Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Layla Marie (A Baptism)


Little Layla,

You won't remember the day you got baptized. You won't remember how so many of the people who love you gathered with your mom and dad in the back of your church. You won't remember the white christening gown you wore, the same gown your sister wore less than two years earlier. You won't remember how the room was cold or how your cousins weaved in and out of the pews, as they waited to go to your house for cake. 
You won't remember the priest or the water or the oils or the prayers we prayed over you and for you.

But we will.


I will.

So if you ever need reminding of the day you officially were brought into the family of God, I'm your girl. 



Thanks for letting us be a part of your beautiful day.

Love you, little girl.





(thanks to Aunt Carol for taking these photos at the baptism) 

Saturday, November 23, 2013

The Bible is not a love letter written directly to you



"The Bible is God's Love Letter written just for me!"

Seriously, guys. Stop saying that. Stop thinking it. Stop pinning things about it.

Because when you say stuff like that, the internet produce scary pictures like this one.

Seriously, this is what you get when you say the Bible is a love letter

I blame you for this image. 

Traumatizing images aside, stop saying it because it makes you look like you haven't actually read the Bible.

Because if the Bible was actually was God's love letter written to me personally, I might think that somebody needs to explain to God what exactly love letters are supposed to look like...

Because this "love letter" has genocide in it. Floods. Destruction. And a whole bunch of gore, blood and death. (Don't believe me, flip open to the book of Judges...seriously, that book is crazy town)

And that's just the violent stuff. This love letter also has page after page of rules, genealogies, measurements, clothing patterns, debates about food laws, and the like.

Nothing says love like all that, right?

Even Jesus, the hero of our story, gets a bit snarky at times. Seriously, read what he actually says in there sometimes. Sometimes its all love and all inspiring, but sometimes he talks about cutting off your hands and throwing them into fire or throwing mill stones around people necks.

Oh and then there's Paul and all I'm going to say is that I'm pretty sure he would roll over in his grave if someone called him a romance author.

When you try to make the Bible become a love story written just for you, you are not getting the whole story of who God is and what the Bible can do. You end up ignoring its complexity, the multiplicity of its voices. You lose out on the stories, the tragedies, the victories.

You lose out on the anger. You lose out on the despair. Which makes the hope you find its pages lose some of its strength.

And no, I'm not saying that God's love isn't in the Bible. No, with every ounce of me I believe that Bible contains the words that lead to Life. God is love, friends and by reading its pages, I hope you begin to realize that God loves you and your neighbor and your enemy and all of creation.  And there are days when I know that the Spirit will use 3,000 year old words to speak directly to the deepest places of your heart.

But that doesn't mean the sole purpose of the Bible is to be love letter written by God directly to you.

It's a collection of stories and letters that span centuries, written for different reasons in different places. Different voices shouting through history to teach us a little bit more about who God is and about who we are and who we could be.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes the Bible like this:

[Because of the Bible] I am not an orphan. I have a community, a history, a future, a God. The Bible is my birth certificate and my family tree, but it is more: it is the living vein that connects me to my Maker, pumping me the stories I need to know about who we have been to one another from the beginning of time, and who we are now, and who we shall be when time is no more.” -   from This Preaching Life 

So call it your birth certificate. Call it your family tree. Call it your connection to the past and to the future.

Call it crazy and lovely and scary and life-giving and encouraging and difficult.

But please, stop calling it a love letter.

It is so much more.




Wednesday, November 13, 2013

#Homeowner?


Why are every single one of my towels hanging outside to dry, you ask?

Because our water heater broke (burst, more accurately) early in the morning sending water pouring all over my guest bathroom and sending me crawling underneath our house to turn off the water.

I was completely convinced I was going to get ax-murdered. Or that I was going to find a dead body under there. (I have been watching too much Criminal Minds lately, I guess)

As I was crawling under the house, this thought struck me: "This is growing up. These are the things that happen which slowly but surely turn into you a grown up."

And then, of course, I went back to freaking out.

Thankfully, Guy would arrive home shortly to crawl and climb with me. The water would get cleaned up. We would get a new water heater. My towels survived.

And so did I.

Here's to growing up, friends.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Purity Pirates and a Jesus Feminist: Reflections on freedom, ministry and high school

When I was seven or eight, I remember my dad telling me I could be anything I wanted when I grew up to which I promptly responded: "anything except a preacher."

Because even my seven year old self knew that only boys got to grow up and be preachers.

When I was in middle school at a conservative Christian school, I listened to my female teachers (who loved us dearly) lecture us on the dangers of dressing immodestly. We were lined up against the wall and our skirts were measured one by one to prove the point. I remember our principal's wife telling us about her unbuttoned shirt and a boy who made unwanted advances.

"When I got home, my mothers slapped me and said I should have known better. And you know what, girls. I know now she was right."

My friends and I laughed it off. From then on, she was known as the Purity Pirate, but I remember thinking that I was glad my little sister wasn't there that day for girl's chapel.

Soon after, I began to joke with my best friend that we were closeted feminists. We had no idea what that meant really, but we were pretty sure it meant that we thought girls were just as good as every boy in our class.

I began to feel a call to ministry in the deep places of my heart. I was looking into Bible colleges, but getting a degree in being a pastor's wife seemed terrible. The colleges I visited felt heavy and suffocating. So I began to feel led into missions, because when you're in the mission field, you don't have to be a missionary's wife, but just a missionary.

But then I met my first "real' feminist. She came and taught us AP English my junior and senior year. She was a Democrat with a PhD who called herself a feminist. She was everything I wanted to be. She had seen the world, spoke multiple languages, had a beautiful family and loved Jesus more than anyone I ever met.

I remember telling her my fears over disobeying God by not going to a Christian college, begging her to tell me how you know something is God's will for your life.

And she must have taken pity on my frazzled awkward seventeen year old self because she asked me a question. She asked me what was God's will for my life was for that day. I remember stuttering something about being a good student and a good friend and daughter. About loving the people God placed in my life.

"Exactly. So go do that. And what's God's will for your life tomorrow?"

"The same thing?"

"Right, so just take it one day at a time. God will lead you when you get there."

And those words were freedom.

And those words were the beginning.

The story, of course, continued. I would pack up my bags the next year and move a few states away for (a decidedly not Christian) college. Soon I would have my first female pastor and the summer I would spend as her intern in a struggling church would change me. I would fall more in love with the Bible and decide this was it. This was what I wanted to do forever.

I would fall in love with a boy with kind eyes and crazy hair who loved God but not in the skinny jean, worship leader kind of way like all the other boys I knew.  I would read and study and preach and meet more Jesus-loving women (and men) who continued to teach me more and more what becoming more like Christ can look like.

But this piece of advice from my first Jesus feminist set me free to go and follow after God wherever that led me, to set aside the life script of a good Christian woman and just love Jesus.




This post is a part of Sarah Bessey's synchroblog celebrating the release of her book, Jesus Feminist. Be sure to check it out! 

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Why Do You Show Up


Why do you come to church? 

No, seriously. When was the last time you thought about it. Why do you get out of bed, get dressed up and go to church? Why don’t you just sleep in and then go have a nice brunch somewhere? 

What is it that makes you keep showing up? 

Is it the people? Is it the people you’ve known for years and you look forward to their fellowship? The handshakes, the smiles, the warm greetings? The fact people will miss you if you’re not there? 

Is it the worship? Is it the chance to hear the organ play or the choir sing? Does it keep you coming back? 

What about the ministries? Why do you show up and serve? There are other ways to serve the community. There are other ways you could spend your time. 

And why in the world do you come to church meetings? I know there are family meals that you are skipping to spend your evenings with us church people as we discuss finances and ministry programs...

Read more at the SSUMC ministry blog

Friday, November 1, 2013

Bedtime stories


Bedtime stories make 14 hours of driving in one weekend worth it.