Tag Archives: One Word

Chapter-a-Day

Blessed in the Running

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Blessed in the Running (CaD 1 Ki 19) – Wayfarer

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.
1 Kings 19:3a (NIV)

2022 has not been a banner year, to be perfectly honest. My one word for this year has been blessed.

“How’s that working out for you?” Wendy asked me a few weeks ago as we were discussing life.

I couldn’t help but imagine God impersonating Inigo Montoya saying to me: “‘Blessed.’ You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Indeed, it’s been a year of hard lessons.

Today’s chapter has always intrigued me, and in it, I have often found solace. The great prophet Elijah has just witnessed one of the most miraculous events recorded in the entire Great Story. He has watched God break through and win a great victory over his enemies against all odds. He should be feeling cocky and courageous despite the fact that he has stirred up his enemies’ vengeance.

But Elijah is afraid. Elijah wants to run, and run he does. Into the wilderness, he runs. Forty days and forty nights he runs.

A few months ago, I was having a cut-and-run moment amidst some stressful days . It happened to be on a Sunday morning and we were worshipping among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers. I asked for prayer and I literally told the sisters praying for me that I wanted to run from the circumstances stressing me. I’ll never forget what was said to me that morning.

“God gives us the desires of our hearts. So, go ahead and run. Just make sure you’re running into God’s arms.”

That’s exactly what Elijah did in today’s chapter. Afraid, worn out, and running on empty, he runs to the mountain of God and hides in a cave. God tells Elijah to go outside the cave and prepare himself for He is about to pass by.

Then, there was a violent wind, but God wasn’t in the wind.

Next came a powerful earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake.

After that, there was a raging fire, but God wasn’t in the fire.

God finally spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice – a gentle whisper.

And, you know what? That’s why I begin my days in the quiet. I love a dramatic eucatastrophe as much as anyone. God’s flashy victory on Mount Carmel was spectacular. I often want and expect God to bless me in a mighty wind, a rumbling mountain-moving quake, or with flashy and fiery pyrotechnics. Along my spiritual journey, I’ve come to understand that God typically blesses me as I sit alone in the quiet, even on stressful days in which I am afraid and feel like running for my life. It’s in my morning pages and my contemplation that I hear His gentle whisper.

What does He say? Basically, the same thing He told Elijah.

“Keep going. Press on. Do what I’ve given you to do.”

“I have blessed you in ways you don’t comprehend.”

“I am blessing you now, even if you don’t see it or perceive it.”

“You will be blessed beyond your wildest dreams at the journey’s end.“

And so, I leave the quiet and press forward with my day, each day, one day at a time.

Taking next week off to spend time with family. See ya next year!

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Wayfarer Podcast

Weekend Podcast: Mark Scandrette & the Ninefold Path of Jesus

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(WW) Mark Scandrette & the Ninefold Path of Jesus – Wayfarer

On this Wayfarer Weekend (WW) podcast, my conversation with Mark Scandrette, author of The Ninefold Path of Jesus – Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes.

“We’ve learned to live from a mentality of anxiety and greed, but what if a world of abundance with solace and comfort is actually near? We’ve learned to live by striving, competition, and comparison, but what if we all have equal dignity and worth? Whatever your story, whatever your struggle, wherever you find yourself, this way is available to you.”

Mark Scandrette is executive direction of Reimagine: A Center for Integral Christian Practice. In addition to leading learning labs worldwide, Mark teaches in the doctoral program at Fuller Seminary. He lives with his family in San Francisco’s Mission District.

http://markscandrette.com

http://ninefoldpath.org

Wayfarer Podcast

Wayfarer Weekend Podcast: “One Word” Recap 2021

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In this Wayfarer Weekend (WW) podcast, we’ll talk about layers of introspection from devotional chapter-a-day thoughts to an annual focus on “one word.” Earlier in 2021, I talked about my “one word” for this year. Today, I’ll recap some of the places my focus on that word led me, and how it’s helped me in my spiritual journey.

(WW) "One Word" Recap for 2021 – Wayfarer

Chapter-a-Day, Wayfarer Podcast

Faith in the Fire

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Faith in the Fire (CaD Ps 93) – Wayfarer

Your throne was established long ago;
you are from all eternity.
Psalm 93:2 (NIV)

On the Wayfarer Weekend podcast this past weekend I shared my experiences with a spiritual exercise that Wendy and I have participated in for several years in which we choose “one word” to be “my word” for the year.

In 2020, my word was “believe.” Early in 2020, as I meditated on the word I found myself asking questions that started with the phrase “If I really believe what I say I believe….” and the reciprocal answers were sometimes blunt.

“If I really believe what I say I believe…

…then I believe that eternity is greater by far than this earthly life.”

…then I have no choice but to forgive this person.”

…then I should be more generous than I feel like being in the moment.”

…then I must respond to that jerk on Facebook with kindness.”

And this was all before the world was thrown into a global pandemic, before racial inequity blew up America, and before political tensions around the presidential election completed a cultural cocktail which further polarized people both in the States and around the world. My soul rattled as the world rocked from the tension.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 93, is fascinating for both its brevity and its singular focus on God’s eternal enthronement over the cosmos. “Enthronement” songs were popular in religions of the ancient near east. What made the Hebrew belief system unique was the declaration of Yahweh as the one God.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (NIV)

Kings were not deities. Human were not deities. Other deities were simply statues and trinkets made from human hands. There is one God enthroned over everything; One God over us all.

“If I really believe what I say I believe…

…then while the world around me rocks from the trifecta cocktail of pandemic, protests, and politics I am assured that God is still on the throne of the cosmos. The Great Story will be played out (with all the earthly turmoil that Jesus, Himself, predicted) and God’s kingdom is not in trouble.”

Following Jesus is a faith journey because it requires me to find assurance in hope that isn’t readily apparent in my present circumstances. It requires me to trust in that which I can’t see, touch, hear, taste, or smell in the flesh. It calls me to see everything through the lens of spiritual truth rather than reactionary human emotion.

In the quiet this morning I find myself reflecting on the spiritual lessons I will take with me from 2020. For me, choosing the word “believe” on which to focus in the most troubling and tumultuous year in my lifetime was a divine appointment. Faith is easy when life is the same. When the fecal matter comes into contact with the electric, rotary oscillator then the genuineness of my faith gets tested as precious metal in the forger’s fire. (See 1 Peter 1:6-7)

The lyrics of Psalm 93 are an amazing statement of faith and praise.

The question is: “Do I really believe it?” And, if the answer is “I do,” then my response to circumstances around me on the global, cultural, and personal levels, will be congruent with that belief.

Wayfarer Podcast

(WW) One Word

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This Wayfarer Weekend Podcast: Trivial Pursuit, Naked Tenders, Synergy, Magnanimity, Thomas Aquinas, Kenosis, Quarantine, Peter Heck, English Premier League, and Ted Lasso as we discuss “One Word.”

(WW) One Word – Wayfarer

Chapter-a-Day

One Word: Believe

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[Jesus] could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
Mark 6:5-6 (NIV)

Among my local gathering of Jesus’ followers there has been an initiative in recent years to choose one word as sort of a spiritual theme for one’s life each year. It’s a very informal thing. Most people pray about it and seek some divine guidance in what their “one word” should be. It becomes a tool for asking, seeking, and knocking on the spiritual door of what God is doing in your life in the particular stretch of your spiritual and/or life journey.

My word for this year is “believe” which I consider to be the active form of “faith.”

One of the subtle themes that I find Mark weaving into his Jesus story is that of faith. Those who had faith experienced the miraculous. In today’s chapter, the people of Jesus’ hometown couldn’t believe that Joseph’s boy, Jesus, was this teacher everyone was talking about:

“He’s the carpenter. You know! Joseph and Mary’s boy. The one who abandoned Mary and the siblings this last year to become this traveling prophet. Who does Jesus think He is? If you ask me, that boy should get these silly notions out of His head, get back to the carpenter’s shop, and help provide for the family.”

Mark records that Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith. Few miracles were performed, not because Jesus had less power but because the people had less of the activating ingredient of the miraculous: they didn’t believe. Their limited faith in Jesus limited what God could do among them.

Later in the chapter, after Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish and walks out on the Sea of Galilee to meet the disciples who are struggling at the oars of their boat, Mark records that #TheTwelve were still amazed and struggling to understand what Jesus was doing. Their “hearts were hard” Mark records. Their faith had not caught up to what they had been witnessing. They were struggling to believe it all.

In the quiet this morning, my mind wanders back to what Jesus said a few chapters back:

“What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

Mark 4:30-32 (NIV)

Jesus also used the Mustard Seed as a metaphor for how much “faith” is required to move a mountain.

I find it ironic (or is it a divine appointment?) that my “one word” for 2020 is “believe” and it’s the year that the COVID-19 virus upends life as we know it and, according to the press who screams it 24/7 to anyone who will listen, threatens to tank the global economy and take my business with it (if we all don’t die first).

Have you ever seen a mustard seed?

In the quiet this morning, Holy Spirit is whispering to my spirit. I imagine it was the same message Jesus was whispering to #TheTwelve on the boat after he walked out on the water and climbed in the boat.

“Yep. It doesn’t take much. Just believe.“

Chapter-a-Day

Making Room

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Make room for us in your hearts.
2 Corinthians 7:2 (NIV)

Wendy and I have been on a slow process this year of purging things from our possession. We’ve taken loads to the local thrift store for donation, sold things on Facebook, pitched things, and given things away. In some ways I don’t feel like we’ve made much of a dent. There seems always to be more stuff than room.

I was struck this morning by Paul’s appeal to the Jesus followers in Corinth to “make room for us in your hearts.” The word picture indicates that there is finite room in the heart just as there is finite room in a house. There is only so much room.

So how much stuff have I crammed in my heart?

What exactly have I crammed in there?

Is it bringing me an increase of Life, or is it just taking up space?

Are there things that should be in my heart but for the lack of room?

Paul’s word picture also assumes that we can make room in our hearts just as we make room in our house. Things can be purged, released, tossed away, and given away.

What have I crammed in my heart that is dead, lifeless, and taking up space?

I’m once again reminded of my word for 2017: empty. As I have meditated on empty I have come to realize that its significance for me is not as an adjective but as a verb. There are things in my life to be emptied. I’m prayerfully pondering this morning how my own heart might be one of them.

Wayfarer's Journal

One Word for 2017 … (continued)

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I mentioned in a post a week or two ago that over the past couple of years Wendy and I, along with some other family and friends, have been engaged in finding “One Word” that is like a theme for our year. For Wendy and me, the idea is not that we consciously choose a word we desire to be the theme of our year, but that we are open to what word we believe God has chosen for each of us in that year. It’s a faith thing. Ask. Seek. Listen. You’ll know it when you hear it.

I shared in my recent post that the word I’ve been given for 2017 is “empty.” I’m still wrestling with that.

Those who know us well know that Wendy is far more deliberative (literally, about every single thing in life) than I am. I’m an intuitive go with your gut and go with the flow kind of person. Wendy typically weighs and reweighs decisions, and then she double checks her choices in case she might have made the wrong one (I can, at this moment, hear God joyfully cackling at our union). So, the reality is that one year Wendy didn’t really get her one word until sometime in the summer.

Having said this, there are times when Wendy determines something quickly and with abnormal (for her) immediacy. When that happens I’ve learned to pay attention because it’s usually God at work.

So it was yesterday during our weekly worship that Wendy told me that she felt called to go to the elders for prayer. This is a regular thing among our local gathering of Jesus followers. Elders stand ready during worship to pray for anyone who desire is. Wendy went to the side of the room to pray and was there a good while.

On our ride home Wendy shared with me that she had felt prompted to go over for prayer because she has been feeling so “empty.” Yes, she used that exact word. Then she said that as one of the elders (a dear friend and prophet whom God has used to speak into our lives at different times) prayed, she uttered a word that dropped onto Wendy’s spirit. “I went, ‘I think that’s my word!‘”

“Pay attention,” the Spirit said to my spirit.

Abundance. Her word was abundance.

My word is empty.

This is going to be interesting.

Wayfarer's Journal

One Word for 2017

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A few years ago our local gathering of Jesus followers went through a series of messages entitled “One Word.” One of the exercises we were challenged to undertake was to pray about one word that would be our personal word for the given year – a theme of sorts.

To be honest, I haven’t expended much thought or effort into the process. I have just tried to keep my spirit open and listen. I’ve had a sort of “you’ll know it when you hear it” kind of attitude.

Two years ago my word was fulfill, or as I liked to write it full-fill. Going into the year I had all sorts of ideas about what that meant. That year saw the fulfillment of a decade of leadership in our local community theatre. We were fulfilled to watch our daughters finishing their graduate and undergraduate degrees, respectively. We fulfilled our time of Wendy’s sister, Suzanna, living with us. We fulfilled a calling to build a house. At the end of the year was the unexpected fulfillment of a legacy as the founder of our company, and my life-long mentor, passed away.

Last year my word was focus. Once again I think my early expectations of what that might mean in coming year was not at all what it ended up being. It is easy for me to feel like it was an epic fail when I think about ways that I wanted to focus my time, energy and life. Instead, it seemed to be more about how life required me to focus my time and energy, at times in less than fun ways.

This year my word is empty which, honestly, does not strike me as particularly inspiring or Pinterest-worthy. More than once I’ve asked in my spirit, “Really?!” I always feel the confirmation.

The past two years I’ve entered the year with my word inspiring all sorts of grandiose notions of what it could mean, only to find in the end that reality was more grind than grand. This year my word has my spirit whispering, “Oh, shit.”

Chapter-a-Day

One Word: Focus

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Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned….
Romans 5:12 (NIV)

For the past couple of years many people in our community have been going through the exercise of choosing one word as their theme for each year. Wendy, Taylor and I have joined in the exercise. Taylor has blogged about her experiences with her one word of “surrender” and “fierce,” but I haven’t really shared about mine.

In 2015 my one word was “fulfill,” or as I liked to think of it “Full-Fill” which stretched the meaning for me in interesting ways. To be sure, 2015 was a year in which many things were fulfilled in life:

  • Building and moving into a new house
  • Entering the final year of my fourth decade on this earth
  • Taylor’s fulfillment of a Master’s Degree
  • Wendy and I fulfilled our desire to visit Taylor in Scotland
  • Madison’s fulfillment of a Bachelor’s Degree
  • Suzanna’s fulfillment of getting off to college
  • My folks fulfilled their move into a retirement community
  • At work there was the fulfillment of some interesting things
  • My friend and mentor, Chuck’s, fulfilled his life journey

The net effect of all these life transitions for both myself and loved ones was to highlight one important point: l am entering a new stretch of my life journey. Things are in transition. The river of Life is flowing and I am suddenly aware how swift the current truly is. The finish line is out there on the horizon.

In today’s chapter, Paul writes the followers of Jesus in Rome and reminds them of some big picture truths. Among them, the reality that physical death is the fate that awaits us all. It shows up on the horizon of every one’s life journey. This can be a truth I can deny and avoid, or it is a truth I can accept and embrace.

To that end, this year my “one word” is focus. There are some things on which I need to focus as life enters a new phase. Some I’m aware of, and some I believe I have yet to discover. As always, I’m sure it will be a fascinating trek.

 

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