The Missing Chicken

Every day I open the chicken pen and let the chickens out to roam.  When out of the pen they are able to find a more varied diet than the chicken feed which stays in the feeder inside the pen.  Chickens scratch and find bugs and stuff to eat in the dirt.  If a moth flies too near, a rather passive looking chicken can suddenly break into a neck stretching run which makes any race horse envious.  They are part of the farmer's entertainment package.   

When the sun gets close to going down and darkness is near, they instinctively waddle back to the safety of the chicken house inside the chicken pen.  Like the Biblical shepherd who counted his hundred sheep coming back to the fold, I noticed one of the five missing the other night when I went out to shut the gate to the pen.  I gave my best chicken call, but all to no avail.  She has been gone a day now which seems to say some predator found her while she was roaming the farm.    

There is always a sadness in losing an animal that belongs to the farm.  It was her home as it is mine.  There have been other such losses.  Moma cows and calves. Chickens.  And, a dog named Susie.  Farm animals are gifts.  They live here awhile.  They have a way of bringing joy in their living and sadness in their dying.  And, so my one chicken that did not return to the pen is missed.  She was not just a chicken.  She was a living part of the creation.  Thus, she bore the imprint of the Creator.  I will miss her waddling presence at my feet as I walk across this part of the creation which we shared together for a moment.  

The Uninvited Guest

I did not hear him knocking.  I did not know he was there until I opened the front door.  And, to be honest, I did not see him at first.  What I saw at the bottom edge of my vision was a blur of something green moving as he hopped univited into the house.  I tried to catch that tiny green rain frog, but he was too fast.  Under the sofa he went.  I moved the sofa and behind a stack of books he hopped.  Since I was on my way to a scheduled appointment, there was not enough time to continue with the eviction so I shut the door and left him to have the run of the house.     

As I walked to the car, I thought of the old saying, "Turnabout is fair play."  To be out on a farm is to live in his world.  I suppose it is only fair that he be allowed to live in mine for a spell.  Of course, I would likely have felt differently if it had been a creature that slithered instead of hopped!  As it was I thought about those lines, "All creatures great and small, the Lord God made them all."  Once again I was reminded that I do not live alone in this holy creation which surrounds me.  It is easy to forget that we are a part of creation and not the center of it.    

For too many of our days we have lived with the false notion that the creation exists for our benefit when there is a strong thread of mutual dependence holding it together.  The creation is not here for us to use and exhaust and exploit, but to join with us in giving glory to the Creator.  And if we learn to see what cannot be seen and to hear what cannot be heard, we fill find that this creation filled with glorious sunsets and tiny green rain frogs is a means through which the Creator speaks and makes Himself known to us.  

The Final Community

One thing for which I have always wished, but never had and never will is the sense of belonging that comes from being born into a small community, going to school with the same people from grade one to the moment of strutting across the diploma stage, and then living the rest of life among those to whom there is that unique sense of belonging.  I came to this community some thirteen years and while I have been accepted and claimed, I still wear the tag of an outsider who was married to my wife, Lynn, some one who was born here, grew up here, and belongs here.  It is the nature of small town communities where belonging is such a birthright that those not born here are always different.     

In these recent days my grief and sense of loss keeps me going to the local cemetery where my wife of 53 years is buried.  I stand there midst a community John O'Donohue calls "this silent field" in his poem entitled, "On Passing a Graveyard."  It is a more inclusive community made up of the old timers and newly born, those who are born into the busy community where lives are lived and those like myself who are always "the outsider," the affluent and the poor.  There is nothing among the raised stones which divides.  In this silent field, everyone is the same and comes as one who belongs.   

But, it is not the last community.  At times it seems like the final gathering place, but our faith enables us to see "that land that is fairer than day"  and the gathering of those who all wear the whites robes that have been washed in the blood of the Lamb.  (Revelation 7:14)   The community of the raised stones is not the final community for it is eternally transcended by the gathering of the great cloud of heavenly witnesses spoken of in Hebrews 12:1.  There in the heavenly place is the final community where God's grace enables us to dwell not as an outsider, but as one who belongs, not for a fleeting moment, but for eternity.  This heavenly community is the one which has the last word for those who seek the Home promised by the Christ.  It is where we belong.

The White Page Struggle

There are times when the empty white page wins the struggle.  Finding the words which are hidden in that stark whiteness is not always easy.  Sometimes the words leap from not being seen into the realm of the visible words on the page and then there are those moments filled with false starts and deleting.  In the old days I suppose it was the kind of moment when those who wrote filled up the trash can with wadded up paper jerked in frustration from the typewriter.  Over the years of preaching and writing I have known more than just a few of those days.   

In a way it reminds me of how it is in those moments when I draw aside and alone for quiet moments of being in the presence of the Holy One.  One thing we all seek in those moments of drawing apart is an awareness of holy presence.  There are those times when I do all the things seekers such as myself might normally do like getting still, reading some Scripture, and praying the prayers that are to be prayed only to find that the emptiness known in the beginning lingers still in my heart.  My soul may "long for flowing streams" (Psalm 42:1) as does the running deer, but the Living God seems nowhere to be found.  In those moments of seeking and longing, the seeking seems to be one that echoes in a chamber of emptiness.   

Such moments are sure to come to all of us.  We may think we have some magic ritualistic formula which is going to cause God to appear, but His coming and going into the visible conscious realm of our inner being is not determined by what we do, but more about what He is doing in our lives.  I prefer those moments when it seems that the Spirit rushes into my life like an overflowing stream, flowing beyond its boundaries, instead of those moments when the word of my heart seems to go forth unheard.  As we walk the road of faith we begin to understand that there is divine wisdom in those moments of apparent emptiness and that the real reality is that they are not really empty, but as full of holy purpose as those moments which flood and wash over the soul.

The Holy Poetry

Prose and poetry both tell their stories, but in such different ways.  Prose fills up all the white spaces with orderly nouns and pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, precise sentences and flowing paragraphs.  Prose fills in the gaps not only on the page, but also in the telling the words seek to do.  Leaving nothing to the unknown, prose creates an idea and drives it home as a hammer drives a nail into waiting wood.  Poetry, on the other hand, loves the white space.  It leaves plenty of it beneath the words which are as illusive as cloud covered images and head scratching mystery.  Poetry creates the images with the words and trusts the reader to take the invisible and make it visible.   

Maybe this is part of the reason most folks who read the Word of God find themselves drawn to those Old Testament words known as the Psalms.  The Psalms are filled with the images of poetry and the white spaces underneath that declare that mystery is present.  And, mystery is present.  But, it is not the mystery of the "who dun it" books for there is no mistaking who has done it.  There is no mistaking the One who is shrouded in mystery and beckons us to use all our senses to know Him, to see Him, and to hear Him.  The Psalms call us to encounter the Holy One not with our heads, but with our hearts.  They invite us not to intellectual reasoning, but to crying tears of sorrow and to wild exhuberant dancing in the streets of our soul.    

I am grateful to my mother for introducing me to these powerful words when I was just a boy trying to memorize the words to please her, later to earn a star on a memory achievement poster at church, and even later to bring holy comfort to the struggles of my spirit and the spirits of others.  So many of the words and phrases of those Psalms have been carried with me in a book that has always been open in the innermost regions of my heart.  They have encouraged me.  They have caused me to raise my hand to receive blessings and offer praise.  They have been the blood and breath of my life and I am forever grateful for the Holy Inspirer of that poetry created for the soul.

The One Who Comes

We all have loss in our life.   Loss is about losing what is precious to us which makes it painful.  The first remembered loss may be something like a broken toy, or the death of a  pet, or the divorce of a  parent.  All are painful.  They continue to come in bundles as the years begin to add up as we turn lose of jobs, homes, parents, spouses, and even children.   No one is immune.  Loss and grief are one of those common denominators in the equation of lfe.  

The Word of God tells us about loss and grief as it tells the story of Abraham at the burial cave of Sarah where he mourned and wept.  (Genesis 23:2).  It is the story told from Mt. Pisgah as the Israelites mourned and wept thirty days for Moses. (Deuteronomy 34:8)  And, it is a story wrapped in the tears of a father crying for his Son as did David for Absalom. (II Samuel 18:33)   Even in the story that ends in resurrection do we see the widow of Nain grieving for her son, Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, and women filled with grief going to the tomb of Jesus that Sunday morning.  Loss brought these people of the holy story to dark and hard places, but in those places they were always encountered by the One who is eternally present with all of us.  

He is with us in the moments of living, in the moments of loss, in the moments of turning loose, and in the moments of trying to find life beyond the grief of our personal loss.  It may take time to see Him.  It  may seem that He should have shown up sooner as was the case with Mary and Martha at the death of their brother, but He does show.  He does come.  When the time is ready for His coming, the Words of comfort He has to speak, and the push into the future He still holds for us, we can count on Him to be present.  Jesus promised to never leave us, to never forsake us, and not even loss and grief has the power to overcome that promise.  

A Litmus Test

Any discussion on spiritiual gifts is going to include at least three sections of Scripture.  The first and, perhaps, the primary one is I Corinthians 12.  The second is Romans 12 and the third one is Ephesians 4.  And while there is within those verses a listing of spiritual gifts, it is not necessarily an exclusive list to which gifts not mentioned in Scripture might be added.   For example, as best I can determine there is no mention of intercessory prayer as a spiritual gift; yet, we know people who seem as if they are mysteriously gifted in offering prayers for others.    

When Paul wrote to the Christians at Ephesus, he was led by the Spirit to use some powerful images to flesh out his teaching on spiritual gifts.  In Ephesians 4:12 he wrote that spiritual gifts are given "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ."  Here is a statement of purpose and a litmus test to use as we discern if some gift not mentioned is truly a spiritual gift.  Spiritual gifts are not given to create a class of super saints, nor are they given to put the one with the gift in the spotlight.   

One of the teachings of the New Testament which is becoming more and more alien to our church culture is the one which affirms that the needs of the community supercede the needs of the individual.  Many of the strange and difficult to understand acts of God in the Old Testament can be seen as something which seeks to protect the identity and the integrity of the people of God and here in this passage about spiritual gifts there is once again a clear reminder that spiritual gifts are not given to set certain saints apart from and above others, but to provide the needs of the spiritual community.