Just Frances T 
I, along with a couple billion (?!?) people, watched the royal wedding today. I didn’t expect to stay up, but was intensely curious about what would happen. Plus, I’m a sucker for weddings (it pretty much comes with my gender). I loved two things. First, I loved the stolen glances and private conversations between the couple in the midst of lots of formality and crowds. Second, I loved the fact that I was watching a church service unfold along with billions of others. The theology of marriage was clearly center stage.
A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of crashing attending a wedding rehearsal & wedding for a couple I didn’t know. I’m taking pastoral care and was required to shadow a pastor in the process of officiating a wedding, so I ended up in a beautiful park following around one of my professors as he worked with a couple.
My professor had told me that this was a really solid couple and that their ceremony is going to be very “them.” This wedding was completely different from Will and Kate’s royal wedding. Read More
I gave up eating sweets for Lent this year. Normally, I’d wake up Easter morning and eat my first Cadberry egg before breakfast. But, it’s been a few days now and I don’t know that I’m going to ever go back to eating sweets. Ironically, in not eating desserts and the like, I felt more freedom than when I could (and did) gorge myself on them.
I was assigned to meditate on Romans 6:1-11 in one of my theology classes last year.
What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.
For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. (For someone who has died has been freed from sin.)
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that since Christ has been raised from the dead, he is never going to die again; death no longer has mastery over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
This was what I wrote in response:
“As I reflect on this passage, I wonder deeply what it means to live a new life and be alive to God in Christ Jesus (verses 4 and 11). I am sure that part of what Paul is describing is a spiritual reality, but it also seems to indicate a day-to-day life that is free from sin. I do not feel free from sin most days, though. In the very next chapter, Paul wrestles with his own sinful condition, so he is not completely free from sin either.
However, I am afraid to relegate this new life and freedom Paul is describing to simply a spiritual reality (i.e. Paul only means that my soul is saved, but my actions are unchanged). I do not believe that I will ever outgrow my need for a savior in this life, but I ought to grow to be more like Jesus over time. As I meditate on this passage, I cannot find an easy answer describing exactly what this looks like. I am reminded of the enormity of Christ’s transformational power. I am convicted of my continuing need to remain connected to Jesus. This passage makes me want to continue praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that I may live a life that reflects being dead to sin and alive to God.”
Through the experience of fasting from sweets, I have a better idea of what this looks like, though it’s still not an easy answer. It’s growing in my dependence on God, every day, moment by moment. I never lacked the timely help we’re promised when we approach the throne of grace (Heb. 4:14-16).
Most of the time what I lack is the desire to approach the throne of grace. I’m simply more interested in clinging to the sinful choices that ensnare me because at least I know what to expect.
I read recently, “Willpower is the willingness to accept God’s power.” So that’s what I’m doing. Instead of clinging to food the way I always have, I will cling to God to satisfy me and comfort my fears. It honestly feels like letting go of a trapeze and reaching my arms out in faith that God will be on the other side to catch me.
Easter reminds me that he can, and will, catch me.
One of my small groups is reading The Emotionally Healthy Church. We just finished a chapter on grieving and loss, which the author says has 3 steps:
- Paying attention. Essentially, you have to pay attention to the pain of the loss, both that it hurts and that things will never be the same again.
- Waiting in the Confusing In-Between. The picture I have is that the boat has left the dock and is in the open waters. You’re not yet where you’re going to be, but you’re not where you were either.
- Allowing the Old to Birth the New. The third step is allowing the pain and uncertainty we’ve been through to create something new in you: new character, new compassion, and new authenticity.
We talked about which of the three phases of grief is the most difficult and for me it is definitely the confusing in-between. There is much fear and uncertainty swirling in my life right now. I am on the precipice of graduation, which is good, but it also means a loss. A good friend is ready to move far away to the mission field, which is good for the kingdom of God, but it also means a loss.
This morning, as I thought about the confusing in-between, I realized that such is the Christian life.
When we put our faith in Jesus, we enter the confusing in-between. We are no longer who we were before Christ, yet we’re not who we will be. We only know parts of the story and the rest we take in faith. I know where I’ve been and what I’ve lost, but I don’t know the end of my story.
Today, the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, is the epitome of the confusing in-between. I know the end of the story, but the disciples didn’t. This was their darkest hour when it seemed all was lost. Everything they expected Jesus to do died before their eyes. I imagine the question, “What now?” plagued their hearts and minds, even as I ask the same question millennia later.
For me, the greatest joy of Easter is seeing the confusing in-between changed into something more beautiful that anyone could have ever imagined. I am filled with hope for the beauty that will unfold in my life as I journey through the confusing in-between.
A friend posed this question on Twitter: “Whose responsibility is it to train pastors: seminaries or local churches?”
My answer is “yes.” I firmly believe in raising up leaders within a local church; however, I also firmly believe that seminary plays a key role in developing pastors. Read More
I posted about the forget-me-nots I planted a while back and it seems a good time to talk about the second lesson that I’ve learned in watching them grow.
Lesson #2, “First, one”
As I said before, I tended my soil, hoping seeds would grow and one day they did. What struck me was that only one seed sprung up. For the longest time, only one plant grew. It took several days before any of the other seeds showed any signs of life. At first, there was one.
I thought of my leadership cohort and how we’ve discussed the principles, “As goes the leader, so goes the church” and “Who you are is your ministry.” In watching my forget-me-nots, I was reminded that a leader has to grow first.
Few of us dare to actually say what Paul did, “You should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ.” (1 Cor 11:1) Someone in my discipleship class actually scoffed at the idea that a discipler leads another person. He didn’t like the idea that someone would be growing to be like him.
For good or for bad, you will reproduce who you are. You cannot disciple people to be someone or something that you are not. You can’t tell people how to get to a place you’ve never been.
Grow not just for your own sake, but also for those around you, too.
So, grow!
Today was a mentally exhausting day. I had lots of great moments and some pretty terrible ones. Worse yet, I am culpable in the worst moments of today. As I ran into Safeway to do my long-overdue grocery shopping, I remembered something I read on a friend’s Facebook today: Jesus is still on the throne.
That thought brought me great comfort as I considered my day because it is true in both the highs and lows. It’s a perfect thought for ending every day.
Jesus is still on the throne.
I’m gearing up for my preaching final later today. We had to choose a narrative from the Gospels to preach and I naively chose John 13, the account of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.
I actually had a pretty cool idea in mind when I chose the passage, but in endeavoring to faithfully preach I let the text speak to me and tell me what it had to say to God’s people. Of course, I ended up light years away from where I started and had to sadly tuck my cool idea away for another time.
I say I naively chose this passage because it is easy to preach when you do the message everyone has heard and expects. “You should wash one another’s feet.” It’s not so easy when you look at the flow of John’s thought. He plants seeds along the way that indicate this passage has a lot more going on than simply the actual footwashing.
This story is about Jesus and the ones who would betray him: Judas in his actual betrayal, Peter in his denial, and all the others in their scattering. It appears that only one of the disciples stuck around until the end.
All of the disciples had false expectations about who Jesus was and what was coming to them in his kingdom. All of them had ambitions that were at odds with what Jesus intended to do. It’s easy to vilify them in hindsight, “Those foolish disciples, they should have known better. I would have.”
We wouldn’t have. We don’t.
Our false expectations lead us to try and force God’s hand, just as Judas did. We try to corner him into acting the way we want him to act and are just as hurt and disillusioned as Judas when it all falls apart and we come face to face with our Lord: the suffering servant who beckons us to follow him.
The only true expectation we’re left with in this story is that Jesus will lay down his life in the face of our betrayal.
Google Reader recommended this item to me: The Heart Knows the Truth. Read it; you know you want to!
I’m reading through The Emotionally Healthy Church once again and came across one of my favorite quotes ever:
When I was young, I set out to change the world. When I grew older, I perceived that this was too ambitious so I set out to change my state. This, too, I realized as I grew older was too ambitious, so I set out to change my town. When I realized I could not even do this, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I know that I should have started with myself, maybe then I would have succeeded in changing my family, the town, or even the state–and who knows, maybe even the world!”
I just arrived home after taking a trip to Disneyland with my friend Danielle to celebrate both of us graduating from seminary this year. We were a few weeks early, but they had a great sale on tickets and it was our only opportunity before she left for Greece and the insane summer crowds hit. It was such a fun trip!
Matt and I on our first trip to Disneyland in March 2006
The Disneyland Resort has been my husband and I’s go-to getaway since we were dating, so I’ve made perhaps 15 trips there since getting married 3 1/2 years ago. As such, I’ve done just about everything there is to do in Disneyland. My favorite things to do (and what I recommend to people visiting the park) are: Read More
Frances
Just Frances T 