On vacation, prayer, and asthma

Everyone has been asking. And the short answer is: Vacation was wonderful!

I am very grateful for the prayers of our church family and friends in the wider community while we were away. We were refreshed! And now, with Lenten activities and Holy Week and Easter... Oh, wow! Yes, April is a busy time, so "prayers for the pastor" continue to be very much “in order” and truly treasured and vital.

For that matter, prayer, period, is vital, is it not? Our lives... all of our lives and every aspect of our lives, yes, every breath of our lives comes from God.

Prayer is our lifeline, our connection to God in whom we live and breathe. One hymn says, “Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath, the Christian’s native air….”

Just as a fish can’t breathe without its gills which, by some miracle I'll never fully understand, allow it to pull the oxygen it needs from the water, in the same way we need prayer to connect us to the Breath of God, the Spirit of God, who daily renews and refreshes and revives us in Christ.

As I often do, I am preaching to myself here, but see if you don’t agree with this confession: We are too often “asthmatic” Christians.

According to one medical expert, “when you have asthma, two things happen inside your lungs --- constriction, the tightening of the muscles surrounding the airways, and inflammation, the swelling and irritation of the airways…. There is increasing evidence that, if left untreated, asthma can cause long-term loss of lung function.”

When we’re disconnected from the lifeline of prayer we are spiritually asthmatic. We find ourselves gasping for air! Left untreated, spiritual asthma can decrease our capacity to breathe the Spirit in deep, to fully experience God’s love and grace, to see God’s purposes for our lives and for the church.

Disconnected from prayer, we die.

Never Too Late

Most Minnesotans are very familiar with the Little House series of children’s books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. But here’s something you might not know: Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t publish the first novel in this famous series until she was in her sixties. It’s never too late!

You may have missed Ash Wednesday completely. Maybe the whole idea of Lent has been “off your radar screen” this year… so far. But it’s not too late. The Wednesday series (supper followed by the six-part “Learning Forgiveness” study and discussion) continues through Holy Week. It’s not too late to make plans to attend. It’s not too late to attend Lenten worship on Sundays. And it’s never too late to make a time of prayer a daily habit.

Some folks fast during Lent. If your health allows, it’s not too late to pick one or two days to “fast and pray.” It’s never too late to commit yourself to a Lenten “fast” from being anxious or worrisome, from longing for “all the good stuff so-and-so has,” from withholding forgiveness, from being consumed by anger or envy or pride.

It’s never too late to come to the place in your life where you finally admit that you can’t handle things on your own. It’s never too late to open yourself up to God’s unconditional love.

Peace in the Desert

“Look to your right,” said Grandma Jaarsma as we drove through the little burg of St. David, “and you should see it in just a mile or two.” And then, there it was: a sturdy wooden 30-foot Celtic Cross appearing almost magically in the desert. St. David’s Monastery lies peacefully behind a grove of pecan trees in a most unlikely and lonely spot just southeast of Benson, Arizona on state highway 80. Like most monasteries, St. David’s had a small bookstore. And since I was driving, we made a pit-stop on our way from Tucson to Tombstone.

It was there I found a souvenir worth carrying home: a hand-painted calligraphy with green grasses alongside the quote from Mahatma Gandhi:

THE SEVEN ROOTS OF VIOLENCE
Worship, without sacrifice
Wealth, without work
Pleasure, without conscience
Knowledge, without character
Commerce, without morality
Science, without humanity
Politics, without principle

The Motivation Behind Works of Social Justice and Compassion

Just thinking..... Is it not Gratitude that is the purest motivation of the human heart towards acts of Compassion and prayers and protests for Justice?

Heidelberg Catechism Q & A 86.

Q. We have been delivered from our misery by God's grace alone through Christ and not because we have earned it: why then must we still do good?

A. To be sure, Christ has redeemed us by his blood. But we do good because Christ by his Spirit is also renewing us to be like himself, so that all our living we may show that we are thankful to God for all he has done for us, and so that he may be praised through us.

And we do good so that we may be assured of our faith by its fruits, and so that by our godly living our neighbors may be won over to Christ.

The very acts of compassion Jesus describes in Matthew 25 -- "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me": Aren't these the acts we most often see in the lives of generous, tenderhearted, joyful folks who live with an attitude of Gratitude? C.S. Lewis said something along these lines in his book on the Psalms. I'm looking for the quote right now....

Oh, here it is:

I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds praise most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least.... (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms)

Lewis is using different words than we would, but I hear him saying basically this:

It seems obvious to me now: The people who overflow with deep gratitude are the folks who overflow with acts of compassion and who allow themselves to become one with the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, and the afflicted. Gratitude is at the heart of compassionate living. The people who don't give a hoot about others are the same jerks (poor souls) who never say thanks, the ones who say, "Why should I share? Everything I have I earned myself. I'll build bigger barns. I'll eat, drink, and be merry."