My sister sent me a card of encouragement and on the front of that card there is what appears to be just a messy pile of strands but as you open the card you see this gorgeous work of art. Isn’t that what our life can look and feel like when all we see is the mess and not the beauty and goodness of God’s grace at work in our life. Beloved, this is exactly where the beauty of grace becomes visible, as we surrender to the mystery of His love revealed in redeeming the ‘mess’ that has touched all of us.‭ T‬his is the gospel we confess and it is big enough to redeem, heal, and restore! But oh but how often it can feel otherwise‭ ‬-‭ ‬boring,‭ ‬disconnected, and at times indescribably difficult.‭

This brings to mind Julian of Norwich‭ who‬ fell ill alone (historians speculate that she had lost her husband, children, and any other family to the ‘black death’-plague) and on May‭ ‬8‭ ‬of‭ ‬1373,‭ ‬after she lost her vision and the feeling of her limbs, she was given last rites believed that she too was succumbing to the illness.‭ ‬The last thing she saw before loosing her vision was a crucifix hung above the foot of her bed.‭ Five ‬days later she recovered and began to write about a series of visions of Christ‭ ‬that would become the first book written by a woman in English in‭ ‬1670-‭ ‬Revelations of Divine Love. In her‭ ‬13th vision the daunting question that had plagued her mind and heart was simple‭ ‬-‭ ‬if only.‭ ‬If only sin had not been...we should all be clean and like our Lord and‭ ‬‘all should have been well‭’

He‭ (‬God’s Spirit‭) ‬knows us far better than we know ourselves,‭ ‬knows our‭ ‬...‭ ‬condition,‭ ‬and keeps us present before God.‭ ‬That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. ‭ ‬Romans‭ ‬8:28b-29‭ ‬The Message

Beloved, in the midst of the unending headlines filled with human suffering,‭ ‬harm, and pain‭ ‬-‭ ‬God has come to tell a story- to weave a tapestry of His Grace-‭ ‬that every detail of our lives is touched by this Grace to tell an eternal story that we have become a part of‭ ‬-‭ ‬this is the mystery of our confession.‭ ‬We believe in a Grace that will make all things work together‭ ‬-‭ ‬so we can say‭ ‬-‭ ‬all shall be well.

Do not hear what I am not saying‭ ‬-‭ ‬the pain is real‭ ‬-‭ ‬the world really is bearing under the weight of what is not good but because of the good work of Jesus all will be well and all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well.‭ ‬That we could say our lives of love for God is worked into something good‭ ‬is a mystery we cannot always explain and is a kindness revealed in love.

Christ has died,‭ ‬Christ has risen,‭ ‬Christ will come again‭! (Memorial Acclamation)

While growing up I heard Romans 8:28 quoted more times than I could count‭ ‬-‭ ‬but if I am honest, at times the quoting felt dismissive at its worst and a triumphal denial of pain at its best.‭ ‬All things work together for good....my Dad would say and I would hear a sort of philosophy of life that in the end all things work out....but that doesn’t hold up.‭ ‬To a sex abuse survivor‭ ‬-‭ ‬nothing of that was good,‭ ‬cancer is not good, and for clarity- nothing about trafficking of human beings in any way was or is or ever will be good.‭ ‬Then you add the caveat for‭ ‘‬those who love the Lord‭’‬ -‭ ‬so for my little brain that had grown up with a gospel centered on sin and sin management that meant if its bad guess whose fault that is‭?‬ And to be really clear to say that somehow things by themselves work for good is to truly a misunderstanding of the scripture and also utterly misses the reality of pain,‭ ‬suffering, and especially of evil.

Julian of Norwich had a bit more clarity in her vision‭;

‬It is sooth‭ (‬true‭) ‬that sin is cause of all this pain‭; ‬but all shall be well,‭ ‬and all shall be well,‭ ‬and all manner of thing shall be well.

These words were said full tenderly,‭ ‬showing no manner of blame to me nor to any that shall be saved.‭ ‬Then were it a great unkindness to blame or wonder on God for my sin,‭ ‬since He blameth not me for sin. And in these words I saw a marvelous high mystery hid in God,‭ ‬which mystery He shall openly make known to us in Heaven‭; ‬in which knowing we shall verily see the cause why He suffered sin to come.‭ ‬In which sight we shall endlessly joy in our Lord God.

Paul said it this way to the Church in Corinth I Corinthians‭ ‬13:17‭ (‬The Voice‭)

This is exactly what I hear in Julian’s writing‭ ‬-‭ ‬the struggle to understand the mess of her life‭ ‬-‭ ‬yet it was the revelation of the mystery of the Love of Christ that changed everything‭ and, ‬to be clear, it was her perspective that shifted.‭ ‬To surrender to an invitation that not only God knows but is able to make all things well‭ ‬-‭ ‬to weave them into something good and beautiful‭? ‬Yes‭!

The mystery of this Gospel is that He came and still comes into man’s wandering places and restores all that is Good and Beautiful.‭ ‬Such is the wonder of this good news. He takes it, all of it- even the pain, and turns it into a beautiful tapestry revealing there really is something more powerful than all of the destructive forces at work around us‭! That which is more powerful it t‬he love of God revealed in Christ through self giving, self emptying love and forgiveness.

So here is a mystery,‭ ‬a God who can redeem, heal, and transform our life- not based on our certainty or moral performance‭ ‬but in something else.‭ T‬here is a power at work that gives beauty for ashes.‭ ‬I do not know how but I have come to the place that I am no longer interested in being certain of my certainty or my moral perfection‭ ( ‬yes it matters what you believe and how you live‭ ‬-‭ ‬but not as a basis to get an otherwise reluctant God to be kind and benevolent‭ ‬-‭ ‬but rather a deep understanding of the revelation that I have a really good Father‭)‬.‭ ‬So I don’t have to talk Him into being what He already is.‭ ‬I don’t have to persuade Him to care for what He already cares about‭! ‬I am becoming convinced that all will be well; is the fact that God is really committed to revealing God. If I had one chapter of the Bible to remember for all of my days‭ ‬-‭ ‬it would be Romans‭ ‬8.‭ I‬n this chapter is the proclamation of the measureless dimensions of the Gospel.‭

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us.‭ ‬I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead,‭ ‬angelic or demonic,‭ ‬today or tomorrow,‭ ‬high or low,‭ ‬thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. Romans 8: 37b-39 The Message

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

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Christian author Arthur Sutherland said ‘God’s goal for all creation is a kind of homecoming; a welcoming and receiving.”

When Denise and I were introduced and dropped at their home with suitcases in hand - we honestly had no idea what to expect. It was a beautiful historic home in Belgium owned by our hosts Marcus and Maria (not their real names) who were not ‘Christians’, according to the missionary couple who arranged for our stay, but they agreed to host us because they wanted to learn more English. So, after being introduced, the missionary left and we began a week of awkward exchanges with our hosts who knew very little English and of course we knew absolutely no Flemish. The daily routine included morning breakfast and evening visits before we were picked up and dropped off. Maria and Marcus welcomed us with a grace that was unmistakable and soon something was becoming clear in our time together. They seemed to deeply appreciate our presence and by day two no longer wanted us to wait to be picked up or dropped off but took the time to transport us. By day three Maria began to lobby our missionary host for some personal time with Denise and I - first requesting to host us for a personal dinner in their home and then asking to take us on a journey out of the city. I distinctly recall feeling a bit uncomfortable when the missionaries reluctantly agreed. Our absence was taking time from the physical labor they wanted our group to complete at the time. The time soon arrived that we had to go to our next city.

Here was the most disorienting part of that whole experience. As we prepared for our goodbyes at end of the week our hosts assembled their grown children for us to meet and we all had tears in our eyes as we said goodbye. We embraced and they expressed their deep affection for who we were...our missionary hosts were visibly bothered and verbally affirmed that suspicion by pointing out that we had formed a bond with our hosts. They were not happy that we had seemingly gained more trust in our short time of doing life than all the words they had shared with them. I remember feeling somewhat confused by the whole experience of having our obvious connection regarded by ‘experienced’ evangelists as a distraction to the ‘real’ goal of seeing their conversion to real faith. It seemed just loving on one another didn’t fit the mold.

Connection is not always about words is it? And yet we have put so much confidence in words, saying the right words, believing the right words...but love - well love doesn’t always need words does it? In our text Jesus reveals an aspect of the Gospel that is often overlooked or perhaps even dismissed - an receiving welcome - a cold cup of water - not words but an invitation...

The Extreme released a song in 1990 that included these lyrics

‘What would you say if I took those words away? Then you couldn’t make things new just by saying ‘I love you’. More than words is all I’ve ever needed you to show. Then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me cause I’d already know.’

The wordless gospel...

Fascinating - most of us are not very fluent in that language are we? As one person said so well ‘our words should contribute to, not take away from, the silence’.

These are the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:40-42 from the Message translation

“We are intimately linked in this harvest work. Anyone who accepts what you do, accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts my Father, who sent me. Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God’s messenger. Accepting someone’s help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I’ve called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing.”

Maybe there is actually something holy to how we live with and embrace our neighbor. The Wordless Gospel, a welcoming and receiving life, “And whoever receives one such child in My name, receives Me;” Into a world filled with words of division, judgment, and violence Jesus points to a wordless gospel revealed in welcoming and receiving the least, the last, and even our enemies. A gospel, not bound by human dictionaries, but defined by the boundless reach of the love of the Father to the human heart. That, beloved, is good news!

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

Into a world filled with words Jesus underlines that the Power of Presence is central to the Gospel. Which means God’s grace is always at work before any of our words are spoken. Welcoming and receiving presence points and surrenders to Divine initiative way before human logic and is revealed in human welcoming. Think about that for a while, maybe there is something way more holy to how we live. Meaning our posture towards those that society overlooks- children,‭ ‬the marginalized,‭ ‬the forsaken, and forgotten- reveals the truth of the Gospel much more than our mere words.

Consider this account of the early church AFTER the literal demolishing of Jerusalem in AD70 who took Jesus’ words recorded by Matthew in AD85 quite literally.

The ancient world was stunned when it first saw it.‭ ‬Followers of Jesus,Christians,‭ ‬doing what he had commanded them:‭ ‬feeding the hungry,‭ ‬caring for the sick,‭ ‬extending compassion to the dying,‭ ‬doing the unthinkable,‭ ‬touching the untouchable,‭ ‬picking up unwanted and abandoned children from the streets of Rome and caring for them.‭ ‬A famous Christian theologian in the second century,‭ ‬Tertullian,‭ ‬wrote,‭ ‬“What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is the practice of loving kindness.‭ ‘‬Only look,‭’ ‬they say,‭ ‘‬how they love one another.‭’

Christianity is about an alternative social vision—an alternative to the violence and suffering and poverty that characterize daily life‭; ‬it’s a vision of kindness,‭ ‬compassion,‭ ‬gentleness,‭ ‬and peace and is our job as the church of Jesus Christ!

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

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Flowers by Denise

Beauty awakens and unveils goodness - beauty points to goodness. Isn’t it fascinating that the scriptural account of creation records God’s commentary on God’s work of creation as ‘good’ and finally as ‘very good’. If you look at the original meaning of this word it is something like this; Good, in the widest sense of the word, means beautiful, bountiful, and at ease. Here is what is so hopeful in a world filled with anxiety and fear- hearts are still looking for the Good and the Beautiful and, beloved, the Good and the Beautiful define reality as God intended - Genesis 1:31.

So here is a thought - those flowers are more than just a ‘longing for beauty’ they are a prophetic declaration of good news - ‘the good and the beautiful still remain’.

The following reading is from ‘Common Prayer; a liturgy for ordinary radicals’ by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro. Before each month of daily prayers the authors share something they call ‘Marks of New Monasticism’ as a challenge. For the month of June they write about Care for Creation - the following is shared with permission.

Marks of New Monasticism

Care for Creation

Fifty days after Pentecost Sunday, the church celebrates the Holy Trinity, worshiping the one God who lives and reigns forever as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity icon is a reminder that Abraham and Sarah had the chance to welcome God in three visitors who showed up at their door. Theology is never far removed from the people and places outside our door.

Much of our theology has been so concentrated on heaven that it invalidates any concern for the earth. Some images in Scripture have even been misconstrued to perpetuate a disregard for the creation, such as the image that in the last days the world will be consumed by fire. But nearly every other time the “consumed by fire” image is evoked in Scripture, it is a fire that purifies rather than burns up, a fire that frees up life rather than destroys it. No doubt, the way we live is shaped by how we imagine the end of the world - whether we think God’s final plan is for everything to go up in flames or for everything to be brought back to life.

Creation care is not just about theology. It is about having the creativity to embody our theology imaginatively — flushing toilets with dirty sink water, riding a bike to work as an act of prophetic dissent, or helping an institution become carbon neutral. At its core, creation care is about loving our global neighbor, because the poor suffer the most from the degradation of the earth and the struggle for clean water. For many kids in the concrete jungle of the ghettos and slums, there can be such a disconnection from creation that they feel disconnected from the Creator.

A community of folks moved into Camden, New Jersey, because the neighborhood has suffered so deeply from environmental degradation that it was rated one of the worst places to live in America. More than half the kids have chronic asthma. But part of what we do as we plant urban gardens is reconnect to the beauty of the earth. Kids get to see grass pierce concrete.

Their eyes light up as they pull a carrot out of the ground, and digging for potatoes can feel like digging up lost treasure. At the heart of it all is a God who so loved the world and who called everything in it good. Our story began in a garden, but it ends in a city - a beautiful restored city the Scriptures describe as the New Jerusalem, coming on earth as it is in heaven. Christianity is not just about going up when we die; it’s about bringing God’s kingdom down, all the way to the dirt in our gardens.

St Teresa of Avila said “All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause. Praying as if God were absent”.

There is so much to unpack in that statement! But if our life is a prayer I wonder how much of human existence is lived as if God is absent. Beloved, part of awaking a life of prayer is living awakened to the revelation of the Good and Beautiful and what better picture of the Good and the Beautiful than to look at that revelation in creation.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.

If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing.

Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ,

rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation.

This means…we are to become vessels of God´s compassionate love for others.

~ St. Clare of Assisi - 1194-1253

We become what we love...there are several scriptures that affirm this reality that has been said in other ways such as ‘we become what we behold’. But what I appreciate about St Clare’s emphasis is how love is what will capture us. The Revised Common Lectionary has had us in John 14 for the last two weeks. John 14 is a familiar text to most of us - especially verses 1-21- ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled nor let them be afraid...’. Mattering on your translation, we hear Jesus’ words of comfort to His friends whom He has just told He will be leaving. These verses are a part of the funeral liturgy of the Common Book of Prayer and as a result have been rehearsed at countless grave sides as a word of great hope and comfort.

Yet the words of Jesus in John 14 follow His prediction of His betrayal ‘by one of the disciples...’and then a confrontation with Peter who had declared he would lay down his life for Jesus and it is here that Jesus reveals to Peter - ‘no in fact you will deny me - 3 times.’ Jesus has just exposed the frailty of His closest friends that left them reeling with uncertainty. While John 14:1 is certainly a comfort at any funeral.

His words came to those who had been ‘gutted’ by Jesus’ talk of betrayal and denial! This is not coach Jesus saying to His friends after 3 years of walking with Him - ‘hey you got this!’; this is coach Jesus saying, I know your hearts are still being held by something else and it will end in betrayal and denial (let’s not forget the word ALL in Matthew 26:56b ...Then all the disciples left Him and fled). To this group of friends who will experience the weakness of their love - Jesus said ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled...’ Did you catch that?

I wonder how many times I have needed to hear this word personally - don’t let your weak love throw you - trust Me. In the context of the frustration and failure of weak love Jesus gives His friends and us these words. “In My Father’s house are many rooms..if I go to prepare a place I will come and receive you to myself...and I will ask the Father to give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever...” Oh my goodness! To a weak and discouraged group of friends Jesus said I am going to make the place ready. I wonder if you, like me, have sung songs about the Father’s ‘big big house’ with lots and lots of rooms, our imaginations being captured by the columns of mansions in a far far off place. It does not help that we talk like this at the death of our loved ones, it does help if we take Jesus at His word.

Let’s start with this - The Father’s house that Jesus was and is talking about is you and me - look at verse 22 ...We will come to him and make Our abode with him. Beloved, that house is not somewhere on a cloud - it is here and now in you and me! But wait, didn’t Jesus say if ‘I go to prepare a place..?’ Yes. And He clarified the location but what is this ‘go to’ thing - well in the original language it can mean a journey but it can also mean ‘to die’. Jesus, by His death and resurrection, is clearing the way for our union with the Father to become - Papa’s house! A house built and paid for in love! And I will receive you to Myself - that word receive is the same word as a groom receiving their Bride - that is you and me! This is the gospel that Jesus reveals in love for love. He literally became what He loved to reveal love.

As Thomas and Philip ask questions tied to their longing for certainty Jesus said I am the way, the truth, and the life - if you have seen Me you have seen the Father! The way and the truth were such important topics as I studied theology, yet the Way is a Person, who tied all that He is to love. If you love Me, you will keep My commandments...in this call Jesus is re-orienting us to what has always been His dream for us- love.

Jesus took upon Himself all of the messed up ideas we have of ourselves and of God and bore them with Him on the cross- representing Father God in the process as the self-giving, self-sacrificing lover of our souls. This is one of the reasons the cross is so breathtakingly beautiful.

The Gospel reveals to us that we are not alone-He sent to us a Helper, One who reveals to us who the Father truly is and also who we truly are. We were always intended to work in partnership with our Triune God- never alone- always WITH! The Helper, Holy Spirit, is here to do life WITH us. He helps us to understand who Jesus looks like in and through our life. Not a religious life filled with calculated transactions, but a life that reveals His love to the earth.

Consider this truth, Father knew our value even when we didn’t. So much so that He moved heaven to earth to open the door to the restoration of what we were always meant to be... His very image revealed in tangible form on the earth. We live in a world where powers and authorities are moving to hollow out humanity. Jesus came so that we could live life to the full and revealed that goal by restoring our humanity! So then we need to pay attention to what we are organizing our lives around for what we organize our lives around is what we become.

As we live WITH God, organizing our lives around what Jesus would, loving with our whole hearts- self-giving, self-emptying love, we live and “love with mud on our boots and bread in our hands.” (Jon Swales).

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Moving to meet the least of these and in so doing whispering to their hearts that they are not alone either and they too are worth more than what the enemy of their souls has tried to convince them of. We have not only been freed from the prisons and given a way out of the hell of separation from our Father God, we have been freed to live life to the full--loving out loud--allowing His love to shape who we are and what we become.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

There were two ways into the city.

Two winds moving through the same streets.

Two gospels already being believed.

From the West—empire.

Boots on stone. Iron catching light. Horses restless for violence, their bodies remembering what they were trained to do. Standards lifted—bright, unquestioned. Carried like certainty. A kingdom fluent in power, calling it peace. A kingdom drenched in blood, calling it righteousness.A kingdom that names God, without fear of God.

And from the East—no army.

Just a man on a borrowed donkey. Dust on his feet. Breath in his lungs. No performance. No defense. Just presence. Just mercy. God refusing to become violence. He does not ride above the earth—He feels it. Each step a kind of refusal. He does not command destruction from a distance. Does not name targets and call it justice. Does not bless the bomb or sanctify the strike.

Photo by Frank van Hulst - UnSplash

He comes close instead. Close enough to be wounded. Close enough to be killed. They shout—Hosanna. Save us. But salvation bends to whatever we’re hungry for. Some want safety. Some want revenge. Some want control—just with God’s name stamped on it.

And here—something tears.

Because there is always a way to take the name of Christ and make it useful. Lay it across the back of a warhorse. Stitch it into a flag. Call domination discipleship.

In the long shadow of the conquistadors—the gospel arrived armoured and called it mission. In the churned earth of the great and bloody war boys were blessed before they killed boys and heaven was asked to take sides. And it hasn’t really stopped. New language. Same hunger. God invoked to secure the tribe. The cross lifted to protect the self. You can still see it in rooms where power is performed, in talk of making nations great again,in Bibles held high, while the way of Jesus is quietly set aside.

This is the lie that keeps coming back—that God belongs to the strong, that if you win, you must be right, that might is somehow blessing. But He will not ride with it. He does not climb onto the warhorse. Does not bless the blade. Does not call down fire to prove a point. He will not be invoked over missiles. Will not be named over drones in the night. Will not sit above the blast and call it peace. He chooses the donkey. Small. Unarmed. Nothing impressive about it. A kingdom that cannot be enforced. A kingdom that won’t defend itself the way we expect. A kingdom that would rather suffer than become the thing it hates.

And still—we hover in between.

Palms in our hands. Expectations in our bones. We were told to look for a lion. Something strong. Unstoppable. Something to deal with our enemies.

But when we turn—it is a lamb.

Wounded. Quiet. Standing there as though it has already been slain. And if we’re honest—we don’t quite know what to do with that. And when He does not—when He refuses to dominate, to silence, to win—something shifts. Not loud. You could miss it. But it’s there. Disappointment. A crack running through belief.

Because when love won’t take control—we start looking for something that will. The palms loosen. The songs thin out. And somewhere between hope and outcome—coins start talking. The warhorse waits. It always does. Strong. Certain. Too easy to trust. It offers clarity.Victory. A god we can manage.

But the donkey—it just keeps going.

Into misunderstanding. Into rejection. Into the slow, stubborn work of love. Into a cross that takes the violence and does not give it back. And we—we’re still there. We’ve always been there.

Between the horse and the donkey. Between the flag and the cross. Between the Christ we talk about and the Christ in front of us.

Not in what we say. Not in what we sing. In the choices we make when it actually costs. Take up the cross. Lay down the sword. Not as an idea—as a way of living.

Because one way crucifies—it always has. The other…gets crucified.

Rev’d Jon Swales

Easter 2026

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

John 3:3 includes an often quoted phrase ‘you must be born again’. Both the word and phrase are a victim of bad translation from the Latin Vulgate, leaving the reader to conclude you have to find your way out of the dark to find the light. The focus is often on ‘you must’ and what we hear is what we must do. Interesting that Nicodemus is meeting Jesus in the night - giving acknowledgment to the light in Jesus’ life. When he hears Jesus’ response- you must be ‘born from above’ (the correct translation) he then attempts to find an earthly answer to a heavenly reality. Nicodemus was trying to find light in the dark while talking to the Light of the world!

And isn’t that what man’s religious search for life and light does? It does not help when we focus on this question, ‘ are you born again?’ with an emphasis on man’s action and experience.

None of us are saved because we looked up - God reached down through His Son to meet us in our darkness. Our moment of recognizing light is not the evidence of its beginning. For God so loved the world - He looked down long before we could ever look up and that is Good News.

In an our hour of increasing darkness and confusion it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that is the light of reality - we are born from above not by how well we have understood God or even by a prayer we have prayed, the reality is that God recognized us and our need before we ever recognized Him.

Now let me be really clear- the phrase ‘born again’ can be a means to express salvation. But like the moment captured in the photo of my uncle with his son, the question is this - was his moment of seeing reality what made reality? Is it the sequence that made it reality or the source? Our emphasis on personal salvation focused on a personal decision made, and a prayer that prayed is how ‘salvation’ has come to be known. The focus being on the ‘experience’ of a new start or a ‘do over’. Curiously this is why Nicodemus asks about physical birth - he is interpreting Jesus words as a sequence..a ‘do over’ - now how do I do that? Jesus’ challenge to Nicodemus and us is that salvation is not found in a sequence but in the Source! Salvation is not the result of the sequence of our transactions.

It is experienced but its genesis is not the experience. This is where Jesus tells a familiar story of the Israelite’s with Moses in the wilderness wanderings. God’s people are delivered, cared for, and protected in the wilderness and they complain. Our text says that God ‘sent’ serpents into the camp and we see a type of punitive punishment for their unbelief and complaining. I don’t have time to develop this here but it is better understood in this way, that the God who had been protecting them from powers of death simply steps back and death, as we hear Paul proclaim in Romans 5:12, followed in hot pursuit.

But that is not the end of the story. God instructs Moses to take a serpent and wrap it on a pole, an image of what was killing them, and lift it up so anyone who looked at it would be saved. Now this is an obvious image of Jesus on the cross. Jesus, who takes upon Himself all of what is killing mankind, and said if I am lifted up I will draw all men to myself. Israel was not saved because they looked up - they were saved because God looked down! And so it is beloved John 3:15 the Mirror paraphrase. In the same prophetic pattern, I will be lifted up for all to see and be equally persuaded in the echo of the life of the ages now redeemed within them!

So what can we learn from John 3:3? The first and most obvious is this, Salvation is by divine initiative. God acted first! Beloved the Gospel is about the God who came to take on flesh to reveal the Love of the Father to restore us into relationship with God in love and for love. It proclaims a stunning reality from Jesus’ words to Nicodemus and to us- we could not get salvation in our flesh unless it got here from above! These words from Francois du Toit (translator of the Mirror paraphrase)

You are not the invention or result of your earthly parents - you are the greatest idea God ever had and because of that He choose to come down! ...the gift of his Son is for mankind to realize their origin in him who mirrors their ‘authentic birth - begotten not of flesh but of the Father! In this persuasion the life of the ages echoes within the individual and announces that the days of regret and sense of lostness are over!

Being ‘born again’, if we have to use that phrase, is not the result of something that happened at the altar, we could not get their in our flesh. God acted first!

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When God creates the earth and fills it with light, beauty, mystery, pleasure, delight, and abundance - He called it Good! When He made man, male and female in His image and likeness, He called it very good! What God called Good is beauty, bounty, peacefulness, connectivity and continuity. Goodness is what defines reality as God intended, a goodness that was expressed in a partnership, in love, with mankind!

The fall of man was caused by sin and that is best understood not as man ‘messing up’ because he did not follow instructions ( yes that happened), but by man attempting to secure what God created and gave freely apart from God. ‘Then you will be like God...’ (Gen 3:5) the tempter said to Adam and Eve - the truth is they already were made in the image and likeness of God! Their temptation was more than making a bad choice, they chose to find life apart from the source of life - God. This, beloved, is at the heart of every temptation known to man. The attempt to find what is good apart from the One who is alone Good.

So how then shall we live? Part of my post head injury reality is that I am often awake in the very early hours of the morning. Lately, I try to use this time to meditate on the challenges I am feeling in my life. One morning I was feeling the conflict of our polarized political world in America that is often amplified by either or both sides claiming their position to be endorsed by their faith in Jesus. How do I live like you, Jesus, in meekness and gentleness, in such a time of dissonance? What do I do with my own passion to prove my ‘rightness’? And the words of Micah 6:8 came to my mind - ‘He has shown you what is good, (same word as Genesis 1), and what does the Lord require of you? To do (promote) justice, love, mercy (kindness), and to walk humbly with your God.

Perhaps the path to goodness in real time will not be realized by proving who is right and who is wrong (yes, at times I still want to prove that my way of seeing the world is the correct definition of the good life...) but rather the utter simplicity of Micah 6:8...He has shown you what is good...

Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

On September 30, 1973 Phyllis Webstad, a 6 year old girl, was forced to leave her home on the Dog Creek Indian Reserve in British Columbia, Canada to attend a residential school in Williams Lake, British Columbia. On the first day of school, she proudly wore an orange shirt her grandmother had given her. The residential school staff stripped her of her belongings, cut her hair, and took away her clothes, including her orange shirt.

When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine! The color orange has always reminded me of how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared. – Phyllis Webstad

Beginning in the 1870s, the Canadian government forced thousands of indigenous children, like Phyllis, to attend religious residential schools where they lived away from their communities.This same thing happened to Native Americans in the United States. The students at these schools were not allowed to wear their special clothes from home. They were not allowed to speak the language they grew up knowing. They were forced to cut their hair short. They were not allowed to do activities their parents had taught them since they were young. Even worse, children were not allowed to leave during the school year and parents were not allowed to visit.

After many years of exposing these injustices, in 2021 The Canadian Government began The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30th following a 7 year study of the impacts of these residential schools.

September 30th has become known as Orange Shirt day in Canada with the sub-text ‘every child matters’.

A day to remember the injustices of residential schools, in honor of Phyllis and so many other Indigenous children, as people wear orange shirts together. It is a form of lament that remembers and honors the past giving space to express sorrow and pain.

What if part of Lent is to embrace Micah 6:8 in such a way that can lament injustice and love kindness and mercy? Not as a backdrop or proof text but in surrender to what is good and what will actually unveil goodness in this season. He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the LORD really wants from you: He wants you to promote justice, to be faithful, and to live obediently before your Go. New English Translation

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

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‘What is one of the bravest thing you’ve ever done, and what was the outcome?’

This is an interesting question because you can come at it from several different ideologies. What is bravery? Several experiences come to mind. Standing up to a teacher in 2nd grade who was a bully and accused me of something I didn’t do.

Standing in front of a crowd and singing a solo for the first time or being one of just a few women to give a senior devotional (actually a sermon) at Bible College where women weren’t allowed to speak in that context. Doing it again at my home church as an adult even knowing some of the leaders didn’t approve. Defending a young woman who was being hit by a man at night on the streets of London or rescuing a young woman who was being harassed by two men at a gas station in downtown Fort Wayne at night.

Maybe bravery is rushing in to kiss your husband goodbye when he was bleeding out on the operating table or maybe bravery is sitting with your dying father, being a target for his frustration, and yet holding his hand as he took his last breath and then helping to wash his body for the last time. Maybe it is making the decision to tell the doctor to go ahead and do surgery on your mom’s brain or sitting down with you father to tell him that you had been sexually abused by the neighbor for years. There are those moments that you must stir bravery when you are rushing your son to the hospital because he can’t breathe, or you are sitting with a child at the doctor because something isn’t right, and the diagnosis is a form of autoimmune disease. Even making the decision to put down your family pet and then staying with him until he passes so he doesn’t have to be alone, requires a level of bravery. Some might consider it brave to go to another country where you don’t speak the language or know the culture to adopt two little girls that you have never met. Or maybe the fact that I had to stay there alone for three months, dealing with a court system foreign to me, was brave. I could certainly say 1 had to muster a certain level of bravery when I boarded that Greyhound bus that took me to college hundreds of miles away from my family and I can also say there was a certain level of courage required when I was whisked away in an ambulance in another country, just as we arrived for a mission trip, to help care for and advocate for a fellow traveler. It was brave to give myself over to the deconstruction of the religious system I had relied on. It was brave to choose to love in the face of hate. You don’t think about bravery while you are in the moment, you just realize later that it was there- in the fibers of who you are. Then there is the physical bravery like going in for that second root canal, or to give birth to your second child because you didn’t have enough sense to know you needed to be brave the first go around. Or maybe it is going in to give birth knowing your child has died in your womb and that once you give birth, that child is gone to you forever. Some mornings it took bravery just to get out of bed after that. Of course, jumping out of a plane took a certain level of bravery. The memory of sitting with my feet dangling out the door getting ready to jump still makes my hands sweat.

We also made a big jump when we left everything we had known as pastors in a local church, including a steady paycheck, to start a new prayer ministry, raising our own support, with, at the time, six children along for the ride. There is a certain level of bravery driving away after unloading your child at college and no it doesn’t get easier with each one. It takes no less amount of bravery to stand with them as they join themselves to another for the adventure of marriage, hoping you have given them what they need to love well and live towards fulfillment.

J.R.R. Tolkien said, “Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.”

So, my greatest act of bravery would be in loving my children without self-preservation. To open myself up to learning from them, to remaining pliable even when I feel, at times, they haven’t give me the same teach-ability, or vulnerability in return. To keep showing up, to keep loving even when you feel hurt, dismissed, or passed over. To sit and listen to the areas they feel you have failed and to offer a repentant heart. To carry that love without becoming offended. To keep serving even when they aren’t aware of the sacrifice. To love, that is the bravest thing I have done, not just for our children but for others in our journey. I want to say the outcome has always been amazing but there have been tears, grief, and pain often while simultaneously experiencing the greatest joys, the most exhilarating highs, and my very proudest moments.

Isn’t that one of the conundrums of life? That we hold both joy and sorrow at the same time?

I haven’t always found myself brave in this endeavor, in fact, there have been times that I just wanted to go somewhere and hide, to protect myself for fear of rejection. But my heart, my passion, my deep desire, is to keep showing up - to keep choosing love, to keep growing and learning, so that in the present day to day and then at the end of life’s journey, our children will know, no matter what, their mother loved them with a deep and abiding love and gave without cowardly self-preservation and to know, in so doing, she was brave.

“So be careful how you live: be mindful of your steps. Don’t run around like...the rest of the world does. Instead walk as the wise! Make the most of every living and breathing moment because these are evil times” Ephesians 5:15-16 The Voice Translation

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

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To a group of boys who felt isolated and alone - the Nicaragua community communicated one simple message - you are not alone and you matter! The team began to play like a team. They were being celebrated with joy. Writers about this series said it was a truly special moment in little league history. That series became a celebration of ‘all that is good about baseball’.

Three days later, August 20th, they beat Puerto Rico. On August 21 the game began but was called for rain and finished on the 22nd and they played what is described as the game of the ages - the longest recorded little league game in the history of the sport at that time, and they beat Japan. On August 23rd they beat Panama. On August 24 they played Curacao again- scored 2 runs but lost one game from the final. This time, they were able to celebrate. The team from Hawaii went on to beat Curacao in the final. The lasting story from this particular series was not about the ‘score’ board but about something far more beautiful, especially on the backdrop of the pandemic. A display of how unconditional love and support can change the story! The managers of the team said it was the longing of those in the stands that touched something deep in the heart of those boys - their passion was beautifully irresistible and it changed the outcomes because it changed them. Writers about that series said it was ‘fun to watch’ the affect it had on everyone.You see, what team manager Ricardo Riva invited his team towards was not to better baseball but to something deeper in them- he invited them to repent - to change their minds and their hearts, based on the desire of those supporting them.

David Bentley Hart defines repentance this way:

This kind of repentance is Good News! Matthew records that John the baptist ‘...came preaching in the wilderness saying “repent”...’ (Matt. 3:1-11)

The definition of repentance that many of us have internalized is ‘straighten up and fly right’ in ORDER for the Kingdom to come. We hear some say ‘do you know why God is not working in your life - it is because you need to get it together’. So we often hear this message of guilt and moral reform. The repentance that John is proclaiming is because Heaven has come near!

Repentance is not a rehearsal of mistakes- repentance is to perceive what is true - God has come near. He was not content to leave man isolated and alone. Repentance is to turn and see the loving kindness of God and to notice that it has an irresistible affect that we are invited to consent to. Here is what is revealed in Christ coming - you are not alone, you are loved and you matter to God. When the beauty of that message captures our attention - we begin to encounter the good news of repentance! When we allow our mind, heart, and life to be reoriented by the sheer attraction of what is good and beautiful - the Love of God revealed in Christ - that is repentance. And friends, that means repentance is beautiful, not something to fear or disdain.

What if it is really that simple? What if I orient my life by what God calls good and beautiful? Jesus’ idea of repentance was not about moralism and tears of regret (although tears are sometimes involved). It is about turning to SEE what is good, the love of the Father revealed in a Person. That is repentance.

Its fascinating watching people share, without hesitation, their pictures of the Northern Lights, Sunsets, Sunrises, flowers blooming, Super Moons....beauty has a transcendent message that we did not invent. It grabs us across language and culture - it says something is good...and it stirs a longing in us for the good.

‘True repentance is not just a feat of the will but a consent of our will to the irresistible allure of the good’ David Bentley Hart

The voice in the wilderness is proclaiming ‘repent’ and, thanks be to God, it is not about moral book-keeping. It is about seeing the good and the beautiful and being changed by it. This is the Gospel we confess.

Here is where this gets personal. Jesus said the actual place where we would find His beauty is in the face of the weak, the vulnerable, and oppressed.

‘The failure to see the beauty that shows itself in the homeless, the migrant, is the failure to be drawn to it’s irresistibility - is a judgment passed on us by those whose faces we turn away from’ David Bentley Hart

When we truly encounter and see the beauty of Jesus - when we repent - we are invited to continue to see His face in the face of the broken. This is the challenge of the world we are experiencing right now - which way will I turn my head? In indignation, anger, and violent rhetoric against those who I think are to blame for the suffering of others? Or will I hear a voice in the wilderness saying - repent...and SEE Jesus? It was Dr Martin Luther King Jr who pointed out that the opposite of love is not hate, it is turning our head in indifference.

So the rejection of indifference is paying attention and being present to the faces of Christ in our lives who are right in front of us...to proclaim to the heart that is convinced they are alone, “God cares and you are loved, and you are not alone”. This is the message we rehearse in Advent. ‘Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.’

‘True repentance is not just a feat of the will but a consent of our will to the irresistible allure of the good’. David Bentley Hart

Oh What Wonderful News!

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

Many of us grew up singing a song about Zaccheus as a wee little man. To actually understand the gravity of the story Luke tells us in chapter 19:1-10 is to reveal a Scandal of Mercy. Zaccheus, who hosts Jesus as his guest, is called a ‘sinner’. Those of us who grew up in a good reformed background heard early and often that we were ALL sinners - so what’s the point Luke? The point is that the word and reference to ‘sinner’ that Luke uses is reserved for those who had become the NSB’ers of the day! To even be seen in the company of a ‘sinner’like this would have meant a loss of status and respect in the Jewish community. A Tax-collector (and Zaccheus was the ‘chief - head’ tax-collector in Jericho) was not just complicit with Rome but had become an enemy to their own people in ways that Rome could never be. They profitted by creating and expanding the poverty of their own people!

No wonder Zaccheus climbed up in the Sycamore tree. Yes, he was small in stature but, so were a bunch of other folk in Israel at the time. He, who had become a ‘persona non grata’, climbed into a tree to become invisible so he could see, with his own eyes, the man he was convinced he could never get near and for good reason! He is in the tree not just because he is short. He is in the tree because he knows he is unwelcome to those he has bullied, betrayed, and extorted. He had heard about how Jesus revealed mercy to the oppressed lepers and to blind Bartimaeus but he had no imagination for what mercy could reveal to an ‘oppressor’.

Photo by Stefano Zocca on Unsplash

For Jesus to talk to, associate with, or become a friend of a ‘sinner’ is the actual scandal and it is a scandal of staggering proportions. Luke has shown us what Mercy looks like for the oppressed lepers and a blind man but what would it look like for the oppressor? Mercy that is more than forgiveness or a generous response to our failures. Mercy that dares us to believe that the truest thing about us is not that we are broken, flawed, alienated, or disconnected but that we are loved---- that is good news!

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I don’t think Zaccheus was expecting to be seen and especially not to be talked to and if he were talked to he likely thought he would hear what he had heard before--sermons of condemnation like the last time he was in synagogue, or the last time he observed the Passover with all the not so subtle jabs, all intended to make him aware that he was not welcomed.

But then Mercy embodied stops, speaks, and calls him by name! The tax collector, the dishonest extortionist, the sinner, Jesus calls him by his name Zaccheus and tells him to come down from his ‘hiding place’ so he can go to his house! Did you catch this? The scandal of Jesus is to choose connection with a ‘sinner’... BEFORE he ‘repents’! Jesus doesn’t require a recognition of his failures before coming to his house! Its kind of like Jesus knows the power of Mercy to reveal unconditional love is all thats needed and its enough to transform. Jesus reveals Mercy that looks like radical open armed hospitality towards a ‘sinner’ by going to ‘stay’ at his home and that accomplishes more than what a hundred sermons could have.

Now about that word ‘stay’, it means ‘to rest or lodge’ and to be clear this is radical. Jesus knows one of the greatest needs of the human heart is presence. Not just because hell is waring against the human heart in disconnection, but because God knows Himself. ‘Let us make man in our image’. God, who exists in communion, knows we were made for connection!

I was also fascinated to find that this word stay also means ‘to destroy’. What? Jesus said I need to stay at your house and I believe this is a picture of the Cross. The place where our old ideas of how to make life work need to be dismantled. The Cross reveals that God has chosen to relate to us on the basis of His love and not on the basis of our sin brokenness and failure or our accomplishments. The Cross reveals the God who removes demand and duty as the basis for connection and freely offers Himself as the basis of connection that He has freely given! No sermon is preached, no altar call given, no altar confessions, just a shared meal and a pumpkin spice latte and Zaccheus repents!

Salvation didn’t come to Zaccheus by inviting Jesus into his heart in some abstract way, but by actually inviting Jesus into his real life as it was, and suddenly discovering that because of Jesus he wanted to change his life. Salvation is not a mere change in our status, but a real transformation of our lives. Jesus brought salvation to a tax collector by simply alerting him to his true identity. At his core Zaccheus wasn’t really a con and a cheat; that was a corruption of his true identity. Zaccheus was really a wayward son of Abraham who needed to be sought out in love and restored to the table of fellowship. Zaccheus was a real life prodigal son redeemed by love. Brian Zahnd - The Unvarnished Jesus.

And here is the real scandal of Mercy - when Jesus calls us by name. Salvation looks like a life that chooses to embrace the ways of Jesus - I like the way the First Nations Version translates this verse: ...this man and his family have finally been set free. For he had lost his way and the True Human Being has come to find the ones who have lost their way and guide them back again to the good road.

Zaccheus then makes amends because the fruit of repentance looks like mercy embodied--not just having the right answers in a debate.

The good road of Salvation, as revealed in Zaccheus’s life, reveals Mercy. Here are a few things that are worth pointing out about repentance;

• It needs to be lived out not just spoken - sometimes saying sorry does not help.

• It is important to own what we have done - not dismissing it but owning it.

• Part of this means we recognize harm we have caused - not shaming ourselves but seeing wrong for what it is and moving to right what we can.

• The amends of his life was NOT about extracting forgiveness from those he had wronged so he could feel better about himself (although I’m sure he did), rather is was about choosing the way of Mercy and embodying it in deed.

Prayer for Mercy - an adaptation of Augustines ‘Prayer for Tears’.

Lord Jesus Christ Son of God,‭ ‬have mercy on us. Oh God we find ourselves in a time of great sorrow.‭ ‬ Give us the gift of tears that moves us beyond sadness into compassion. To You we cry out, To You we run, For where else would we go‭? We feel the weight of our broken world, Through wars,‭ ‬famines,‭ ‬and disasters, In injustice,‭ ‬hatred,‭ ‬and oppression.

The nations desperately need Your deliverance. Give us the gift of tears that moves us beyond sadness into compassion.‭ Empower us not only to cry about others but also to weep with them.‭ Teach us to lament,‭ ‬more than regret our circumstances

Be near to us,‭ ‬Oh God. Reveal Your Kingdom to our hearts and our community. Restore us to an awareness of Your presence. Help us not back away from You in my time of grief.‭ Help us instead to lean into You and trust you,‭ ‬even when we do not understand your ways.‭ Keep our head above the waters of anguish and our feet from slipping off the ground of truth.‭ Help us see You in these hard moments and glorify You in our response. As high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is Your lovingkindness and mercy toward those who fear Him. Lord Jesus Christ Son of God,‭ ‬have mercy on us.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

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The pictures stored in my memory are a rehearsal of what I valued most in those moments, the lobby of the speaker of the house and the floor of the House of Representatives. Just being there was captivating and as I look back I can more clearly that even being near power can be intoxicating.

As I think back to that day, I see how easy it is to become the ‘rich man’ Jesus describes in Luke 16. We can read this story about the ‘gate’ in life that became a ‘chasm’ or a ‘gap’ between heaven and hell, but that’s not the point. The gate and the chasm are not about the future, they are about the present; its about the gate in our life and the potential chasm in all of us.

Speaking of gates and chasms, in our world of constant contact I am watching, seeing, and hearing men and women who are now using forceful words to describe the gates and chasms between them and in specific with those whom they disagree. By now most of us have seen these ‘declarations’ and mattering on the wording the conclusion is something like this ‘its time to close the gate, I have had it with you, I will no longer hold space for you in my life, you will become invisible to me!’

This is what Jesus’ parable is all about an unveiling of the heart. It is about an invitation to repent from choosing to live from a heart that chooses to no longer value their neighbor! What Jesus so clearly reveals in this parable is that when something other than love controls the heart, we are the ones who are poor because the chasm is in us. The question then becomes will we value what God values?

The gates that seem to find their way into me are the ones that allow me to separate myself from the humanity of others, to walk past the ‘Lazarus’ who has become invisible at my door and those gates become chasms of the heart that shut down generosity, grace, compassion, concern, forgiveness,vulnerability, and love. Dare I say the core of our greatest need today is to live and embody the heart of the Father towards the one sitting at our gate?

The Church then is not anti-world but, rather an attempt to show what the world is meant to be as God’s good creation. Stanley Hauerwas - Jesus Changes Everything.

We don’t get there by power, influence, and control, we get there by loving the one sitting at our gate. In a world filled with gates, boundaries, and chasms, we are invited to tell and embody another story. One that Jesus sums up by saying ‘as much as you have done to the least (the ones who have become invisible) of these you have done it unto Me’; not by trying to show my neighbor how ‘unworldly’ and holy I am, but by revealing something of what the world is meant to be as God’s good creation - a people loved by a Good God who in turn love others.

How do we see Jesus’ reference to ‘hades’ in this text? If must talk about Hell from this passage then let’s come to the correct conclusion. I will quote Brian Zahnd without comment:

“Hell is the inability to love other people! Hell is the Love of God wrongly received. Hell is NOT God’s hatred of sinners, God has one single disposition towards sinners - love - remember the parable of the prodigal? Hell is not God’s hatred; rather, hell has something to do with refusing to receive and be transformed by the love of God.”

The chasm is not about a hell to come but a reality of a heart disconnected from the love of God. Father Richard Rohr says it this way:

“Love is always torment for the hateful...the love of God to the wicked and evil will feel like torment, where the love of God will be blissful to those that show fruit of the relationship with Jesus. Yet God will be all in all.”

‘Homeless Jesus’ stature outside Christ Cathedral Church, Dublin, Ireland.

Here are a couple of things I do think this passage means. Being a follower of Jesus means I cannot ignore and walk past Lazarus at my door. I heard someone recently sum this up well;

How do you know if you have met God? You actually love people - especially the marginalized.

What if I pay attention to and let go of my impulse to trust my ‘gates’ to keep me safe meaning that, I let go of my impulse to see the stranger as a threat and instead try to see them as a person to be loved and valued?

I wonder how many of you have prayed something like me in the last few weeks, Lord Jesus, Son of David, have mercy or Jesus help us? (the Jesus prayer). And then we find Lazarus knocking on our gate - whose name means, from the Hebrew Eleazar, ‘God has helped’. Did you catch that?

From W. David Taylor - Prayers for the Pilgrimage

O Lord, you who meet us in the face of the stranger, grant us we pray,...to see in the every stranger we meet this day, whether they be hungry or thirsty, naked or sick, oppressed or in prison, the true image of Christ. Grant me the grace this day, I pray, to be generous spirited in all that I say and do, and may I do so in an uncalculating manner, so that I might become tangible evidence of your economy of abundance over against a vicious economy of scarcity. I pray this in the name of Jesus, the One who multiplies the loaves and the fishes. Amen.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

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Jesus does not come just to bring a course correction to this leader’s hospitality but to reveal a new definition of hospitality. A living example that shows hospitality not as a means of influence and favor but as the place where Heaven can be put on display in real lives revealing radical love for the least, the last, and the other.

Rethinking Hospitality

Throughout much of my journey in spiritual leadership I would have to say I have seen, heard, and even practiced hospitality that is defined a lot like the official in Luke 13 defined it. We say ‘that person seems to be gifted in hospitality’ and what we mean is: they do a great job at making people feel at home in their home, notice the freshly baked bread and fresh cookies? Yes there is such a thing as those who are so welcoming that you can just sit and be at peace. But let me remind you that the corporate world has learned that as well- the art of making living and working spaces welcoming and more productive (our local university has a four year degree in hospitality). But Jesus, in Luke 14, is not talking about an understood definition of 'hospitality’ as the one who brings the donuts and makes the coffee. The first thing we observe is that Jesus sees a man who is overlooked and suffering. Luke does not record Jesus healing the man’s suffering, which is curious. Could it be Jesus is revealing a Kingdom that is not just about ‘fixing’ the stuff we see broken - its about rethinking how we see God and how He is inviting us to embrace the stranger and the suffering (hospitality).

Here is Jesus’ idea of hospitality: ‘…invite the blind, the cripple, who cannot repay you and you will be blessed with a reward from God at the resurrection.’ A hospitality that reveals a new way of living, where the Love of the Father is visibly displayed through love and acceptance of those who have nothing to give in return. They are seen and loved by God through our hospitality, creating a space where Heaven becomes visible!

This kind of hospitality IS the witness/vocation of the Church. If we look at Acts 2 we find a people who are living a shared life together - in the temple courts and from house to house- and they had really good carry in meals....maybe...but there is not a needy person among them. This is about shared life - shared vulnerability.

Pastor and author Brian McLaren shares how after the 9/11 events he felt these words from God burning in his chest (he was pastoring a church in Maryland at the time) Your Muslim neighbors are in danger of reprisal. You must try to protect them. So he reached out to a local Imam named Ahmad and they grew a friendship that was transformative to their community. Imagine what might happen around the world if more and more Christians rediscover that central to Christian life and mission is what we could call subversive or transgressive friendship—friendship that crosses boundaries of otherness and dares to offer and receive hospitality. —Brian McLaren

One of the central teachings of the Old Testament in the life of Abraham centers on Hospitality.

In Genesis 18 Abraham, who himself was a stranger in a foreign land, is visited by three strangers who ‘appear’. Later in the text we discover that two of them are angels who go to Sodom, the other is God. This is called a ‘Theophany’ in the scripture, the pre-incarnate Christ that the text identifies as the Lord. This is what the Hebrew writer is referencing in Hebrews 13:1-3 ‘do not neglect hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.’ The Hebrew writer was speaking to men and women who knew the Genesis 18 story to say ‘do not neglect hospitality seeing it as just ‘warm bread’ but rather hearts that are open to what Father God has- like what Abraham encountered, he did not just encounter angels - he encountered God! Have you ever wondered, like me, how Abraham ‘knew’ to greet these strangers? Some might suggest he had a spiritual prompting or a 'word of knowledge’ to have ‘known’ these men were different and so welcomed them. But maybe Abraham had come to understand that part of the economy of God was embracing the pilgrim who approached his tent, embracing them the way he would want to be greeted - not in a display of power and position, but in openness and vulnerability. Maybe we see a man who had learned that the God he served welcomes the stranger in a foreign land, willing to open his life to those who could not reciprocate.

Theologian John Caputo defines hospitality this way: “Hospitality in the Kingdom is not an invitation we initiate but a visitation we did not see coming”.

Some observations from these texts on hospitality:

• Hospitality as Jesus teaches it does not begin with opening the door of our house but by opening the door of our heart. It is not so much about ‘who’ the other is or isn’t - but who I am.

• As one person said so well, skip the guest list and take an inventory of our own fears, prejudices, cynicism, and dare we say profiling of others - those are the locks on our heart.

If hospitality in the kingdom is a visitation I did not see coming...maybe I need to embrace a practice of seeing the ones around me as more. More than a possible person trying to sell me something, more than someone I need to fix. Maybe I need to learn from Abraham what it means to perceive the work of God in my life- it is not from what I initiate as helpful - but that my life is lived knowing I am safe and secure, belonging to my Heavenly Father and from that place I can be a person who is safe, loving, and welcoming to .

“So then, while we have opportunity, let’s do good to all people...” Galatians 6:10

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

For so many of us we have internalized a message of hope for our world that presents as the idea that God will ‘break in’ to bring change and transformation primarily to the systems of life around us. Many embraced the discipline of prayer as the necessary means to produce the desired end ‘cultural transformation’. I (Ben) signed up for that idea and eventually discovered that the primary purpose of prayer is not to get God to do what I want and transform the world ‘out there’ but instead to transform the world inside of me. Thankfully, God is very patient and kind in His dealings with us especially when, like me, we wanted to ‘use’ prayer as the means of ‘harnessing the movements of God’. As one friend shared after spending hours and hours in prayer, “I realized it was not about making ‘revival’ happen it is about encountering God.” “In the end.” he said “I discovered a new name for God, Jehovah sneaky. I went to prayer to get something I thought was needed and discovered it was God who is my great reward!”

As I opened this book ‘Jesus Changes Everything, A New World Made Possible’, I was struck by the first few words of Stanley Haurwas’s 2nd writing:

Jesus does not want Christians. At least not in the sense of people who simply profess certain beliefs about Him. As followers of Jesus, our beliefs cannot be separated from how we live...To believe that this man, Jesus, is the Christ, God’s anointed king, requires that we become as He is. The truth of the story we find in the Gospels is known only through the kind of lives it produces. Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did’ (1Jn 2:6) Jesus’ aim is to re-narrate our lives in accordance with His.This thought is expanded in the next writing, Jesus came proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom...The kingdom cannot be made into an ethical ideal, because scripture refuses to separate the kingdom from the One who is the proclaimer of the kingdom. In the words of Karl Barth ‘Jesus is Himself the established Kingdom of God’. Or in Origen’s (2nd century church father) classical phrase, Jesus is the autobasileia - the kingdom in person....The way of the kingdom, as manifest in Jesus, is quite simply extended training in being dispossessed, of becoming liberated by God from all we think gives us power over our own lives and the lives of others.

Pondering these simple yet transformative truths makes one wonder about our best imagination of prayer. Is our best and highest hope for prayer in our life and the life of the Church that we see what we deem as cultural transformation or is it something far more personal (that indeed has corporate implications)?

Recently, I (Ben) have been struggling with consistent sleep following surgery to repair my right shoulder - so currently I have regular intervals of ‘unplanned’ conversation and thought with the Lord. I have several individuals around me that I am praying for -physical healing, emotional and relational healing in family members and loved ones. There are a couple things I have begun to notice. How much of my prayer focus is about a ‘change’ of current or future outcomes. To be clear I still am praying for healing and the removal of things like cancer, but I wonder about my own imagination of prayer. I had surgery on my shoulder for what the MRI (read by 3 professionals) said was a full thickness tear of my rotator cuff - the surgery discovered only a partial tear and a bone spur! So grateful to be experiencing a quicker recovery! Yet I am grappling with the harder question - just because I had a ‘less invasive’ surgery is that the answer to prayer? Perhaps on one level.

• But as I consider the intercession of Jesus (Heb. 7:25) isn’t ‘answered prayer’ more about my actual life being ‘re-narrated in accordance with Jesus?

Jesus changes everything beloved! Scripture reveals over and over that God is able to take all the ups and the downs of our lives - our actual life- to meet us and invite us to live a life that looks like Jesus - right where I am right now, in the real and messy. No matter the outcomes of elections or how the crazy topsy turvy the world we live in right now becomes - real wars or culture wars, the goal of our confession as followers of Jesus as Dallas Willard put it is, that we would live as Jesus would if He were us.

The Kingdom is a person revealed in real time whose name is Jesus. I wonder how many times I have longed for God’s Kingdom to grow around me and my imagination is filled with my own ideas of what this would look like. How many of us, like Jesus’ friends, have spent a good deal of time imagining what the Kingdom of God might look like in our idea of ideal.

Jesus reveals God’s Kingdom in real time and it is not about resisting the empire or the litany of today’s broken cultural norms, the Kingdom is a Person - Jesus, who is still revealing what the Father’s heart that looks like: justice for the oppressed, mercy for the broken, provision for the poor and reconciling forgiveness through self sacrificial love.

Maybe the in-breaking of the Kingdom is not far from any of us who will choose to allow Jesus to re-narrate our lives along the lines of the Father’s heart? To become a people who surrender to the good news that Jesus really changes everything - namely me. Amen.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

In Luke 8:26-39 that is exactly what happened to Jesus and the disciples. At Jesus’ suggestion they had gotten into a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee - presumably to a destination that the boys would have been familiar with, but then they are hit by a storm so severe that they actually feared for their lives. It seems pretty clear that where they landed was not where they had planned to be. They ended up on ‘the other side of the tracks’ so to speak, in an area near tombs and a pig herd so, obviously Gentiles as well. These are all places and things a good Jew would have avoided! Suffice it to say this is not a destination that these experienced fisherman had in mind when they set off but, here they are, in the wrong place at the wrong time and sure enough what they feared has come upon them- the ‘crazy man’ who lived among the tombs that they had heard so much about was headed straight towards them. What does Jesus do? While the disciples pull back, He steps out of the boat..now that is a sermon by itself! The God who does not shrink from what we naturally avoid -Jesus- moves to meet this man who is described by other gospel writers as the ‘man of the tombs’, a shell of who he once was, alive but among the dead -literally. Disconnected from the living and dis-robed by a trauma that drove him into the desert, unable to be in control of his own life - alive and breathing but alone, feared, and no longer really known. So fractured and fragmented, his identity has been overrun by another presence, demonized, isolated, and shunned. This man is one of the main reasons people avoided this place!

Jesus steps out onto a land of compromise with no lack of what is seen as ‘unclean’, tombs, pigs, Gentiles, and now He is confronted by a naked, demonized, crazy man -and yet He is unafraid!

Jesus who had just calmed the wind and the waves and had left the disciples asking ‘who is this man?’.

This Man? This Man’s presence brings order, hope, and restoration in a place and to a people that have no imagination for what is possible. This man has come to a land and a people overrun and fractured - His very presence proclaiming ‘you are not invisible or forgotten’ and to the ‘man of the tombs’ - identified only by his oppression- Jesus’ presence unmistakably proclaims ‘You may have forgotten who you are but I have not!’

Beloved the good news of the gospel revealed in Jesus’ encounter with the demoniac at Gerasenes is something we need to proclaim regularly‭ – ‬He came to restore and make whole all that was broken‭ – ‬Shalom‭ – ‬no wonder He was always proclaiming Peace‭! ‬Isn’t it interesting that Jesus’ own disciples were asking 'who is this man’,

When Jesus asked the man of the tombs ‘what is your name?’

• the man identifies himself by what had overrun his life ‘Legion’, other gospels add ‘for we are many’.

Two quick things to notice in this encounter; in Jesus asking ‘what is your name’ reveals something about the gospel that we can miss:

• the key to this man’s freedom is not the knowledge of his failure and bondage but in his true identity.

Next its worth noticing the name the man chose, Legion. On the historical level this refers to a Roman army unit of about 6000 soldiers designed to overrun an enemy force. The name given this man of the tombs was about his own oppression (we are many), but was also connected to the Empire of oppression over God’s people and then they are driven out into the pigs - the symbol of what is unclean. Here is a curious question - why are their pigs in this area unless there is some Jewish person in compromise to succeed in the economic systems of the day. So we have the two symbols of power that affected everyday life- the empire and mammon (money).

Jesus identifies them and renders them powerless. That gives us a bit of an idea about what and who will bring hope and restoration according to Jesus - not mammon or the power of empire! In the end the man Jesus is standing with the ‘man of the tombs’ who has been restored: clothed and in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus as a disciple would.

I wonder if we could proclaim good news over our hearts today? No matter where we land in life

Jesus is unafraid of the narrative - death - tombs - chains - shackles - clothes or no clothes. ‘Legion’ holds no power over the self giving, self emptying love and forgiveness of Jesus. Brokenness and shame do not get the final word. The true image of the man of the tombs was never completely lost or destroyed- when He saw the man Jesus he was then able to see himself.

When this man was restored he was invited to go home! His homelessness had more to do with his heart than his exterior conditions!

This is so powerful ‘go home to your people and tell your story’. His mission is not about something grandiose - ‘removing empire or the structural evils and systems of mammon’. That may sound cool but frankly can stroke our ego. How much do we truly believe in the power of living authentic love? Interesting, Jesus never commanded His disciples to start an organization but rather to inhabit a way of living. Go home - to your people. Tell your story.

And isn’t that the point of this text? Most of us have had places in our lives where we have felt run over by something bigger than ourselves. Pains, that if we are not careful can almost redefine us. Pains that have made us feel small, broken, afraid, and ineffective. Broken places that make us feel invisible, shamed, or out of control. While the pain and brokenness are real, there is a God who has set foot on the land of our hearts to proclaim life and to say what all of us need to hear - Jesus sees and knows the real you and wants to invite you back home.

Most holy and eternal God, you dwell in the heights of heaven, yet you walk among those who refuse to see you. You hold out your hand to those unable to fully see you,‭ and invite us to freedom from the chains that bind, that we may be healed by Christ and proclaim His saving deeds to all the world.‭ ‬Amen.‭

Offering for San Pablo Tacachico—El Salvador

June 28 a combined offering of $6730 was sent from Pastor Luis Alvarado, Praise International and Tending Ancient Paths to San Pablo Tacachico El Salvador, that went to the aid of 113 Families—our posture of solidarity with some of the most needy in El Salvador is a true grace we see the Lord allowing us to participate in, thank you to all who have joined us as we continue to partner in El Salvador.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. John 14:27

Horatio Spafford was a senior partner in a thriving law firm in Chicago,‭ ‬an elder in his church and an active supporter and a close friend of a young evangelist by the name of Dwight Moody.‭ ‬He and his wife Anna had‭ ‬4‭ daughters‬.‭ T‬he great Chicago fire of‭ ‬1871‭ ‬saw most of his real estate investments lost.‭ ‬For the next two years he his and family gave themselves to helping the survivors of the Great fire.‭ ‬Finally they decided that they needed a break and knowing that their friend Dwight Moody was preaching in England choose to take a much needed holiday.‭ ‬His business dealings kept him from accompanying his wife and‭ ‬4‭ ‬girls for the crossing to England.‭ ‬On November 22, 1873 Anna and the girls were aboard the Ville du Havre steamship in the Atlantic when it was struck by a British Iron sailing vessel, the steamship sank in less that twelve minutes.‭ ‬Anna was found unconscious on a piece of floating debris one of‭ ‬27‭ ‬survivors.‭ ‬On her arrival at Cardiff in Wales she sent a telegram to her husband.‭ ‬ “saved alone what shall I do‭”

Horatio left immediately to go to his wife.‭ ‬As this ship crossed that Atlantic the ships captain informed Horatio when they came to the place where the Ville du Havre sank under nearly three miles of ocean.‭ ‬He first wrote this to his half sister Rachel

On Thursday last we passed over the spot where she went down in mid-ocean,‭ ‬the water three miles deep.‭ ‬But I do not think of our dear ones there.‭ ‬They are safe,‭ ‬folded,‭ ‬the dear lambs,‭ ‬and there,‭ ‬before very long,‭ ‬shall we be too.

But then Horatio retreated to his cabin and began to write......‭’‬When Peace like a river attendeth my soul‭ ‬-‭ ‬when sorrows like sea billows role‭ ‬-‭ ‬whatever my lot‭ ‬-‭ ‬thou hast taught me to say‭ ‬-‭ ‬it is well it is well with my soul‭’ ‬-‭ ‬Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

That hymn, has touched the hearts of countless individuals as it identifies a paradox in the opening line - Peace in the place of deep Sorrow. The ability to encounter something that transcends the present and touch the soul. ‘It is well’ is not a description of success but deep acknowledgment of presence in pain. I have seen the closing phrase as a tattoo is because it speaks so clearly of the reality of life in the human condition that touches all of us with brokenness and pain‭ – ‬yet Jesus promise is not that we would not have trouble but that we could know actual Peace. Not the absence of conflict,‭ ‬the resolution to our problems or unanimity or agreement.‭ ‬Its about a way of being and living in the world‭ – ‬but according to the scripture its an inside job‭ – ‬to allow the peace‭ – ‬the wholeness and completeness of Gods love to rule and reign in our heart.‭ ‬Peace that enables us the deepest parts of who we to be at rest in the knowledge of the Fathers affections.

We are not talking about an adjective in our vocabulary but a reality of this Easter Gospel, Shalom‭ ‬that takes broken things and restores to reveal something even more beautiful‭!

The Shalom of Jesus is His legacy and our gift in a world that has left us disconnected and disoriented. My Peace I give not as the world gives do I give to you.‭ ‬Do not let your heart be troubled or let it be afraid.‭ ‬And that beloved is Good news in a world ruled by fear and trouble‭! ‬

Augustine said it this way: So let Peace be our beloved - that we choose to share life with.

Jesus said‭ ‬My peace I give not as the world gives....He knows that all of us have been deeply touched and affected by a world that is not as it should be. So how do we 'find’ peace?‭ ‬This is the Easter good news‭! ‬God has made Peace where I could not and He offers it freely. Romans‭ ‬5:1-5 ‘...By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him,‭ ‬make us fit for him‭' (‬the Msg‭) ‬‘...having been justified by faith,‭ ‬we have peace with God....‭’ One of the b‬iggest lies to the human heart is that God is mad at you He knows all the stuff and you better watch out.

Augustine also said we should‭ ‘‬sit on the chaste couch with Peace’ what‭? That is an o‬ld world picture of a person who had chosen to open their life to another, and only them. The scripture says it this way Col.‭ ‬3:15 Let the Peace of Christ Rule in your hearts.....‭(to ‬rule‭ means ‬arbitrate or act as an umpire‭)‬. The umpire‭ ‘‬calls‭’ ‬it the way it is‭! ‬You are actually forgiven‭ ‬-‭ ‬You are loved‭ ‬-‭ ‬You are not alone‭ ‬-‭ ‬You have a future‭ ‬-‭ ‬You are incredibly valuable‭ and ‬worthy of the blood of Gods own Son‭! Now not‬ one of us gets out of this experience of humanity without wounds and scars. Those wounds are intended to steal‭ ‬-‭ ‬kill and destroy you. They become the entrance point of hells war on the heart‭! ‬They do NOT have to define us‭ ‬We all need an umpire to tell the truth and receive it‭! ‬The only way wounds heal is to allow Peace to tell the Truth about Gods heart and ours and that is what our life of formation is all about. Now‭ ‬to be clear it takes a minute.

Now may the God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,‭ ‬so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.‭ ‬Romans‭ ‬15:13

Peace, Shalom is a Person living in you and me who invites us not to a truce but to a table of communion with Him that changes us and allows us to His peace to a non-peace filled world. That is how we actually become ‘peacemaker’s’ and reflect a whole different way of living.

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

After Horatio and Anna returned to Chicago they began having prayer meetings in their home.‭ ‬They had‭ ‬3‭ ‬more children a son and‭ ‬2‭ ‬daughters‭ ‬-‭ ‬the son died of scarlet fever at age‭ ‬4.‭ ‬After his death Horatio Anna and their girls left their comfortable lake front property to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem‭ ‬-‭

‘Jerusalem is where my Lord lived,‭ ‬suffered and conquered,‭ ‬and I,‭ ‬too,‭ ‬wish to learn how to live,‭ ‬suffer and,‭ ‬especially,‭ ‬to conquer.‭’

In‭ ‬1881‭ ‬they moved into a home just inside the old city to establish an American colony Jerusalem‭ ‬-‭ ‬they opened their lives up to Christian,‭ ‬Jew and Muslim sharing what they had to help as they could in famine,‭ ‬plague and war to simply demonstrate the Love of Jesus.‭ ‬After Horatio and Anna passed their daughters carried on the work Christmas eve of‭ ‬1925‭ ‬their daughter Bertha was asked to care for an orphaned Bedouin child‭ – ‬that soon became another and then more. This was the birth of the Spafford Children's home and hospital.‭ ‬

Beloved we need a fresh imagination for what Peace on Earth looks like‭ ‬-‭ ‬a fresh embracing of Peace as a Table that invites men women boys and girls into a vision of Shalom‭ ‬-‭ ‬the way things ought to be.

Offering for San Pablo Tacachico—El Salvador

If you have read this far I want to invite you give this article application and pray about giving to our friends in San Pablo Tacachico, El Salvador. Long before the topic of El Salvador was in the news we have been standing in solidarity with this community helping to build the lives of some of the most needy and most vulnerable. Every dollar given towards this offering goes directly to help the families of San Pablo Tacachico in the form of seeds, beans, and fertilizer in an effort to help them move forward and in some instances to just survive another year. We have seen a vibrant spiritual community beginning to form as a result of this ministry. We remain committed to stand in unity with these dear friends.

• We ask you to pray about giving and please let us know your intent by marking your gift for the work in El Salvador.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I lost control of my car and wrapped my car around a telephone pole - miraculously it only hit the back of the car. After getting out of the car, that was no longer drivable, and seeing that I was at least a mile from the nearest house - there were no cell phones in that day - I remember the confusion -of asking myself ‘what am I going to do’? I said out loud ‘Jesus help me’. Suddenly there was a car that drove up to me, a red Fiero - the car I wanted at the time but my parents would not even entertain the discussion. The car stopped and I got in with a bearded man who drove me home while I talked non stop about how I had no idea what I was going to do. He dropped me off and drove away. After returning home and being able to collect myself - I realized I had no recollection of telling him where I lived or who he was - in fact I don’t remember him speaking at all. He simply drove up and drove me home.

Part of what modernity has done for people of faith is to invite us to the idea of reasoned faith, and to be clear I do believe we can have a reasonable faith. But what happens when we treat the topic of faith as a fact that must be defended and of which we must be certain -as if faith is primarily about being certain of what we know and see. Being certain of facts does not mean we have encountered or seen God. Jesus turns to Peter (Matt 16:17) and says ‘blessed are you for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but My Father who is in heaven.’ There is a profound difference between seeing facts and seeing the mysteries of the movement of God in our lives.

If we read Peter and John’s testimony before the religious leaders of the day in Acts 4:20 they say ‘...we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard’ seeing that as men who are simply proving the facts about Jesus’ existence. I think we might be forgetting that Peter and John were among the disciples who had seen and heard Jesus for three years but after His death were locked in a room for fear of the Jews (Jn 20:19). Better yet we have the accounts of others who actually ‘see’ the resurrected Jesus, Mary ( Jn 20), Cleopas and the other disciple (Lk 24) but they did NOT recognize Him, ‘seeing’ Jesus with their eyes did not mean that they ‘saw’ Jesus! For Mary, she saw a gardener, for Cleopas and the other disciple they saw an unaware traveler on the road to Emmaus.

Beloved the scripture affirms repeatedly this powerful mystery of ‘sight’ that is not physical vision but about faith (2 Cor 4:18). The testimony of Mary and the disciples, including Thomas, was the incredible revelation of Jesus revealing Himself in places they had not expected to see Him- in grief, fear, and doubt. Their testimony ‘I/we have seen the Lord’ is not about their factual discovery, it is about the revelation of the God that had never lost sight of them. ‘My Lord and my God...’ is Thomas’s encounter with the One who had answered his request to ‘show us the way’, by revealing in His body what He had said to Thomas ‘I am the way, the truth and the Life’. Thomas, I am the life you are looking for (Jn 14:5-6).

So, dear friends, may we pause in the midst of our lives that often feel so disoriented -filled with grief, fear, and doubt to try to ‘see God’ in this season of human history and more specifically in our own lives. Beloved He is closer that you think, the gardener, the fellow traveler.... Jesus did say when you care for the widow, the orphan, the downcast the forgotten - you have done it to me.

I met God there? I wonder how many journeys I have taken seeking for God’s kind direction and overlooked my fellow traveler. So convinced of Jesus’ absence in the personal or corporate experience of my life that I failed to notice the very One standing with me, who is asking ‘what things are you talking about as you travel’ or to translate Luke 24 into 2025 ‘are you looking for a great nation or a great savior’? This One who is recognized, not by the power of the sword but in His solidarity with the suffering of all mankind, still walks with us today! It was His brother James who proclaimed ‘this is pure and undefiled religion to care for the widow and orphan’… in other words, this is where we ‘see Jesus’ today -among the needy and vulnerable.

Think about Simeon ( Lk 2:30) who proclaimed- my eyes have ‘seen’ the salvation of the Lord - but all he was holding in his hands was a baby - yet, he ‘saw’ the Lord’s salvation. Joseph of Arimethea (Lk 23:51) who belonged to a little group of people who, like Simeon, were ‘looking’ for the Kingdom of God, that is they were ‘looking’. As I reread these accounts of Jesus’ friends ‘seeing’ the Lord—I wonder how many times I have been walking in the garden of my life searching for Jesus, pleading for Him to meet me, and dismissed the gardener because I was looking for the geo-political definition of a Kingdom, not noticing the activity of God in the present. So, back to Peter and John in Acts 4, they are not just teaching facts to prove the historicity of Jesus, they are proclaiming a God they had ‘seen and heard’ with more than their ears and eyes— with their lives! A God who reveals to each of us by His presence- you are seen, you are heard, you are known, and you are loved (read the epistles of Peter and John). They became men who could not help but speak of what they had ‘seen and heard’ because they were ‘looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God’ (Titus 2:13). Not as a distant someday reality but as the God who meets us in the garden of grief, on the road of disappointment, and in our rooms of fear - so that we can say - ‘I have seen the Lord’

One of the places Jesus proclaimed that we can ‘see’ Him is this - “Truly I say to you to the extent that you did it to the one of the brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.” Matt 25:40.

Offering for San Pablo Tacachico—El Salvador

If you have read this far I want to invite you give this article application and pray about giving to our friends in San Pablo Tacachico, El Salvador. Long before the topic of El Salvador was in the news we have been standing in solidarity with this community helping to build the lives of some of the most needy and most vulnerable. Every dollar given towards this offering goes directly to help the families of San Pablo Tacachico in the form of seeds, beans, and fertilizer in an effort to help them move forward and in some instances to just survive another year. We have seen a vibrant spiritual community beginning to form as a result of this ministry. We remain committed to stand in unity with these dear friends.

• We ask you to pray about giving and please let us know your intent by marking your gift for the work in El Salvador.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

Photo by Rene Paulesich on Unsplash

Are you with me? I have used that phrase often to ‘check in’ with those I am sharing with to confirm that they are ‘following’ the current thoughts I am sharing. Yet, I wonder how many times my use of that phrase reveals more about me? My need to be assured that what I am sharing is worth their attention. I mean, am I actually inviting people into a communal process of thought or am I simply trying to alleviate my own unspoken fear - that I am actually alone in what I am sharing - ouch! Not one of us enjoys the kind of aloneness that leaves us defenseless to our fears of safety, security, or belonging. The scriptures proclaim a God who meets us in those places, in fact, the Psalmist says ‘even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, You are with me’.

‘…for You are with me’ beloved is the game changer of all game changers!

I awoke a couple days after the war in the middle east had broken out again, with a foreboding, almost tangible, funk. I could not recall my dreams but what was in my body and on my spirit was a kind of heaviness. Beloved this is what happens when our minds and bodies begin to imagine a future where we find ourselves without the resources we think we need. We are allowing our mind, our heart, and our body to imagine a future where we are alone - without God. After grabbing a coffee I headed to my office with some sense that I was dealing with the effects of the tragic news of the weekend - so I set myself to my regular morning prayer liturgy (when you don’t know what to say - say your prayers, that is a phrase worth remembering). My daily liturgy begins with confession and moves into praying the 23rd Psalm. On this day I picked up my Common Book of Prayer and began to read the 23rd Psalm and was arrested by the transition of verse 4– the place where the Psalmist moves from a third person description of the Lord as his Shepherd, even in the worst he could imagine- the valley of the shadow of death, into a first person declaration... ‘, for You are with me’.

Of the 57 words in Psalm 23, 26 lie before and 26 after these 5 words

‘...for You are with me’.

It is the central declaration of this beautiful prayer that almost everyone has heard at some point in their life. Considered the ‘Lords Prayer’ of the Old Testament, it makes this bold declaration, we are not alone!

Dare we say it is the central declaration of the gospel?

As I paced in my office I paused and then pulled out my journal and began to write these words ‘How much is fear a failure of imagination, anchored in a sense of lack, that allows our mind and body to be captured by the idea of a future absent of God?’ Absent of a Good Shepherd? When we allow ourselves to camp out in this place, we are unable to see ‘Who’ is present and what is possible. But the truth remains the same -‘You are with me’. You, whose Presence is able to refresh, restore, reverse, repel, and return me to a place of wholeness and rest. As I looked at this phrase in verse 4, I opened my computer and began to explore these words in the original language. In just a short time I discovered why some rabbinic teachers consider this phrase to be the most precious and profound phrase in all of the Psalms: ‘Ki Atah imadi’ - ‘for You are with me’. Here are just a few of the phrases and definitions:

• ‘for You are with me’ = Sustaining, Imadi. In Hebrew this is not just a reference to an identity but to the essence of the whole individual personally present to sustain because ‘imadi’ means that person’s primary concern is to protect and care for, they are alert and ready to act.

• ‘for You are with me’ = Support, Imadi. The root of this Hebrew word comes from both the Akkadian and Persian languages, the Akkadian carries the idea of a wounded warrior leaning against something or someone to support them. A comrade to keep them standing and in some cases to keep them from falling.

• ·‘for You are with me’ = Settled, Imadi. The root in the Persian language reveals a person who is persistent in maintaining the value of something. Jesus told the story of the pearl of great price - the dirt, the obscurity, and the lostness of the pearl did not change its value. Imadi - the person watching knows the value of what He is supporting and protecting!

Ki Atah Imadi - ‘for You are with me’ means the essence of His whole being is in active present tense- sustaining and supporting what He knows to be of great worth.

The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not be in want - for You (that Shepherd) are WITH me! The opposite of that reality is not just fear but the surrendering of our souls to the shadows of loneliness that leads us to disconnection. We are surrounded by forces that financially benefit from soul-less activity and we also have no lack of options that invite us towards consumption and conformity. These options do not touch our deepest need for communion - the place where we know we are loved, valued, seen, and known. Perhaps, said another way, we can often give attention and affection to things that leave our soul disconnected leading us to live with a sense of a foreboding shadow...of lack, insecurity, and isolation.

for You are with me! Could it be? The good shepherd who leads us to places of wholeness -who restores and revives EVEN in the valley of deepest and darkest shadows - Could it be?—You are with me!

Truth be told its not that hard to imagine a future of lack that can lead our hearts to want to surrender to the shadows of fear. Its not insignificant that it was here that the Psalmist makes this proclamation in the first person - “You are with me”. Our triune God is a good shepherd who knows how to keep us standing and how to present us with great joy. Perhaps our greatest need is not to attempt to talk ourselves out of fear but rather to surrender to what is true - You are with me - no matter what. You, who have never distanced yourself from me- You, who can keep me from falling- You, who knows the value of what you are supporting and watching over. You, are with me! Even when we don’t believe we have value, that we are lost and hidden, dirty and buried in despair...He that is near knows the value of what He protects! This is the essence of hope, the anchor that holds us as we ride the waves of tumultuous times. This is Good News!

Ki Atah Imadi - one last nugget about this phrase from one Hebrew teacher is that it is written in future perfect tense - meaning, it is an action that has already occurred - yet it hasn’t. Beloved this is Gospel! The Lord has not only been with us, ‘He is present with us and will forever always be with us’ –Selah!

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

So: The News. Politics. World events. – as you no doubt have noticed, there’s a lot going on at the moment, plenty of it panic-inducing and/or heartrending to many….

….But there’s one piece of advice I’m confident applies to basically everyone: as far as you can manage it, you should make sure your psychological centre of gravity is in your real and immediate world – the world of your family and friends and neighborhood, your work and your creative projects, as opposed to the world of presidencies and governments, social forces and global emergencies.

This will make you happier. It will make you more meaningfully productive. And to whatever extent it falls to you to be an active citizen – to be engaged in politics, say, or in otherwise addressing world events – it’ll make you better at that, too. There really is no downside.

From Oliver Burkeman -The Imperfectionist (Substack)

After recently posting this on social media my head has been stirring with this simple thought about Reality—the reality that is right here…

The first Reality is that we, as Jesus lovers, embrace the Hope of the Gospel as our reality - through the gospel of Jesus Christ we live from the place of communion with God and one another.

Yes, we are living in unprecedented times that are frankly deeply troubling - where is all of this uncertainty going to land? The quick answer - none of us can know for sure. How then do we live real lives present to reality? By embracing what is real and true in our humanity - I do not hold the full force of any government but I do hold the power to live in what is real. That I am loved and I was made to love others - that actually holds the power to change my world.

What began in Garden creativity and connectivity is at the core of the ways of Jesus. His presence in our day and time is not measured by our ideas of greatness and bigness any more than it was when He walked the earth. When His disciples were trying to organize the crowd and quiet the children, He said let them come to Me. He said blessed are the poor and those who lament. Little wonder His brother said pure and undefiled religion is to care for the widow and the orphan. Here is reality beloved, the greatest means to impact a generation is not by our collective power but in our surrender to reality - to the good news of our confession! Here are some implications of that reality.

Reality - Saying that ‘God is in control’ is ill informed and not helpful. As I have heard Denise state several times over the years -if anything is being stolen, killed, or destroyed in your life it comes from one place, the adversary of your soul - John 10:10. Do we really think God is in control of the drunk who took the life of an innocent child? Do we really think God is in control of some of the most inhumane things committed against men and women? He is not the author of evil and does not use evil means to get your attention.

Reality - There is no possible future in which He will not be present. (Dt 31:6, Heb 13:5) In fact, the definition of ‘fear’ we have adopted is- imagining a future absent of God.

Reality - Hebrews 10 was written 300 years before there was ever a church building to ‘go to’ - connection is about actually sharing our lives together, not just sitting in proximity to one another for an hour or so and not just ‘liking’ a post but being in touch with one another’s lives.

Reality - Our common communion in Christ connects us beyond borders and boundaries. Consider how Paul ‘labored’ for men and women of faith that he never met - Colossians 1:29, 4:17 and for others from whom he was separated by physical chains and distance Philippians 1:8-9.

Reality - God works all things together for our ‘transformation’- Romans 8:28, 12:1-2. Even in global uncertainty, so we proclaim, God is Present and at work today, beloved.

Reality - Love that is truly love is not about control but consent-not by coercion or press of power. So where do we locate God in the midst of global uncertainty? The same place He was when His Son was crucified on the cross, in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. (2 Corinthians 5:19) He is present in the pain and suffering, revealing immeasurable self giving, self sacrificial Love to the human heart. He is right here with us, never leaving us, never forsaking us.

Reality - God brought into being Grace and Truth in a human body and forever changed the course of eternity for men and women who receive it ( John 1:14) that they could become what they would never have been able to become before. Not just really really good versions of human beings but children of God! God did so - don’t miss this - in weakness and vulnerability! He changed everything WITHOUT Wall Street - Washington - Hollywood - Medicine - Education...all those places we have become convinced ‘must’ change before we can see change. Don’t misunderstand me here, we still work to make these things better through the influence we have been given through loving well but these places are not where our hope comes from.

Reality - The Kingdom can be birthed in us. We can confess like Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:16-17: For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Reality - The same God who fed His children with something they had never seen- ‘manna’, and designed a world that we are still discovering, has fresh manna for this moment today.

Reality - Heaven is coming to earth and in reality has already begun to be revealed to us in the place called the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom there is no distance! We have complete union with the creator of all. ‘And the secret is simply this: Christ in you! Yes, Christ in you bringing with him the hope of all glorious things to come.’ Colossians 1:27b JB Phillips

The Reality of those that follow The Way of Jesus is that we are on solid footing, never alone, always loved, and given everything we need for life and for godliness even in this unprecedented time. We are o.k. even when we are not o.k. and it is o.k. to not feel o.k. We were not meant, as humans, to carry the onslaught of the horrors of the world brought to us by media streams from all over the globe while at the same time navigating all the unsettling change that is happening everywhere. Our hearts and minds are being invited to overwhelming grief.

While we pray over the landscape of our global community, we must stay anchored in our immediate world which is where we can enact the most change through co-suffering, self emptying love. Living from the reality of the Kingdom of our Beloved we can say, with Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” We pray together, Beloved, that today we know peace...the peace that passes understanding, because we stand in the reality of knowing that we are surrounded by the love of our Father God.

With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

Or you may donate online here

The 10th of November 1944 my father was arrested by German sympathizers and taken to prison. By all accounts he should not have survived his incarceration for many reasons the most obvious being that he was guilty of what he had been arrested for - assisting fellow Dutchmen who were ‘running’ from forced work camps near the town of Lobith in the south of the Netherlands. These Dutchmen had been recruited by German forces, under threat of watching their homes burned to the ground, to dig ditches near the rivers in the south to halt the Allied offensive. After more than a week of incarceration my grandfather had gone to the prison to look for my father and through the exchanges and inquiry from the German officer in charge, who first told my grandfather that his son had already been sent to a concentration camp, my father, unaware of my grandfather’s visit, was questioned by the officer. Somehow the answers they both provided were enough to see my father miraculously released. My Dad wrote about his experience of being released by saying, I did not have legal papers. I was 19 years old and should have been in the labor service and here the impossible happened -we were sent home.

That should not have worked!

It remains an actual sign and wonder in the life of my family. There is no logical explanation to how my father survived November of 1944 and when I ponder it long, it leaves me still a bit astonished. When I tell this story to my children today I am careful to point out that many, who also prayed, ended in gas chambers. When my dad would tell the story he felt confident that in his prayer not only had God heard him but he was sure God would do anything he would ask - like he had secured a ‘formula’ to make life work....he soon discovered it was not a formula but something much deeper —a profound mystery of Grace.

Mystery can often make us feel a bit uncomfortable, especially in the west. Following the renaissance - science and reason began to take center stage and we have this huge temptation to document and define things that we cannot fully define or understand.  

I wonder how many times I have been tempted to believe ‘I finally found the formula’, you know -the one that can assure us that we can get God to do what we need Him to when we need Him to do it to get the result we desire? And then there is the challenge of our best spiritual definitions and dogmas or should we say our attempts to control what we cannot even fully define? As good as our common confessions are, how can we define the Love of God revealed in Christ? The hymn released in 1898 proclaims, Oh the deep deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free.

Luke’s account of Jesus calling His first disciples (Lk 5:1-11) is fascinating in that Jesus does not assess their capacity to see if they can ‘go the distance’. He does not first interview them to discover their knowledge of the Law and Prophets. He does not even do a background check into their questionable associations (ie: the zealots James and John– Sons of Thunder.) He simply invites them to surrender to His words ‘put out into the deep...’. In the deep their hearts will encounter what they cannot define or control. In the deep Jesus reveals a deeper mystery -something beyond hard effort and excellence. Lives not defined by success, failure, emptiness, or clutter - but by the abundance that comes from encountering the mystery of the measureless heart of the Father revealed in Christ. Here they experience what they had never known before-- measureless grace! What Good News!

Luke tells us Jesus was teaching while fisherman were cleaning their nets when He extends an invitation to these fishermen to ‘put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch’. I want to be sure we notice the obvious - Jesus, was talking to experienced fisherman who knew that lake like the backs of their hands. They were ‘done’ for the day and had been cleaning their nets. Jesus did not grow up in a fishing boat but in a carpenter’s shop - he did not have the expertise of these fishermen. If he had he would have known not to invite them to throw out a trammel net during the day when the fish could see it

Simon said it this way, ‘We have worked hard all night and caught nothing’. Peter is giving words to the known formula for experienced fisherman. Jesus Words were not about educating Peter (no secret formula or insight) but instead it was an invitation– ‘let down your nets for a catch’. Jesus was not revealing a new way of fishing but a new way of being and living. This is an invitation not to reason but to surrender - to faith. To put down their nets, like they had hundreds of times before, was an invitation to engage their body and their minds in surrender - even when their reason said it did not make sense. To be clear they did not ‘sense’ this was the Lord. It was a deliberate choice to surrender to Jesus’ invitation.

Beloved, this is faith - choosing the Words of Jesus above our own. To choose the words of Jesus over what life and experience has ‘taught’ us. One of the more difficult realities that has come from our highly personalized version of evangelicalism in the west is the temptation to elevate our own sense of experience and feeling over the words of Jesus. Beloved, to put out into the Deep is a choice to hear and trust the words of Jesus above our own! Love my neighbor, forgive my enemy and pray for them, choose the path of peacemaking in a warring world? Yes, this is not about learning something new- it is about choosing to embody a different way of living and being. This is not about me reveling in my expertise or my knowledge - but a choice to engage in embodied trust in the words of Jesus - that, beloved, is what it means to be a follower of Jesus! In the face of things I may or may not understand - in the face of the unknown- to choose to trust the mystery of the Love of God revealed in Christ! Choosing the deep, the words of Jesus, that in turn reveal the heart of Jesus.

For Peter, James, and John - it was choosing the words of Jesus above their gut, expertise, and experience!

Now here is the miracle! Not the quantity of fish they caught, but Peter, James and John realizing, in the face of their empty cluttered nets that, that should NOT have worked! Something else is going on here - they are encountering a measureless mystery! Amazement is how Luke records the reaction. Dare I say this out loud, their amazement is not at Jesus teaching but at the abundance of the depth of the heart of God revealed in Christ! Then, according to Matthew and Mark He invites them to ‘follow’ Him. And here we have the context of discipleship for Jesus! Not information, but fascination— hearts being astonished...

Maybe ‘putting out into the deep…’ is about the choice to trust the words of Jesus and embody our living from a different posture.

Howard Thurman said it this way.

‘When I love people, then I find God... Isn’t it interesting how Jesus always insisted upon this, and how completely we have missed it in our doctrine?’

James Finley worded the experience of encountering the Love of God this way.

In the mystical experience, the depths of God, by the generosity of God, have been given to me as the depths of myself. That experience of oneness is God’s infinite identification with me—with God’s own life—in my nothingness without God. Love is never imposed, it’s always offered, so once I’ve tasted that spiritual experience, then I have to freely give myself to the love that gives itself to me. In the reciprocity of love, then destiny is fulfilled. That’s the real story of our lives—where we are in the reciprocity of love.

Put out into the deep and let down your nets

God give us courage to hear and believe your words today.

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With gratitude and integrity we steward your gifts. Thank you for partnering with the mission the Lord has given us in this hour as we partner with Him for His kingdom to expand. Please make your tax deductible contribution to: Tending Ancient Paths (TAP) Fort Wayne, 5907 West Wallen Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46818

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