Wickedness Peaks this Week

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We are not fighting against humans. We are fighting against forces and authorities and against rulers of darkness and powers in the spiritual world.*

Darkness thickens, I can feel it.  Halloween winks and smiles.  Wickedness peaks this week.

America sputters, we progressively turn from God.  Putrid poison pours through our screens while we nod and justify.  What we deemed abhorrent 20 years ago, is entertaining and informative.  We trust it to feed us, guide us.   As a result, denominations twist and turn, atheists multiply, hedonism clinks its glass and raises a toast.  Good is evil and evil is good.  The gold standard replaces God’s standard.  Violence, addictions, immorality rise.  Years pass, we swim in our own muck.

Halloween, though, every year at Halloween evil peaks.  If you don’t believe me, read the news this week.

Many, maybe us, ignore or stay busy.  It is only a holiday season, after all.  Kids don costumes, parties happen, candy dishes come out–nothing more.  Just beyond awareness, an ugly head rises and we sink to new lows: we despise our spouse, dismiss our children, “forget” to pray, seek a buzz, judge another, become a doormat.  We hurt, but don’t know why…

Our costumes echo the “ghost” that haunts us.  We slip into masks, we hide.  Joyously, we giggle and belittle entities who point at us and laugh.  We think we’re so powerful, so smart, so good.  Nothing hurts us, we hurt no one.  Evil isn’t, not really.

Impotent in our ignorance, he who hates us grabs the strings and makes us spin and swirl into an emotional coma.  We cannot feel, we cannot see.  We ignore or stay busy.  It is only a holiday, after all.

Some see, some pay attention, some battle in prayer.  Christ, through His Holy Spirit, empowers and invites His followers to join the warfare in the spiritual realm, the place where things happen first….yep, happen first before they happen on earth.  No getting there without prayer, no staying there without prayer. **

…prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray [in the Spirit using God’s Word as a weapon] hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.***
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*Ephesians 6:12 (CEV)
**Importantly, Ephesians 6 also notes essential protective armor: truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation.  Only weapon noted: a sword, God’s Word.
**Ephesians 6:18 (The Message)

Reflections on Advent

Today we undeck the halls.  Creches, candles and Santas will be boxed, the tree will feed the bonfire pile.  We’ll rearrange and redecorate.  The house will look ‘normal’ again, it will revert to pre-Thanksgiving decor.  Not very festive, granted, but proper and practical.  January is here, Christmas is over (yes, liturgically the Christmas season extends, I know that, but as far as our house goes, it is over), a new year we’ve entered. 

As I think back over Advent and the Lent in Advent commitments I made I wonder just what happened.  Here is what I committed to and vowed to keep you abreast of:

1. fast one day a week (no food, only drink)
2. pray contemplatively EVERY day for 30 minutes
3. see those around me and do or say two nice things, every day
4. at least once a week give time, goods or money so that others might sense God’s love for them

I started out with a struggle and plenty of failure.  It was humbling, indeed it was humbling.  Everything was work and even felt forced.  Such struggle brought me to my knees where I asked for God’s strength and power and perspective.  He showed up and, even through difficult days, I found myself desiring to help others, wanting to give time, goods or money…what a joy, what a blessing these times of reaching toward others were.  Prayer was more ‘on’ than ‘off’, most every day prayer was entered and what a blessed time it was.  I had some 20+ hour segments of fasting, but never a full 24 hours.  An abysmal failure there. 

As I reflect on the three + weeks of Advent, I see that after seeking God’s mercy to help me and sensing His working through me to the benefit of others, I was hit with the longest migraine I’ve ever had (a full week), our cat got sick and refused to use the litter box (use your imagination here, I’m not gonna elaborate), the truck’s transmission gave up the ghost, our aged dog became ill and died.  Could it be that a little personal forward spiritual movement was met by the enemy with an assault?  It sure seems like it could be.  Maybe dark warriors stood ready to snuff out any new glimmers of light…maybe those moments of chaos, confusion, pain, grief, illness and death were icy blasts from Hell designed to put out a newborn flame. 

Some may wonder: what didn’t get done?  No family Christmas picture or letter sent this year, only one batch of cookies exited the oven, shopping was limited due to our limited budget (much was purchased online), I didn’t decorate the basement and kept decorations upstairs in check (i.e. no festive centerpiece ever created or bought for our diningroom table), we didn’t attend every party/festive gathering.  I didn’t freak about a “to do” list this year…things did get done, but not everything and not perfectly.

In many ways it was a challenging Advent, but then again, in many ways it was a beautiful Advent.  I wonder if…no, I trust that He used all of it for His glory, that all of it was allowed for His purposes and that His will found a place to manifest in the midst of our home, in the midst of my heart. I cannot say without doubt, but it is possible and sure feels like I’m more in love with Him than I was before…

Warring Week of Advent

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Well, what a week.  Most of it was spent in a darkened bedroom with an ice pack on the nape of my neck and a prayer for mercy on my lips.  Advil and Excedrin were my constant companions, sleep a welcome visitor. 

Migraines come and land from time to time.  Their triggers, most of which I cannot control, have a way of collaborating and congregating at the same time and place to ensure my misery.  Do they have a will of their own?  I know it is impossible, yet I wonder…

How to stay true to my Lent in Advent commitment while ill…that has been my conundrum.  Sickness has a way of turning one inward, forcing self-centeredness.  Such a posture is only natural and fits the doctor’s orders, we all know…yet, is that the only posture?

With God leading, I decided to choose which commitments to stand by.  I opted to rally and rise for “not to miss” items and for times when I was most needed.  For instance: my niece’s very first band concert was this week.  I had a choice, get up and go or miss–either way my head hurt, but what was I going to do?  I considered whether I’d regret not seeing it/whether she’d regret me not being there…that made the choice easy: I went, no regrets…thank you very much!  Emily (our daughter) desperately needed help delivering boxes of fruit for a fundraiser–after holding my head for hours and cursing God, I rose and, in the snow and bitter cold, she and I loaded the truck and spent the evening making deliveries.  I have a few more tales of this kind, but I think you get my drift…I pondered the possibility of future regrets and the level of need in front of me and went from there.  Although pain still lingers and much remains undone, I am grateful God extended a measure of mercy so I could show up for others in ways that were life-giving for them.

Contemplative prayer was particularly difficult…that sort of prayer in the midst of searing brain pain is no small trick.  I failed miserably, but did try from time to time…  I haven’t ventured into fasting, the thought of fluctuating blood sugar levels seems much too risky right now (I still have a headache…not a killer one, but bad enough…). 

I don’t know if God smiles on my week…I cannot say.  I just know I tried to give Him and others first billing even as the migraine wanted to be dictator of my every move.  Maybe a battle or two was won this second week of Advent…hmmm…a warring week of Advent…could be…

Mama Bear

At our church’s quiet prayer service last night I grabbed a book off the resource table and read a poem that hit home a truth I knew but didn’t know…get my drift here? I knew it intellectually but didn’t really know it at a deeper level.

Jesus, on the cross, took our sin on Himself. Yeah, you’ve probably already heard that one, me too. But if we ponder it a second that means that no part of us isn’t His. He has our good, hitting the mark parts and our less than stellar, missing the mark parts.

He died to reconcile us with God, which means He took even our darkness into Himself so nothing can stand between us and God, nothing. I’ve always thought that my sin is my sin, and that He has no part in it. Seems He is right in the midst of it, taking it on Himself (if we surrender it to Him for cleansing/healing/a transformed heart) so we might see God.

Dare say Jesus is one active Heavenly Dude, perpetually intercepting our small and dark places so we can know His love, His healing, His glorious Tomorrow. I can’t think of an example here, except a video I recently saw of a mama bear defending her cubs from a starving male bear that was looking for lunch. First time she met him on the side of the river she and her cubs were on and she was ferocious, utterly ruthless. Mr Bear retreated, for a while. Second time she saw him coming she charged across the river and met him there, no more defensive moves, she was all offense. She brought the fight to his neck of the woods and was even more ferocious than at first. I switched off the video at that point, not wanting to see the end result. You know Mr Bear, if he survived at all, was never seen again. Mama Bear may have been hurt, may have even eventually died from her wounds, but you know those baby bears knew life because she was actively intercepting anything that threatened their well being.

Like I mentioned earlier, surrender is key. Jesus doesn’t go where He isn’t invited. Can be easy to compartmentalize our sin and see it as something we own, our problem to fix. If we hand it to Him, He not only protects us, He transforms our hearts so that we no longer seek dark corners to feed our insatiable hunger, or make ourselves vulnerable to starving beasts. God’s feast is enough, is more than we could ever consume, and we finally realize the Truth…we willingly let His light blast our dark corners so that they become healing corners, corners where we can bring others so that they may experience His light too.

It is a hard thought to imagine Jesus taking my sin on Himself, that He is actively in the surrendered sinful places in my life, making good. Yet He did and does. That is the whole point in His Resurrection. Sin and death are defeated and are being defeated, one sin, one death blow at a time because He took it all into Himself and stands between me and them. One ferocious Mama Bear on guard, ready for action, sacrificing everything so that I might see God. I stand in awe, yet how could He be otherwise…

(contemplative prayer update: I’m still battling this virus, so prayer has been difficult, which has led me to skirt it altogether. Last night’s service was helpful, as you can see. I’m also rather busy, which is hindering things and cluttering my mind…busyness may be one of those ‘missing the mark’ places in my life right now…even though it is almost all God oriented busyness…)

Livin’ on a Prayer

 

Yesterday was Rich’s (my husband’s) 43rd birthday. It also happened to be the day of the biggest Twins baseball game of the season. What did we do to celebrate? Yep, he and I went to the game (Em, our daughter, had play practice and couldn’t go). The Metrodome was packed pretty well, and the place was rockin’. Even though we were tucked in an upper tier and far from the action, the upper tiers all the way around were on their feet screaming the last few innings. It was a barn burner, indeed. In the tenth inning we managed to get a run, the winning run no less. Very fun to be at and the smile on Rich’s face was priceless….really made his day special indeed, thanks Twins.

Toward the end of the game, when the Twins were rallying a comeback, a song came on the screen (the Dome has gargantuan TV like screens that serve various purposes throughout the game: announcements, player stats, shots of the crowd, karaoke songs) with the words noted so we could sing along. It was Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi (an 80’s hard rockin’, big hair group, oh yeah :-) and I guess the chorus kinda says it all for the Twins:

 

Oh, we’re half way there – Oh, livin’ on a prayer

Take my hand and we’ll make it
I swear – oh, livin’ on a prayer.”

The dome practically popped when we all sang these words, ummm, I mean screamed these words. The Twins, who are consistently underdogs at the beginning of each baseball season, are eeking by. Every game could be their “goodbye to the championship” game, yet they manage to pull it off, even by the skin of their teeth at the last minute. They are livin’ on a prayer indeed, for not much else is in their corner: they run on one of the lowest pro baseball budgets around, rookies galore and are star pitcher-less.

 

As we wade through this crisis with my stepfather (who is in the hospital and is mentally unstable…moved to the psych ward today) I couldn’t help thinking of him last night while singing that song. He and Mom got just about nothing going right, right now, and I mean nothing. They are truly living on a prayer. Hope hangs by a thread…

Reminds me of some of the Apostles in the New Testament. Nothing going for them, not a cent in their pocket, uprooted, friends exiting, thrown in jail, tortured…all they lived on was a prayer–all they had was God with them, working through them. But if we look again, we see that that was all they needed, all they cared about, was exactly WHAT was needed. Because of them and God’s work through them, we are here centuries later singing praises to God and claiming Jesus as our Savior.

Hmmm….Maybe livin’ on a prayer is the way to go…sometimes crisis makes things clearer, puts us on our face in prayer, a place we should be in 24/7.

A line in the song says: “You live for the fight when it’s all that you’ve got.” Living on a prayer requires spiritual battle, cause Satan wants us reliant on anything but just God. When we take responsibility for our relationship with God, stay reliant on and surrendered to Him, the battle is won…until then we fight, we fight ourselves and the forces of darkness that keep us from trusting Him utterly.

Living for the fight to be right with God keeps us livin’ on a prayer…or…maybe livin’ on a prayer helps us fight that fight. Love it when things circle back on themselves…

Oh, we’re half way there…oh, livin’ on a prayer…

“We’ve got to hold on to what we’ve got
‘Cause it doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not.
We’ve got each other and that’s a lot for love –
We’ll give it a shot.