A Thumbs Up

An Inkling

It’s the time of year when I hear repeated reports about those grand moments that we call “recitals.”  I’m between recital seasons – between the a jillion dance and piano recitals of three daughters, and the recitals yet to come with grandchildren.  But I well remember the drama of “The Recital.”

There we see children as a mixture of ham and self-consciousness, concentration and distraction.  The adults are a mixture too, of sweaty palms and relieved sighs, as they sport the same mix of beaming smiles and furrowed brows as their children.

The customs of such recitals are well known:  as video cameras whir and flashes blaze, girls in fine dresses and boys with combed hair dance, sing, or play their more or less memorized pieces.  Then they conclude with obvious relief, and curtsey or bow as everyone claps wildly.

I guess it’s possible that some of the parents wish all of the children ill except for their own little Johnny.  But I think it unlikely.  At the recitals I’ve attended I sensed a common pulling for all of the children, a hope that each child would remember his or her pieces and do it up proud.  I remember once when a little girl got stuck on her first piano piece, and with tears streaming finally gave up.  You could sense knots in every adult stomach in the room.  But then she proceeded to play her second piece quite well, and was hailed with thunderous applause!

I wonder if God’s palms sweat as he watches us trying to do our best.  Does his brow furrow or his stomach churn as he hopes for us?  I think not.  Surely his love is not so closely knit with anxiety as is ours.  But I know he’s pulling for us.  And I feel certain that despite our frequent mis-steps and sour notes, he beams with joy at our performance.  Such is his grace.

Be sure to look to your proud Father.  He’s trying to catch your eye to give you a wink and a thumbs-up.  Therein is the greatest joy of the recital.

Bravo,

Keith

Faith Portrayed

An Inkling

Traffic was thick at the corner of Malvern and Grove this past weekend.  It was the annual Greek festival at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, and thousands came.  Since we live nearby, Sarah and I walked over to join in.

What fun!  It’s no wonder that this annual festival has become a Richmond event not to be missed.  The “Greeks” serve up marvelous Mediterranean cuisine, and sell their arts and handicrafts.  Troupes of various ages deck themselves in traditional Greek outfits, and proudly exhibit their culture’s music and dances. 

For those with an observant eye, the festivities themselves point to a common life our Greek friends have in Christ.  But to make the center of their life more apparent, they also offer a tour of their sanctuary, which Sarah and I took.  If you’ve not been to an Orthodox sanctuary, I recommend it.  It’s not just a meeting place; it’s an architectural creed, a right-brained confession.  And the cathedral on Malvern is a particularly lovely expression. 

Our tour guide was a laywoman who clearly loves the Lord, and delights in the particulars of Orthodox worship.  She explained the candles and icons in the narthex, and how they use these aids to prepare themselves to enter a holy place to worship.  She explained the iconostasis (the front wall with all of the icons, shown in the attached snapshot I took), and the sanctuary behind it, where only the priests may go.  She also showed us the large baptismal font where they dunk their babies!  To Protestant ears it was a different sort of testimony, but clearly a testimony to the same One we honor a few blocks west on Grove at St. Giles.

We Presbyterians have our own strong suits, and our own ways of demonstrating the life we have together in Christ.  But our Orthodox friends serve as good tutors in what it means to combine fun, fellowship, and proclamation.  May we learn and do likewise!

And may God bless the Orthodox!

Keith

Sprouting

An Inkling

Not long ago a friend said that they had lain out of church for quite a while, never quite finding the right place, but that when they had come here it clicked for them.  He wished they had come sooner, and he sensed that they had wasted some valuable years.

Maybe so.  We can waste time in life.  The biblical life span of threescore and ten passes oh so quickly.  So we do want to seize every opportunity that the moment affords.

But it is also true that the time has to be right for us to take certain steps.  There are particular steps of growth that we simply cannot take any sooner than we do. 

Our Christian life is more like the world of agriculture than that of manufacturing.  Factory production is on a schedule and efficiency is at a premium.  But how can one schedule things of the spirit?  And as for growth, it is anything but efficient.  Spiritual growth is more like agricultural production:  the time has to be right before a seed can germinate, a shoot can sprout, and fruit be borne. 

The Divine Gardener has an eye for such seasons in our lives.  In what season do you sense that he has you now?  What growth is sprouting?  Is it time for you to act? 

Blessings,

Keith

Respecting My Elders

An Inkling

The old preacher’s joke is:  “I’d preach for free.  They pay me the big bucks to work with the elders.”  Often humor arises from pain, of which the pairing of pastors and elders frequently generates more of the latter than the former.

But I’m happy to report that it ain’t so here.  The elders at St. Giles are a joy to work with.  Over three decades and four churches, I’ve worked with about 200 elders in over 400 Session meetings.  Many a Session night I’ve arrived home after the meeting depressed and depleted.  But here at St. Giles I’m almost always arriving at home with a spring in my step.

Why?  It’s not that we haven’t had to face some hard issues.  It’s that the elders here are amazing.  They bring a depth of biblical wisdom to our conversations.  They are earnest in prayer for each other and for the church.  They are willing to tackle tough issues, and are bold to act once the Lord has made his guidance clear.  They are some of the most loving people I’ve ever known.  And when they get into a discussion there is often an unmistakable Holy Spirit synergy at work.  It’s fun to see.  By the Spirit’s power the whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts.  But the parts ain’t too bad either!

Pray for your elders.  They may look like the proverbial duck (calm on the surface), but beneath the surface they are paddling like crazy.  It’s hard work.  And they do it marvelously well.  But they definitely need your prayer support.

Blessings, Keith

Too Excited? No Way

An Inkling

A friend posted this recently, and I found it to be great fun – and instructive.

When it comes to the stars of the celebrity constellations, I am definitely out of it.  So I had to look up Steve Harvey.  In case you are out of it too, he is a comedian, a radio talk show host, and the host for the TV show Family Feud.  And he has a wonderful capacity for expressing his excitement about Jesus.

Okay, so maybe it’s not exactly the language you want to use at every point in writing an orthodox creed.  But it’s language native to Steve, and it was communicating with his audience.  It’s also language that clearly carries his excitement about Jesus.  And Steve is VERY excited about Jesus.

As I watched him I got to thinking:  Jesus is the only one that it is impossible to get too excited about.  Our excitement about anyone else can go over the top – be it candidate, hero, sports star, or even a loved one.  We really can, and sometimes do, speak too highly of someone, a person complete with limitations and flaws akin to our own. 

But not so with Jesus.  We simply cannot speak too highly of him.  We cannot be too excited about him.  Whenever we honor him we understate the reality, because it’s a reality greater in magnitude and goodness than we can fully take in.

Have you found your own voice to speak excitement about Jesus?  Your can’t borrow Steve Harvey’s voice, but you have your own.  And it’s time to find it and then to find the places where you can let it sound.

Speak up,

Keith

Connections

An Inkling

One of the blessings of being a pastor is that I get a couple of weeks each year for study leave.  It’s the church’s way of trying to keep the pastor’s blade sharpened.  In the last two weeks I split a week of that leave in two very different places, but in both I found community. 

Two weeks ago I spent three days at St. Anselm’s Abbey in Washington.  It’s a Benedictine house, and as part of their mission they receive guests.  So I stayed in one of their guest rooms, and joined them for their mid-day prayers and meals.  (The picture is of some monks beginning to gather for mid-day prayer.) 

One of my goals was to study John, through which I’m preaching this year.  The quiet of the Abbey made for some wonderful study time.

But I also got to learn about community simply through observation.  I wasn’t there long enough to become a part of their community in any meaningful way.  But I could see many facets of their community life as they gathered for prayer four times a day, gathered for meals, etc.  Father Christopher, the guest-master who greeted me, has been at St. Anselm’s for 52 years – almost his entire adult life.  The other brothers have similar stories.  Theirs is a community of stability and structure, with Jesus at the center.

The next week I was in Louisville for three days for the annual gathering of my “covenant group.”  This is a group of about 25 Presbyterian pastors, who have adopted a discipline of mutual support, accountability, and encouragement.  Within the 25 I have been part of a smaller circle of five, with whom we checked in at length. 

There was all the usual foolishness that comes with 25 guys getting together anywhere.  For example, since we were in Kentucky, we took an afternoon to tour a bourbon distillery.  Such foolishness has its own value for community life. 

But in addition to the foolishness, there was also a deep sharing.  Just to hear the stories of what God has been doing in these brothers’ lives was deeply moving – especially since we’ve prayed each other through some of the challenging passages of the last year in our monthly calls.  The stories were both painful and joyful, and they were all deeply instructive in God’s goodness.  In contrast to St. Anselm’s, this is a community that is free flowing and scattered, but again, with Jesus at the center.

Where is your community?  It can have many shapes.  But if Jesus is central, it will be life giving.  Where might you find one?  Or start one?!

Blessings,

Keith

The Story of Our Lives

An Inkling

For some stories once is enough.  For others we keep coming back.  I know my daughters must have read or watched Anne of Green Gables a dozen times.  As a child Sarah did the same with Gone With the Wind.  While I didn’t re-read stories, I read all of the Civil War books I could get my hands on – and amazingly the story turned out the same every time!

Something more is happening with our “returning stories” than merely hearing again.  We already know the story, so it’s not about suspense.  Rather, our encounter becomes a dialogue, a way to live into that place and time, and to bring that place and time into our own stories.  Even as our own stories are still being written, the characters of these favorite stories become our companions and foils.

I’m always struck by the eagerness with which people receive the Christmas and Easter stories.  People in those jam-packed worship services listen so intently as the story is read.  And it’s not as if there is any doubt about how the story will turn out!  Yet we come to hear again, and we leave satisfied.

While there are many fine stories worthy of repeated readings, God’s story above all others has the capacity to enter our own story with comment, encourage­ment, direction, and truth.  We come to God’s story in the scripture again and again, not because we don’t know how his story turns out, but because we don’t know how our story turns out.  Our hope is that if he can tell the scripture story like that, then he can make our story a prize winner too.  And so he does, making us a part of the greatest story ever told!

Read on!

Keith

Best Used As Directed

An Inkling

I love that video!  It reminds me of my own misadventures, when I imagined that I already knew what I needed to know without a glance at the owner’s manual.  I only wish that my misadventures were confined to purchased products!

Hang around the church for a while and you’ll hear the scripture compared to an owner’s manual.  It’s an apt comparison.  While the scripture is more than an owner’s manual, it’s certainly not less. 

In the scripture our creator tells us where the buttons are, how they work, and what it’s best not to do with this human life.  We can ignore such wisdom, imagining that “where the buttons are” for love, marriage, gendered life, parenting, etc, don’t apply to us, or are subject to our redesign.  But in the end such adventures are shown for the misadventures they are by some sort of dishwasher reality check.

Gratefully the owner’s manual also describes our creator as ever able to restore and renew us.  Such is the grace given through Jesus – even after the dishwasher! 

Blessings,

Keith

As the Pieces Come Together

An Inkling

Have you noticed?  When the Lord gives a direction, he rarely lays out full course of the  journey, with each step described.  But once you start moving, he directs and provides.  The guidance and the necessary pieces start coming together.

In my world, the latest study in this part of God’s faithfulness has come with the Session’s decision to move our contemporary service from the sanctuary to the fellowship hall.  That may sound like a fairly simple matter, but as I began making a list of the “to do’s” necessary to bring it off, that list soon ran off the page.  And a good many of its items were marked with question marks – as in, “how can we possibly get this done?” 

Yet already the Lord is providing – an idea for how to make projection work, a provision for our software to be used on a different computer, a ready handy man who can do some electrical work, an artist who can help re-cast our space, and on and on.  Each day several more pieces fall into place.

The joys of the journey are many – good company, new sights, surprising turns.  But near the top of the list has to be the thrill of observing how God provides.  The mnemonic I once heard is, “what God guides he provides.”  That is true all of the time, but it becomes especially apparent when we step out in a new direction.

In what direction is God sending you?  How is he providing?  Watch and marvel!

Blessings,

Keith