they didn't realize

“Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.” (John 21:4)

Apparently, it was difficult to recognize the risen Christ, just ask Peter and John, or Mary, or the travelers on the road to Emmaus.  I wonder why that was.  Was it something about him or something about them that kept the realization from happening?  Or maybe it was just the situation.  Maybe it was the early morning sunlight, or their preoccupation with trying to haul in a catch of fish, or their frustration with not being able to do so.  Maybe it was the grief and sadness and confusion of having lost their dear friend and teacher and leader.  After all, Mary came to the tomb looking for a dead Jesus, and what she found was a Jesus more alive than he had ever been.  That would have been a surprise to anyone. 

The real question is not about them but about me.  How many times in my life have I failed to realize it was Jesus?  After all, he has been there all along, but I have failed to recognize it.  And where am I currently failing to recognize that it is Jesus?  Where and how is he standing on the shore of my life, just waiting for me to finally realize that it is him?

Give me eyes to see you, Lord Jesus, and a heart to recognize you in the midst of the events and interactions and conversations of my day.

the one who stayed (good friday)

“The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true.  He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. (John 19:35)

O John, why did you stay?  Why did you stay to the bitter end?  Why did you stay until his dying breath, when all the others had fled?  Was it because of love?  Was it because you knew that love is stronger than fear?  Was it because you knew that perfect love casts out fear?

Teach me how to stay as well.  Teach me how to believe in love.  Teach me how to dwell in the house of love rather than the house of fear.  Teach me to look deeply into the eyes of Love and glean all that there is to glean from its delicious and delightful fruit.  Teach me to stand when I’m tempted to run away, teach me to stop when I am always on the go, teach me to listen when I am constantly speaking, and teach me to believe that perfect love always has ahold of me even when I am filled with fear and doubt.  Only then will I know what you know.  Only then will I know that I, too, am the disciple whom Jesus loved.

“Fix your eyes on the Crucified and nothing else will be of much importance to you.  If his Majesty revealed his love to us by doing and suffering such amazing things, how can you expect to please him by words alone.” ~St. Teresa of Avila

a prayer for palm sunday

Loving God, on this day we remember that going up to Jerusalem cost Jesus his very life.  So we come before you, conscious of the way religious words and holy phrases can slip so easily from our lazy lips and our hardened hearts.  What do we really know of your mountainous truth, your rock-hard integrity, the depth of your suffering for love of us all?  Forgive us for the shallowness of our faith and the timidity of our following: forgive us for the ready excuses we make for going our own way and claiming it as yours.

Turn us round again, we pray, by your Holy Spirit, active within us and among us.  Show us how to be open again to your faithfulness and to your freedom, that we may live new lives and be again bearers of the seeds of the realm of Jesus.

—Going up to Jerusalem by John Harvey

Next book in the series (Eastertide)

 

If you are looking for a companion for the season of Eastertide, Alive: Encountering the Risen Jesus is available on Amazon.

where is your hope?

“O Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.” (Ps. 131:3) Where is your hope?  Who, or what, do you really put your hope in?  And how can you tell if your hope is really in the Lord?  If you look at your life, it will give you a pretty good idea.  Your actions will always show you where your hope really lies. 

Waiting for the Lord is one surefire way to tell.  Waiting for the Lord shows us where our hope really lies.  If we are willing and able to wait for the Lord, it shows that our hope is really in him, and if we are always charging ahead, it shows that our hope is really in ourselves. 

What does it look like to put your hope in the Lord these days?

wait in hope

“But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” (Rom. 8:25) 

There is an intimate connection between hoping and waiting.  Until we fully recognize and acknowledge that the things we most deeply long for—like healing, wholeness, freedom, and peace—cannot be accomplished by our own power, gifts, and efforts, we will always be frustrated.  When we long for things that only God can bring about, our only option is to wait in hope and trust that God’s heart is good, and he will take care of us.  Unfortunately, we are not very good at waiting patiently, which means that, in most cases, our hope is in ourselves rather than in our God.  Thus, we constantly try to manufacture and produce, to fix and manipulate, rather than wait patiently.

We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.  In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.  May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” (Psalm 33:20-22)

paradox

 "...like a weaned child with its mother is my soul within me." (Ps. 131:2)

you must know

your belovedness

before you can

fully embrace

your nothingness

only you

Only you, O God, can make the parched land glad and make the wilderness blossom and bloom. (Is. 35:1) Only you can make water gush forth in the desert and make streams flow in the wasteland.  Only you can turn burning sand into pools of water and transform thirsty ground into bubbling springs.  Only you can turn the wilderness into a place of life and hope.  Do that again today, we pray.  Lord, have mercy on us.

out of and into

“And the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil, and oppression.  So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders.  He brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey…” (Deut. 26:7-9)

The two movements of God in this passage are unmistakable: He leads the Israelites out of Egypt, in order to lead them into the promised land.  That’s kind of the way He works; God is always leading us out of one thing to lead us into another.  Out of darkness and into light.  Out of brokenness and into wholeness.  Out of chaos and into peace.  Out of slavery and into freedom.  Out of fear and into love.  The first thing must be left behind in order for the second thing to be fully realized.

What is God leading you out of these days and what is he leading you into?  What is he asking you to leave behind and what is he inviting you to step into?  What does he want you to let go of and what does he want you to take hold of? 

Lent 2025

 Lent begins on March 5th this year.  If you're looking for a companion for yourself, your family, your small group, your staff, your church, etc.  Here are two options:

Emptying is the next book in the Order My Steps series.

And Journey to the Cross was my first Lenten devotional.

Both are available on Amazon.

divine duality

weeping and laughing

mourning and dancing

sorrow and joy

not enemies

but friends

not opposites

but compliments

mysteriously connected

each requiring the other

a divine duality

only through, not around

“Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.” (Psalm 77:19) Oh, how great it would be if your path, O God, always led around the sea.  If life with you meant that we would never experience heartache or chaos or pain or loss.  But your path does not lead around the sea, but straight through it.  It is only by going through the sea that we are forced to depend on you.  You teach us something by taking us through the sea of pain and loss, of sorrow and sadness, that we could learn no other way.  Walking through the sea is what you use to form our lives and shape our hearts.  It is how you make us more like Jesus, who “learned obedience through what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8) So, thank you.

Loss is inevitable in this broken and fallen world.  How we deal with that loss is something else altogether.  We can live our lives trying to avoid or deny it, or we can face our losses, grieve them, and embrace what God wants to do in us through them.  The fact is that we can never arrive at joy by going around sorrow, but only by going through it.  It all comes down to trust, really.  Do we trust his heart when we cannot see his hand (or, in this case, his footprints)? 

action and contemplation

“I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” (Psalm 131:2)

Carlo Carretto once wrote: “When there is a crisis in the Church, it is always here: a crisis of contemplation.  The church wants to feel able to explain about her spouse even when she has lost sight of him; even when, although she has not been divorced, she no longer knows his embrace, because curiosity has gotten the better of her and she has gone searching for other people and other things.” (The God Who Comes by Carlo Carretto)

We talk about being a weaned child with its mother, we read about it, we study it, we teach it, and we even write about it.  But do we do it?  Do we actually ever become a weaned child with its mother?  That is the crisis of contemplation.

Action that is not born out of contemplation has no power or authenticity.  It is just theory and dogma without experience and encounter.  We must stop talking about it and just do it!  We must become a weaned child with its mother!  For only then will we be able to experience the stilled and quieted heart of one whose hope and love and life are rooted firmly in the experience of God's unfailing love.  And only then do we have any hope of being a non-anxious presence in this fallen, broken, chaotic, and fearful world.

O Lord, help me not just to talk about being a weaned child with its mother, but help me to actually become a weaned child with its mother.  Help me to live every minute of my life in your strong and loving embrace.

shrinking

humble heart, lowly eyes

non-essential disposition

fully embracing unimportance

stilled and quieted soul, weaned heart

non-anxious presence

free of need, free to love

my only hope is in you

this is the life you want me to live

connectedness

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice.  Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.  If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?  But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.  My soul waits for the Lord ore than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.  He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.” (Psalm 130:1-8)

Have mercy, wait for the Lord, put your hope in the Lord, and trust in the Lord are all interconnected.  If you take out one of them out, the whole thing falls down.  Thus, all are essential, and all are interdependent as we walk with God. 

Mercy involves the realization of my immense need for Jesus—not merely in salvation (which is huge), but in all things.  It involves me realizing that I cannot do or accomplish anything of eternal value on my own.  Not one thing.  I am totally helpless and dependent on God and his power.

If I can do nothing (as Jesus tells me in John 15:5), then I am totally dependent on God’s mercy for anything and everything.  Which is not a good look for us.  We do everything we can to make sure we never have to depend on anyone.  But the truth is that all of us are totally dependent on God and his mercy.  Therefore, our only recourse is to wait for the Lord.

But we can’t really wait for the Lord if our hope is not in the Lord.  This is where the lines get a little blurry, because it is hard for us to see, at times, what our hope is really in.  Sometimes our hope is in our gifts and abilities.  Sometimes it is in the gifts and abilities of others.  Sometimes it’s in our circumstances, our performance, or the opinions and affirmations of those around us.  All of which point to our hope being in ourselves instead of in our God.

So, it all comes down to trust.  We can’t possibly hope in the Lord—or beg him for mercy or wait for him—if we do not trust him.  It’s as simple as that.  Which brings us right back to begging for mercy.  For when we cry out for mercy, God gives it to us 100% of the time.  It may not look like we want it to—which is a mercy in and of itself—but it is exactly what we need.

Hope in the Lord, O my soul; wait for him.  Do not take matters into your own hands, but trust in him to move, speak, and act in whatever way he sees fit.  That’s what walking with God is all about; he leads, and we follow.

saturday's psalm

Praying Psalm 131 every Saturday for the past eight years has been one of the most formative things for my soul that I can remember.  It continues to change the way I see, think, and operate.  I'm just hoping that someday it will be 100% true of the way I live my life.  Here's today's response:

Empty me of pride and arrogance, O Lord.

Empty me of the need to be important.

Don't let me be consumed with making an impact.

Then my soul can finally be still and quiet.

Resting in your loving embrace.

Weaned of need and be free to love.

Then my hope will be in you, and you alone.

come and rest

“Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30) What a beautiful invitation, and yet we rarely, if ever, take Jesus up on it.

Why is that?  Why are we so resistant to rest?  Why are we so hesitant to come?  Jesus gives us an open invitation into the life and joy and rest of the Trinity and we refuse.  Why on earth would we do that?  Are our egos so big that we think we can manage and control our lives better than he can?  Are we so prideful and delusional that we would rather sink or swim on our own than surrender to his care, direction, and control?

It’s nothing new; Isaiah and Jeremiah ran into the same thing: “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy one of Israel, says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.’” (Isaiah 30:15) “This is what the Lord says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.’  But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’” (Jeremiah 6:16)

What is wrong with us?  God offers us the moon and we settle for the darkness.  He offers us a life of peace and joy and rest, and we settle for anxiety, weariness, and busyness.  We’re a piece of work, huh?

 

131

O heart, be not proud and lifted up.  O eyes, be not high ad haughty and arrogant.  Don’t live on the oxygen of approval, affirmation, and accomplishment.

Instead, still and quiet your soul like a weaned child in the loving embrace of its mother.  Breathe me in.  Let me be the only air you need.  Stop trying to suck it out of everyone else, for that is what it means to be weaned.  Only then will you be free.

And all of it depends on me, not on you.  Always remember that.

What's above is a little adaptation of Psalm 131 from my time with God this morning.  It's a psalm I have been praying every Saturday for years now.  And every time I pray it, I wonder if I'm making any progress in the "weaned life."  There is still so much in me that I need to be weaned of.  I need to be weaned of the need for a certain response from others, weaned of the need to impress and be affirmed, weaned of my slavery to what others think and say about me, weaned of my captivity to results and performance.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  But, as the psalm says, my only hope for this weaning is in God.  So, I will keep praying and keep wrestling and keep trying and keep hoping that one day "stilled and quieted" might actually be the state of my heart and soul.

broken and contrite

“My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)

It could be that my brokenness, desperation, and dependence are the best things I have going for me.  It could be that they open up great space for God to live, move, and act in and through me.  Thus, maybe I should embrace them rather than reject, avoid, or deny them.

Maybe they are an invitation rather than an intrusion.  An invitation to recognize the presence of God, the hand of God, and the power of God amidst all the chaos.  An invitation to share in the sufferings and vulnerability of Christ, and to become more and more like him.

Maybe a continual sacrifice of my deep brokenness and contrition makes good space for God to do some of his best work, because it keeps me from taking up all the space.  I am emptied of my competence and my adequacy and independence so that he can finally fill me with himself.  Maybe that sacrifice keeps me where he wants me and makes me who he wants me to be―humble, lowly, and dependent.  When we don’t recognize our great need for Jesus, we tend to take up all the space ourselves.  That’s why God will never despise an offering of a broken and contrite heart.

 

trajectory

down

down

down

empty

empty

empty

nothing

nothing

nothing

stripped

bare

and

wholly

dependent

on

You

an old invitation for a new year

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.  Why send money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?  Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul with delight in the richest of fare.  Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.” (Isaiah 55:1-3)

A New Year has begun, but God's invitation is always the same: "Come!" Could intimacy with God really be this simple?  Just listen to God’s words of invitation here and you tell me: come, come, come, come, listen, listen, eat, give ear and come to me, and hear me.  That's all we've got to do; the rest is up to him.  He’s the one who fills our hearts and brings delight to our souls.  All we have to do is come and listen.  Why do we make it so complicated?  And why don’t we consistently do what is written in these short few verses?  For if we did, our souls would truly live.  

What is God’s invitation to you for the New Year?  How is he inviting you to "Come"?  How is he inviting you to listen?  How is he inviting you to eat what is good, that your soul may live?