Archive for September, 2011

A tailor prayed, “Lord, I cheat on pieces of cloth; you let babies die. But I am going to make you a deal. You forgive me my little sins and I’ll forgive you your big ones.”

Lew Smedes included that haunting anecdote in his important little book, Forgive and Forget. He uses it to call attention to a concept that might be more comfortable to ignore: theodicy and the problem of pain. Or more to the heart of the matter, what is the impact of our pain and suffering on the way we view God?

Many well-meaning evangelists have “softened” the gospel demand “to pick up your cross and follow Me” for the gospel of personal well-being. Or is its source the Bible? Theophylact, the 11th century archbishop of Ohrid (modern day Bulgaria), suggests that even members of early Christian communities believed that life for the faithful, based on their reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, should be prosperous and secure:

“Many Christians found afflictions hard to bear because they had read in the law that a prosperous and secure life was promised to those who serve God. Peter therefore approaches the subject by telling them that they are greatly beloved. He then goes on to warn them not to be surprised at their sufferings, which come to them as tests from God.”

A choir director I know used to take his choir on a fall “advance” (instead of a “retreat”) to make progress on the fall’s music.  Usually we think of a retreat as a time to get away or “save yourself,” as in a military retreat. I think all these nuanced ideas work well together: we seek to leave our normal routine, sometimes as a “life-saving” necessity to make progress in areas of our life where we feel stuck. For most of us, these are planned events. I want to tell you the story of a forced retreat.

Please Don’t Break

by Anne Grizzle

After keeping silence together

where the only sounds are the wind’s

whistle, woodpeckers drumming, high

pitched melodic trills from half a mile away,

one’s own heartbeat and soul stirrings,

the Creator’s soft whispered care –

it’s hard to find a word that’s worthy

to break that clearest crystal space.

If you are anything like me, the news of the earthquake and tsunami that recently devastated the nation of Japan, crept into your awareness gradually.  Even if you heard the news right away, it wasn’t until you started seeing the pictures, the video, the coverage that the enormity of this event truly hit you emotionally, mentally, spiritually.  Images have an impact on our souls, communicating truth – and suffering – in ways that a thousands of words cannot.

This will be published on Friday.

I find myself frequently and joyfully “on retreat” these days…facilitating them for leaders and teams, guiding them for our own ministry teams, planning them for others on Sabbatical, and engaging in them for myself. No matter what the context or the group, the purpose of a soul care retreat is pretty straight forward: deepening intimacy with Christ.

We often think of retreats as times of refreshment, as times when we choose to get away from our normal activities of daily living in order that we might behold God and also examine ourselves and our ways. And that is what retreats usually are.

I am on retreat even as I type this. Over the years I have found that I need to pull back from the maddening that is sometimes my life. I have found that retreats have given me an opportunity to schedule time alone to regain my equilibrium. Retreats help me align myself to the presence of God. When I am no longer sensitive to the fact that I’m barking and biting or that my life has again become unmanageable, retreats make space for me to simply “be still and know”.

There are no good ideas in front of me, only colorful sticky notes covered in gibberish.  Pre-writing was not going well this time, but what could I expect after abandoning common sense?