Month: April 2025

Categories
Religious

Overthrowing Moods that Disrupt Life

“The Lord’s word has brought me nothing but insult and injury, constantly. I thought, I’ll forget him; I’ll no longer speak in his name. But there’s an intense fire in my heart, trapped in my bones. I’m drained trying to contain it; I’m unable to do it.” Jeremiah 20:8b, 9 (Common English Bible)

Pressed into the hearts of those preparing for Christian ministry are these, or similar, words: “Pastors and chaplains must maintain a ‘non-anxious presence’ among those they serve.” There is sound wisdom in the instruction; those who seek our care desire that we are strong when they are weak, steady when their world is shaken, and confident in faith when they struggle with doubt. It is an exercise of professional management—the management of the engine room behind the professional facade. And it is a façade. Pastors and chaplains are not cut from a different cloth than everyone else—not cut from a cloth that is finer and sturdier than what is common to other people. Ministry professionals experience the same moods as those we care for in our offices, in their homes, and at the bedside. It was so with great characters who populate the pages of our Bibles. Take the prophet Jeremiah, for example. In this teaching from the twentieth chapter, Jeremiah wanted to quit ministry. As he puts it, the vocation of serving God has brought nothing but insult and injury. Constantly!

Jeremiah had his share of moods. Carefully read the Book of Jeremiah, and one will discover that tears appear often. In fact, many biblical scholars reference Jeremiah as the “weeping prophet.” Jeremiah was no different from many people who occasionally find emotions welling up. Often the result are eyes becoming “a fountain of tears.”[i] Jeremiah continues to say that if his head were a spring of water, he would weep day and night for the wounds of his people. Nor is this any different from you, me, or anyone else. We all have crying moods. A man in my office said, “I am tired—as a child is tired at the end of the day. But I wake in the morning with the same weariness. I am tired of being tired and crying all the time.”   It may be helpful to recall that Jesus wept. Crying is natural unless it becomes excessive and disrupts life.

Jeremiah also had his moods of depression—on one occasion becoming so depressed that he cursed the day he was born.[ii] In the depths of his depression, Jeremiah sought to remove any blessing his mother may have experienced at his birth. He found himself wishing curses upon the one who brought word of his birth to his father. Jeremiah wished he had been born dead![iii] Such people have sat in my office. Hopelessness threatens to suffocate them, which would satisfy their desire for death. What word of comfort or encouragement can a pastor or chaplain bring in such a moment? Just this, that they are told that they have been heard, that they are loved and cared for, and sharing with them Jeremiah’s story. Jeremiah sat where they now sit, and then stood, despite it all, and became useful to God. A steadying sense of God’s presence makes possible the greeting of a new day.

Other moods that haunted Jeremiah included disgust, cynicism, and vindictiveness, each of which had the potential to disrupt life. While much has changed in the world since the time of biblical characters, people are the same. A thousand more years may pass, and people will remain the same. The fundamental problems that Jeremiah wrestled with confront people today and will tomorrow. Therefore, there is guidance located in looking at the life of Jeremiah and discovering there what helped him to overthrow disruptive moods. The clearest is in our passage above, the conviction that God has intended Jeremiah for a great work, “there’s an intense fire in my heart, trapped in my bones. I’m drained trying to contain it; I’m unable to do it.” Jeremiah moved the focus from himself to God. With this new focus, Jeremiah recovered his great love for people, was strengthened in his conviction that God was still present and working in the world, and finally, that life would be lived by God’s power, not his own. Moods would still come and go, but no longer would they have a disruptive power over his life.

Joy,

[i] Jeremiah 9:1

[ii] Jeremiah 20:14

[iii] Jeremiah 20:17

Categories
Religious

Not Waiting for Happiness

“I’m not saying this because I need anything, for I have learned how to be content in any circumstance. I know the experience of being in need and of having more than enough; I have learned the secret to being content in any and every circumstance, whether full or hungry or whether having plenty or being poor. I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength.”

Philippians 4:11–13 (Common English Bible)

Have you noticed how many people have delayed their happiness? They seem to believe that if they can achieve a little more success, acquire a little more wealth, or marry the right person then they will possess happiness. Happiness, they believe, is what follows effort, time, and, perhaps, a little luck. It is as though happiness is somewhere out in front of everyone who is industrious enough to pursue it. Happiness is something to grasp, they believe, and their minds remain fixed upon it until they have taken ownership of it. Striving day upon day toward the possession of happiness, what they miss is that the secret of happiness is already present in the lives of those who long for it.

Paul’s letter to the Philippian Church provides the secret of happiness—as God’s people, we are to live in humility, looking out for others more than for ourselves. That is a great reversal of the commonly accepted formula for happiness. Essentially, Paul teaches that if we are always chasing after happiness, happiness always remains beyond our grasp. On the other hand, if we occupy ourselves with looking out for others, adding value to other people, and promoting their welfare, happiness quietly joins God’s people and takes-up residence in them. Paul is urging God’s people to break free of the tiny little world of themselves and join the great enterprise of God’s work in the world.

Here, in the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippian Church, Paul further develops the secret to happiness. Having shared the secret of happiness, disclosed in the activity of Jesus who accepted humility to become like us, for the purposes of restoring us to God, Paul points to a mysterious strength that converges in our service to one another. That strength comes not from any person—or from the community of God’s people—but from the outside. It is God’s strength. There is far more going on when God’s people join with one another for the promotion of the welfare of others. The same Christ who became human to serve now empowers and enables God’s people in their service to one another.

Shortly following the death of his wife, J. R. Carmichael entered a nursing home. Yet, if you inquired about him, you learned that he is never in his room. It seems that each morning Mr. Carmichael would shower, dress, eat breakfast, and then move from one residential room to another. In each room, Mr. Carmichael spoke with the resident about their family, read the Bible to them, prayed with them, and told them that he loved them. Then it was off to the next room to do the same thing. Mr. Carmichael missed his wife every day but he never waited for happiness. Happiness found him, as he loved others deeply.

Joy,

Categories
Religious

The Continuing Work of the Resurrection

“May the God of peace, who brought back the great shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, from the dead by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with every good thing to do his will, by developing in us what pleases him through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory forever and always. Amen.” Hebrews 13:20, 21 (Common English Bible)

The first Christians never preached the resurrection simply as a once-and-done miracle, as Jesus’ defeat of death and his return to his disciples. They always proclaimed the resurrection as the work of a living God that continues to work in the lives of women and men in each generation. The same creative energy that raised Jesus from the tomb remains available for each of us, not only to raise us to a new life following our death but grants us a divine purpose to pursue and equips us with the talent and strength to accomplish it. As the author of Hebrews states, God is continually “developing in us what pleases him through Jesus Christ.” We are God’s continuing work of the resurrection.

What this announces is that there is no present darkness that can extinguish the light of the resurrection, no despair that isn’t answered with sudden hope. The celebration of Easter is more expansive than the remembrance of new breath filling the nostrils of Jesus one morning two thousand years ago. The celebration of Easter is claiming God’s active presence today that calls to us, equips us, and sends us into a broken world to complete God’s redemptive purposes. Once estranged from God by our rebellious nature, God wrestles with us until we once again embody and reflect God’s perfect love and makes us apprentices with God redeeming and restoring all of creation.

Frederic Henry is the protagonist in Ernest Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms. An American ambulance driver in Italy in 1915, Frederic wrestles with belief and doubt in a living, active God. During one poignant conversation with a Roman Catholic priest, Frederic questions what it means to love—to love God or anyone. The answer sparkles on the page, “When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.”[1] Easter is an invitation to look closely again at God’s love for us—demonstrated on the cross of Jesus—that we might return that love with a “wish to do things for, to sacrifice for, to serve.” Our own immediate resurrection is from the death of selfishness to a life of selflessness and generosity.

During those tumultuous days of Covid-19, it haunted each of us as we trembled in our quarantine spaces. We feared that the power of darkness may ultimately defeat our dreams. Doubt paralyzes and frantically we sought hope from any quarter. However, Easter reminds us that God has already faced evil at its worst, met its challenge, and destroyed its claim on us. Life never again has to be lived in helplessness, maimed, impoverished, and defeated. That is why the author of Hebrews is able to say, with a sturdy conviction, “To him be the glory forever and always. Amen.”

Joy,

[1] Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell to Arms, London: Folio Society, 2015, 68.

Categories
Religious

Where Could I Go?

The following meditation was written by Dr. Michael B. Brown.

“’Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.’” Matthew 11:28 (Common English Bible)

“Living below in this old sinful world, Hardly a comfort can afford;

Striving alone to face temptations sore, Where could I go but to the Lord?

Where could I go? O, where could I go, Seeking a refuge for my soul?

Needing a friend to save me in the end, Where could I go but to the Lord?”

(One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: an African American ecumenical hymnal, Chicago: GIA Publications, 2018, #543)

That old hymn offers a prescription for peace in a world where peace is sometimes seriously difficult to find. And on those occasions when we do find it, it’s rarely because of anything external or anything we managed to accomplish on our own. In fact, it defies rational explanation. Paul called it a peace that “exceeds all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7 CEB)

Robert Duvall is almost universally acclaimed as one of the greatest actors in movie history. To me, for all his outstanding body of work, he was never better than in his fascinating movie The Apostle. The close of that movie finds him dressed in the striped prison uniform of days gone by, doing hard labor in a field under a hot summer sun, smiling and quoting words of faith and praise. (Hollywood, California: Butcher Run Films, 1997) The circumstances of his life were demoralizing, but his inner spirit refused to be defeated by outer circumstances. He possessed a peace that exceeded rational understanding. Just a movie? No. Instead, it is the testimony of centuries of faithful people who survived hardships and heartaches not because they were necessarily strong, but rather because they knew Someone who was … Someone they could lean on when otherwise they would fall … Someone who invited them to “Come unto me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.” 

As I write this meditation, I have no idea who will read it. But I do know that whoever reads it will be carrying some heavy load in his or her life. They will be bearing up under some burden, perhaps unseen by any human eye. If you are that person, then hang onto this promise. There is Someone who does see and who knows and cares about what you are going through. He clearly stated that he does not desire for you to bear your burden alone. There is a source of strength beyond our strength, a source of hope beyond our means to make lemonade out of lemons. He is leaning forward now to hear the prayer you whisper. And he is saying, “Come unto me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.” Just say the word, and his hand will take your own providing peace that exceeds understanding.

“Where could I go? O, where could I go, Seeking a refuge for my soul?

Needing a friend to save me in the end, Where could I go but to the Lord?“

Joy,