Servant Leadership

Jesus called all the followers together and said, “You know that the rulers of the non-Jewish people love to show their power over the people. And their important leaders love to use all their authority. But it should not be that way among you. Whoever wants to become great among you must serve the rest of you like a servant." (Matthew 20:25-26, NCV)

It's recently entered my mind that I'm not always a great leader.  I have a natural gifting for organization that I have worked to develop throughout my life, but when it comes to people - Lord, help me!  First of all, I'm frustrated easily.  I find myself wondering why a person would do, or not do, something the way they did it.  This is problematic because, as my husband has told me, I have a unique way of looking at things.  Sometimes my perspective is good, and sometimes it's not as good.  I don't understand people who are perpetually late, maybe in part because I am impatient. And I get tired of having the same conversation over and over and over again without seeing any change come of it. I clearly have a lot to learn.

Today I watched my boss walk away from the list of things he had planned to drive a forklift.  Keep in mind, my boss is a pastor. He does have many years experience as a forklift operator, but those years were also many ago. He set aside his plans to use the skills he has to get a job done - a job that few will know he did.

But I saw.

And God saw.

Inspired by his example, I did a job no one enjoys but everyone appreciates once done:  I cleaned the toilet in our office. Today toilets, tomorrow feet.

Advent 2020: Peace and Two Dreams

This post is part of a series of reflections on Advent.
You can read the first post here: 33 DAYS AND COUNTING.

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. Today we look for peace. Scripture tells us that peace is something we need to put effort into obtaining (2 Peter 3:14) but also something that is given to us by God (John 14:27).  Jesus is Prince over a kingdom of Peace which never stops growing (Isaiah 9:6-7), but when I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that I don't always feel the ever-expansive peace of Christ.

The inclusion of the wise men in our modern telling of the nativity is interesting.  Despite modern depictions, the wise men didn't present their gifts to the Christ Child while He was still laying in the manger.  When they saw the star that signified His birth, they travelled from the East, stopped in Jerusalem, and met with the King... all before continuing on to Bethlehem. In fact, because Herod called for babies under two years of age to be killed, some believe Jesus could have been almost two before the wise men came to Him. Regardless of when, Scripture tells us that they presented Christ with those now iconic gifts - gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The wise men had done what they set out to do, and they were ready to go home, "But God warned the wise men in a dream not to go back to Herod, so they returned to their own country by a different way" (Matthew 2:12, NCV).

Scripture seems to be full of accounts of people who received a message from God by dream or vision. In the next verse - literally, the next verse - another dream comes as a warning. This time, however, it is Joseph who is the recipient.

After they left, an angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up! Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt, because Herod is starting to look for the child so he can kill him. Stay in Egypt until I tell you to return.” So Joseph got up and left for Egypt during the night with the child and his mother. (Matthew 2:13-14, NCV)

Why is it that God once spoke so often through dreams, but now it seems that He no longer does? First of all, we have something better than dreams.  We have the Spirit. We are taught that the Spirit teaches us (John 14:26), guides us (John 16:13), convicts us of sin (John 16:8), gives us power (Acts 1:8), and even tells us what to say (Luke 12:12). These are some of the things that were once accomplished by dreams. However, I think there is a second fact: we don't think that God speaks through dreams. Why would God speak in a way we are unwilling to hear?

What little faith I have! Of course God still speaks through dreams. Is my memory that short? I had a series of dreams about ten years ago that were unsettling. They weren't scary, but they shook my faith. I will admit, I don't think I responded in the way God wanted.  I suppose in that regard, the dreams did scare me because they required to do something that was well beyond my comfort level.  God, forgive me for not having more faith in that situation.

That brings me to this, and it may be just for me, but I feel like I need to write it all the same. If God speaks through dreams, historically and in my own life, I must respond appropriately to God-initiated dreams. A good friend and spiritual mentor recently shared with me a dream he had about me that he couldn't shake. He believed it was more than a dream, that it was a vision. The dream was too big, and would be too painful if I believed it and it did not come to be, so I pushed it away.

Peace is not always found where we thought it would be. The wise men went a different way. Joseph picked up his family and ran. What you or I will have to do, God only knows. We find peace in listening to God and heeding His warnings - sometimes from Scripture, sometimes from counsel, and sometimes from dreams.

The next post in this series can be read here: TWO BUNDLES OF JOY.

FMF: Present

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. (Matthew 2:11, NIV)

Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” (Acts 3:6, NIV)

On a table in my living room sit two pieces of art created by kids.  Last year, my older son presented me with ceramic bowls he made in a pottery class, and a few years before that my younger son presented me with a wire sculpture he made. They are both blue, and they were both presented to me as gifts, but they bear no other similarities.

In the old testament, believers were given precise instructions as to what they were to present to God.  Grain, oil, and animals were some of the items presented to God.  But even then, the law made allowances. If a person did not have one thing, another could be presented to God in its place.

Though the way we make offerings to God has changed, He still only expects us to present Him with what we have.  Like my children, God does not compare our gifts to others' gifts.  I would not have criticized my son's sculpture because it was not a bowl any more than I would have rejected my other son's bowl because it was not a sculpture. The beauty of giving to God is that He only asks us to present to Him what He has already given to us.

This post is a prompt from Five Minute Friday and was written in approximately five minutes. For more information, visit fiveminutefriday.com.

Advent 2020: Hope and Two Divorces

This post is part of a series of reflections on Advent.

You can read the first post here: 33 DAYS AND COUNTING.

It's the first Sunday of Advent, and I'd like to kick of this special time of year by talking about divorce.  Merry Christmas.  Ho ho ho.

Though my parents were married more than forty years when my father died, both of their parents were divorced.  Technically, my mother's parents were only legally separated, but they were functionally divorced with no intent to reconcile. My father's parents on the other hand were legally divorced. As the story has been told to me, my parents had married Thanksgiving weekend, and it was their first Christmas that my grandfather announced he wanted to divorce my grandmother. This was a decade before I was born, and obviously not one of the stories you ask to be told at bedtime, so some of the details are missing. Growing up, when I would think of my grandfather coming home one day in December to tell his wife of twenty years that he met someone new, my heart grew sad for my grandmother. My grandfather would stay married to his second wife until he died almost fifty years later, and my grandmother did everything in her power to avoid them. Even though she herself would go on to have a "special friend," they never married. It seemed she never could move past her identity as a divorced person.

The funny thing about our disassociation between divorce and Christmas, is that the Biblical Christmas story actually describes a couple's intent to divorce. Mary and Joseph's story is salacious. The couple was technically engaged, but legally committed to each other when the unexpected happened:

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. (Matthew 1:18-19, NIV)

Joseph doesn't always get much attention when we read about Christ's birth.  Like many dads, Joseph lived in the shadows of everything else going on around him: angels, shepherds, wise men, a government census, and the plot to kill his wife's child. It's easy to to miss Joseph in the grandeur of the story, but initially Joseph was struggling to find balance between his faith and love. In verse 19 we read that Joseph intended to quietly divorce Mary because he was "faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace."  As He often does, God had other plans.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. (Matthew 1:20-25, NIV)

The first week of Advent is about hope. Joseph found himself in a situation without hope, and so he planned to resolve the problem as best he could. He was going to "send Mary away secretly" as the NASB translates verse 19.  When God sent His angels to Joseph, the situation changed; Joseph had a reason to hope. He could live in the hope that his wife had not been unfaithful to him.  He could live in the hope that her child was the promised Savior.  Let's just be real here, he could even hope for the day he would consummate his marriage. Because Joseph chose to live in the hope God offered him, he was part of the greatest story ever told.  All because he allowed himself to have hope.

If this post finds you, like Joseph, trying to make the best of a situation you never anticipated... look for hope.  We cannot always immediately have that thing we are waiting for, but we can always wait in hope for it.  Romans 8:24-25 (read it HERE) reminds us that hope only exists in absence.

Hope beyond reason.

Hope beyond measure.

The next post in this series can be read here: PEACE AND TWO DREAMS.

FMF: Grateful

...and give thanks whatever happens. That is what God wants for you in Christ Jesus.

(1 Thessalonians 5:18, NCV)

Pies are a terrible American tradition. There are too many ways they can go wrong. Yesterday, as my friend cut into my family's traditional cranberry pie, she remarked how it reminded her of crème brulee. You know, crunchy on the top and wet underneath. I assure you, it was not suppose to be like that.

So I did the only thing I knew to do.  I grabbed that pie and threw it back in the oven, and then I waited - impatiently - until finally, it was as good as it was going to get.  To be honest, I'm not sure if I even made it better.  It was still soft in the center, but now the edges were burnt.

Even though it wasn't the way I'd envisioned it, it was pie time.  My #nailedit worthy pie returned to its spot among the perfectly executed classics: apple, pecan, and pumpkin. Yes, we had four pie varietals at my house yesterday.

This year I struggled with Thanksgiving.  I always struggle with holiday, but this year was especially hard.  Just like my cranberry pie, too many things feel raw in the middle and burnt on the edges. But this is what I have to work with. I pray that, like my cranberry pie, God allows me to be grateful for the good parts of life instead of focusing on the rest.

This post is a prompt from Five Minute Friday and was written in approximately five minutes. For more information, visit fiveminutefriday.com.