. Every once in a while, I would spin myself around in the water, play-dancing with him a little bit, letting him delight in me as I delighted in the beauty and freedom of that present moment. 

There was such lightness and joy in that scene, and it seemed to be my true self at peace and at rest and so carefree in the presence of my Lord. 

And yet I sat on the floor in my hallway and told Jesus that scene just felt so far away. 

My true self was also nestled between the beadboard hallway of my house, heart-heavy and sad about the state of the world, of history, and of my own dark demons. 

The distance between here and there could not have been more poignant: one light and carefree and full of joy and laughter, the other heavy and burdened and full of sadness and grief. 

My true heart grieves. My true heart also trusts. 

The invitation from Jesus in that moment seemed to be not to carry it alone. He reminded me of this invitation: 

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” 

— Matthew 11:28-30

Maybe, just maybe, he wants to carry the truth of my grief. Maybe, just maybe, he wants to carry it while walking with me and talking with me about it. He doesn’t want to negate it is there. He doesn’t want to deny the reality of my cares. He gave me the cares that I have — he made my heart care for these things.

He simply wants to hold the weight of those cares as we walk and talk together about them.

And maybe, in the midst of all that, he also wants to let me play.

My Prayer for You Today

Sometimes I become overwhelmed at the state of the world and all its tragedies and ruin. Today has been one such day. I have been filled with such heaviness of heart today, despair looming close and near, and so I practically crawled to the noonday eucharist at my church. I needed to be reminded of the hope that we have in Christ. 

There, we were reminded of the feast day of the conversion of St. Paul — a man who persecuted the early Christians tirelessly, dragging them before authorities and overseeing their deaths in the name of religious fervor and zeal.

And yet, one day, he was converted in an instant to Christianity. As he writes in his letter to the Galatian church: 

“God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me … “

— Galatians 1:15-16

The story of St. Paul’s conversion brought me a much-needed reminder of hope today.

Most especially, it reminded me that God is the one who calls us and is pleased to reveal his son to us at just the right time. He knows when it is time for each one of us to encounter the risen Christ in a way that will change us forever. 

And so my prayer today — for you, for me, and for all of this big wide world — is that God would indeed call us to himself through his grace and be pleased to reveal his son, the Christ, Jesus, to each one of us.

The True Self is Un-Self-Conscious

I was laying in bed this morning, contemplating the words my spiritual director wrote on my Facebook wall for my birthday today.

She called me her friend “who adores Jesus.” 

First of all, I love that she knows me so well — knows that I am indeed in love with Jesus and that I find my life revolving around him more and more with each passing day.

But it also got me thinking about my session with her last week, in which we discussed the true self and the false self. In that session, she had recalled for me what my true self really looks like. I was reminded that my true self walks and talks and sits with Jesus. I remembered that my true self twirls and dances with Jesus. 

And I realized this morning: my true self is not self-conscious at all. 

I could see so clearly that in those places where I walk and talk and sit and dance and twirl with Jesus, I’m not focused on myself at all. I don’t care what I look like, nor am I judging at all what I’m saying or doing. I’m aware of those things, obviously, but not focused on them.

I’m not the main thing. Jesus is. 

He is the focus of my attention, the one of whom I can never seem to get enough.

What he looks like, what he says, how he looks at me, what his gestures are like, how he smiles, what he looks like when he’s thinking or when he’s listening, the ways he teaches and guides or corrects me … all of him captivates my attention.

In this place, there’s no need or room to be self-conscious. 

It’s a wonderfully relieving place to be — not to be preoccupied with myself, but to be concerned fully, instead, with him.

Have you ever experienced un-self-consciousness? What was that experience like for you?

Living in the True Self

I was in a session with my spiritual director yesterday, and we talked quite a bit about the true self — the self God created when he created us, the self into which it is his ever-continuing intention to form us throughout our lives. 

There was a moment in my time of prayer during the session when I could see three selves inside of me, two of them false and one of them true. 

The two false selves exist on the extremes of a pendulum.

On the far right is the self that wants and seeks to be super-human. This is the self that wants to create magic, to be the irreplaceable part of other people’s lives, to be the savior for another person’s quandary. It’s the self that exists under extreme pressure to live up to some ideal of perfection and shininess in order to be needed and wanted and utterly indispensable to others and to this world.

On the far left is a completely opposite self. This self exists in the shadows, behind a heavy curtain, cloaked in shame. This is the self who walks with eyes downcast, ashamed to meet other people eye to eye. It is the self who shrinks from being seen, the self who lurches into coffee shops and grocery stores and the post office and drives down the road with a sense of unworthiness and fear. It is the self who apologizes all the time for merely existing.

Neither of these selves are true.

And I’m so thankful for long-standing relationships, like the one I have with my director, Elaine, that can be a place of reminder. Because of our long-standing relationship, Elaine was able to remind me — through concrete examples — of the true self I have come to know and embody and embrace through my relationship with Christ.

This is the self who walks on the beach with Jesus regularly. It is the self who took a four-month journey through the woods with Jesus, even though I didn’t know what would transpire in those woods or what would emerge on the other side of them. It is the self who eventually came upon a village with Jesus and who sits on benches and rocks and walls and front-porch stoops with him. 

It is the self who knows Jesus and is completely free and strong and fully alive and full of joy in his presence.

There is no shame present at all in my true self, and no need at all for magic. Just being.

The true self lives in honest and glad surrender to these truths: Jesus alone is the one who holds and offers and is the magic. And with Jesus, there is no evidence or place for shame.

Have you met your true self yet? What is that self like? When do you most often inhabit and live inside your true self?

Are you familiar, as I am, with the pendulum that swings from one false self to another? What is your false self (or selves) like? What does your false self seek? How might companioning with Jesus help bring you back to center, to living in the rest and assurance and joy of the true self he created when he created you?

Room to Be Yourself

I’ve shared here before that my path to an authentic relationship with God began with an honest confession that I really never had come to understand grace or my need for Jesus, and that this confession was followed by a prayer for God to teach me both. 

That was 13 years ago, and my life has been an ever-winding journey toward the answer to that prayer ever since. 

I’ve learned some things since then — about God, about myself, about the nature and intent and process of formation — and the very first one has to do with grace.

Grace is that aspect of God that invites us in wholeheartedly and without a single reservation. 

This is what Jesus makes possible: full access to God. 

And not just access but welcome! We are ushered in with the unending invitation to draw nearer and nearer and nearer. 

My reading yesterday morning in the psalms affirmed this truth with these words: 

You’ve always given me breathing room,

   a place to get away from it all.

A lifetime pass to your safe-house,

   an open invitation as your guest.

You’ve always taken me seriously, God,

   made me welcome among those who know and love you.

— Psalm 61:3-5 

Love is first full of grace. Of welcome. Of invitation and full acceptance. 

Can you receive this gift of grace from God today? What is it like for you to receive an irrevocable invitation into the safe-house of God, a place that offers you unending breathing room, a relationship with One who always takes you seriously?

Who Is This Jesus? (Part 7): One Who Changes Us

I was at the noonday eucharist service at my church this week, and the Gospel reading for the day was the passage where John the Baptist’s disciples come to ask Jesus if he is really the Messiah that has been promised. Jesus tells them: 

“Go back and tell John what you have just seen and heard: 

The blind see,

The lame walk, 

Lepers are cleansed,

The deaf hear,

The dead are raised,

The wretched of the earth

have God’s salvation hospitality extended to them.” 

— Luke 7:18-23

I started thinking about the testimony Jesus gave here about himself. He was, in one sense, declaring himself to be the fulfillment of prophecy about the promised Messiah. But in another sense, I saw that he was declaring himself to be someone who changes the people who come in contact with him. 

When I reflect on my own life and journey with Jesus, I see that he is indeed one who has changed me. I am not the same person I was ten years ago, five years ago, one year ago, or even last week! The more I spend time with Jesus, getting to know him and being in regular relationship with him, the more I notice that I am becoming a new person. The process feels like something happening to me, rather than something I direct myself.

In this sense, it really is Jesus doing the changing in me.

How has Jesus changed me? He has softened my edges. He has placed compassion in my heart. He has given me a greater ability to hold seemingly contradictory truths at one time without feeling the need to resolve them. He has increased my patience and my love for people. He has strengthened my desire to love and serve others. He has helped my life to become less about me. 

Above all else, he has made me fall more and more in love with him. 

What about you? How has Jesus changed you as you’ve lived your life with him? Or what change does he seem to be about in you right now?

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Postnote #1: My apologies for the lack of consistent posts here in this space this week. We’ve been preparing to go out of town for the holidays! I will be posting here while on the road over the next couple weeks, but the posting schedule will be altered from the usually intended “five posts per week” to a schedule of “as our travels and wi-fi connectivity allow.” Thanks for your understanding.

Postnote #2: I will be offering the Look at Jesus course again in the new year! Registration will open on January 2, and the course will begin January 16. If you’ve found the posts in this series on Jesus meaningful, perhaps the Look at Jesus course would be a fitting next step for you. More details to come once registration opens on January 2!