Sometimes there just aren’t words…

              when we sit with others in their grief.

              when others try to comfort us in ours.

Sometimes there just aren’t words…

              when life comes crashing down around us.

              when darkness and despair close in.

Sometimes there just aren’t words…

              when anxiety and doubt and shame condemn us.

              when regrets of the past rear their heads and gnash their teeth.

Sometimes there just aren’t words…

 One of my students, Corinne Samuelson, has spent the summer investigating what’s happening with “widows” in 1 Timothy 5. At first glance, one might think Paul was simply instructing Timothy about how to handle the many hungry older women in the Ephesian church (1:3). But on closer exploration we see a description of what might look like an office. That's a challenging question.

A recent leadership conference I attended focused on gratitude. The Chief Executive Officer of the company thought correction in how some members were running their businesses was needed, and therefore spent at least twenty to thirty minutes discussing:

• How to get gratitude,
• How to practice it, and
• How to extend it. 

During a recent Bible Study, I listened as a woman shared about her Christian friend whose godly mother had recently died. This sorrowing woman was grieving and needing comfort. To help with her grief, she drew from something she had heard in the culture—that her mother had now become an angel and was present with her, communicating with her. As we talked about this, looking into what was true or not and how to help someone grieving like that, our discussion encompassed three different issues.

1. Do Christians become angels when they die?

2. Can our loved ones in heaven see what is happening in our lives on earth and communicate with us?

3. When grieving, how do we turn to Jesus for our comfort rather than traditions that make us feel good but draw us away from Him?

Have you seen a cutting horse at work? The masterful way she sorts out a single cow and then maneuvers, step-by-step, to keep it away from the herd? With surpassing wit she leads a spectacular dance of wills.

Some days the world feels aflame.

Saturday, August 3^rd, 2019, the news gripped me. People fled out of a mall where I worked during college summers. Police surrounded the area less than one mile from my childhood home where I played hide and seek and marbles. Blood puddled at a store built where I used to trudge through the desert catching lizards and finding rocks. And the gunman—he hailed from the area where I now live. So, this terror feels more personal. And when I hear his actions flowed from racism and anti-immigrant anger, I shake my head at the lies and brokenness behind this horror.

We are embodied souls. Our souls live in a body that touches, tastes, sees, hears, feels, and thinks. Our soul and our flesh are not separate entities. They are intertwined. When someone is at the end of life, we take care of the physical body; however, the soul needs care as well.  

The 14-year-old daughter of a friend recently responded to her mother's correction with, "Don't judge me, Mom." The same week, a friend of mine asked my opinion on something, and as I was mentally running it through the grid of "what does God say about this in His word," she said, "Now, don't you go judging me!"

My son grabbed a book from the “Leave a Book, Take a Book” library. Mine Craft Zombies. I thumbed through and read, “Rotting flesh falling off.”

Um. Nope. Not this one.

So, I asked him in a teacher voice, “Is choosing to read a book you know your parents would disapprove of honoring your father and mother? Is it following Jesus? What do you think?”

He turned defensive. We played verbal tennis and he blurted out, “So, what do I have to do to go to heaven? I go to church. I believe. Why can’t I just do what I want?”

Ball drop.

Scripture is true. “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved,” (Acts 16:31) Then why does it matter what my son chooses to read—or do—or say?

And holds profound lessons for 2020

During these dog days of summer, HBO is offering one week free access—just enough to watch the blockbuster 5-part series (if you didn't see it in May) on the 1986 nuclear plant disaster that spread radiation all across Europe. Extremely well-written, terrific acting and an uncanny replication of 1986 Soviet Union, according to my husband who has taught theology there many times. And, It. Is. Riveting.  

The series begins with Valery Legasov, First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, recording tapes he will secretly pass on to his fellow scientists. As the lead scientist on the committee to investigate the disaster, he vents his frustration with the core values of Soviet socialism:

“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, we no longer recognize the truth at all. What happens then? All we can do is abandon the truth and content ourselves instead with stories.”

But at Chernobyl, all the socialist State stories hit the wall of reality.