His mercy seat

Peter Gabriel’s voice sang low and pleading, the words “mercy, mercy, looking for mercy….” (Mercy Street, 1986) It’s a lovely and haunting melody that conveys the heart that searches for compassion, desperate for forgiveness when none is deserved. Mercy.

The Psalmist pleads for mercy over and over as did Job when he said “I could only plead for mercy” (Job 9:15)

***

As a child, I was instructed the altar, the wooden structure with a cushion for the knees, was not a place to play. You didn’t stand on it, run on it or sit on it. You came here to kneel and pray. This was serious business when you come in front of the congregation to kneel at this place. At times, my parents called it the mercy seat.

I didn’t know what mercy was, but I knew it was serious. It was personal stuff and some people cried when they knelt and prayed but they all seemed to feel better after spending time at this mercy seat. Some of them scared me as a child, their emotions so……loud. But mostly, folks were quiet when they knelt there.

***

We don’t call it the mercy seat much these days but it is. I know God’s mercy isn’t confined to a particular place but I love the symbolism of it. The tangible where we can physically bow our bodies and heart, humble and quiet ourselves to beg of God, “have mercy on me and hear my prayer” (Psalm 4:1). Psalm 25:16, “Turn to me and have mercy, for I am alone and in deep distress.”

Mercy, that which isn’t earned or deserved…compassion in our need.

***

It’s the close of another service. The message ended with a compelling video that described who God is and asked “I wonder, do you know him?” Henry knelt at the alter asking those who wanted to come pray with him. And I saw Lloyd. In his chair, at the end of the row next to a window, he got out of his chair, turned and knelt. Right there. It was one of those moments I wanted to photograph, not with a camera because it would be one dimensional. No photo could show the meaning of this simple motion. My heart has captured it and replayed it. To see his tall frame, dark skin and bright smile, quietly slip out of his seat, turn and kneel, head bowed over that chair. His mercy seat.

It’s how our services end each Sunday, with Henry asking, “Pray with me?” and with more men going forward than is room at our Mercy Seat so they crowd around and make their own space. Some kneeling at their chairs, some standing in the back, a visual sign of unity in prayer.

God’s mercy is free and freely given.

Sunday

As long as I can remember, as long as I’ve been on this earth, Sunday has been a day of gathering.

 

Born into a church family from a church family, born to preacher parents, all other days pointed to Sunday.

 

We gathered Sunday clothes and Sunday books, Sunday people and Sunday dinner. The doors opened wide on our little churches begging for a bigger gathering of people week after week.

 

Sunday was the day we all got up with the same purpose, same intention, same schedule. And somehow, we got there without contention and we got there early, amen and thank you Jesus.

 

Sunday is where I learned beauty isn’t always external or pretty. There was the Sunday beauty of Billy, an older man who sat at the organ every week, shoes off with his socked-feet on the pedals, greeting everyone who walked by.

 

Billy was different. I never heard the real story but the mark on his head seemed to confirm a head injury of some kind. His was an awkward beauty, best seen when looking back and realizing his testimony was his faithfulness.

Beauty in the kids squirming about and the homeless man who wandered in, welcomed by Ed, stone cold deaf but it never stopped him from nodding in agreement with whatever was said that he never heard.

 

worship in the warehouse while the chapel is being renovated

It was one of our pastors at our long time church who had the courage to cancel Sunday night service one year on Mother’s Day. It was all our group of peers could do not to stand up and let out a hearty cheer for his sheer bravery. The pastor said seemed like this was a good day to gather with our families.

 

Turned out that was a test and not long after we stopped having Sunday night church all together. We didn’t stop gathering. Relationships were strengthened in those afternoons on the tennis court or a cookout with friends. Our families grew together watching our kids play. Fellowship beyond the church doors made it a lasting beauty.

Today it’s me and Hudson doing the gathering of stuff Sunday mornings; sermon notes, laptop for media, prayers for everything. It’s the two of us gathering an extended family of men once stained with the disease of addiction, many struggling still and even in struggle we see how beauty doesn’t give up.

 

We will gather songs and words and hearts along the way. We will pray our sinful lives will be restored and we thank God for recovering the beauty he made in us all along.

The prayers of strangers

It wasn’t the typical Sunday morning but I’m not quite sure what typical means some days. My sister was visiting and going with us to chapel service, her first in the recovery community.  Hudson was leaving town immediately following the service and before I walked out of our house I had a message from a friend in another town asking our men to pray for JW.

As I set up the computer for the media another message flashed across my screen: please pray for JR’s wife and then the needs of another not asking for prayer but I knew it was needed.

Every week there are those sitting in silence, doubting prayer, wondering why theirs wasn’t answered or if they should even ask for prayer. We’ve all trivialized our problems because those of another sounds greater. We’ve sulked because we’re still waiting for the last 10 prayers to be answered and now we aren’t even sure we believe.

It stays in my mind, this woman of the faith who has never met one of the men she has asked to pray. She knows of their brokeness, of the reasons they’ve had to put humility aside and walk through our doors. She’s heard me tell the stories and these are the ones she wants to pray, for one they don’t know either.

My faith is shallow and impatient. It doesn’t wait long and its doubt comes quick. My faith reaches to people I know, I’ve seen their lives and heard their hearts and maybe, maybe, I’ll whisper my need to them.

I know these men and I know God and I know the broken are just the ones God uses to crash my arrogance and pride. I know he hears the hearts of those whose hearts beat for Him and nothing beats louder than a heart needing to be made new.

We prayed for the known and the unknown. Some are praying still. I don’t understand the mystery of prayer. I’m not too good at it, at least the way it seems it should be done. I hope I’m wrong about that. I hope I’m wrong that it needs to be always done on my knees in a quiet room with no distractions and no less than 10 minutes, preferably 15 minutes. Doesn’t that sound right?

You thank and praise, which seem the same to me but I heard someone say they’re different and you should include both in your prayers.

You admit and request and you wrap it all in gratitude and that I know it right because how can I not be grateful to the One who somehow holds it all.

Mostly I pray in spurts. In the moment as it comes to me like seeing a request on Facebook and sometimes I touch the screen and say a prayer. I know I’ll forget if I don’t say it just then.

I pray with my eyes open a lot because I’m driving or at my desk or someone comes to mind while I’m cooking. It always too little  but God isn’t the one measuring prayers by word count or eyes closed.

I don’t know why she asked a group of strangers, men with addiction problems, to pray for her friend. I do know God has heard their prayers. I know her faith in God is why she asked and not her faith in people. I know her faith has helped strengthen mine.

 

This girl is gone….lord willing and all that

Later tonight we’ll board our flight from Miami to London. Direct. More hours than I want to calculate now.

The melatonin is packed and ‘easy mix’ playlist on my iPhone ready with noise canceling ear buds.  Thoughts of how I’ll look after an overnight flight are banished from my mind. I figure I’ll be too tired to care and the hair will be good so what else matters 😉

We are going to the a giant birthday celebration. July 2nd marks 150 years of The Salvation Army. And for once, we’re calling a little attention to ourselves.

PR isn’t our strong suit. Most people will tell you that. I’ve been asked enough times, ‘why don’t we see your canteens on the news in disasters?’ or ‘why don’t you advertise the work you do?’ My answer is simple: we’re too busy doing the work. Our story is best told my others.

There’s that word: Others. The one word Christmas message our founder, William Booth sent to his officers (ordained clergy). That one word sums up what we’re about – others.

But this time, we’re taking time to celebrate these years that are still marked by service.

There will be officers and soldiers (church members), volunteers, employees, friends, family and the whosoever from over 120 countries The Salvation Army serves today. From the east end of London in 1865 to a worldwide organization that exists, still, for others.

We’ll alternate between meetings and sightseeing and cram all the good and new and old we can in the week we’ll have there.

Our list of places to see has been made and is subject to change. We hold it freely choosing rather to soak up the moments less planned.

In all my preparations for this, I’ve failed to prepare my heart. It struck me today, last-minute but not too late. Hit me that I’ve not included God much in my plans, the quite One I take for granted.

Lord, I’ve prayed for safe flights. I’ve prayed for the family there and that we’ll be able to help with the girls when get there. But….I’ve not prayed that in the midst of wherever we are I will see your hand spread across the gardens and the skyline. I’ve not prayed for your calm to be evident in my words and manner. Don’t let me only see you in the colors of the sky but in the smile of strangers and pigeons on statues. Help me know you are with me and around me. Today. Every day.

Blogging won’t be a priority the few days but follow me on Instagram to follow our journey.

 

Shine

“In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.” ― Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child

God has this crazy way of bringing the most unusual things together, all pointing to Him and His grace. He uses people from different walks of life and different places in the world and none know the other but they are shining His light in my life.

For several years I’ve been watching men battling addiction, watching the painful journey of shining a light on their pasts. For some, the pasts was the deepest darkness ever known and addiction seemed the only escape. For others, the wreckage of their past was self-made. I’ve stood before them and assured them of God’s grace, of His love that is the only true light. I’ve talked about pasts they’d rather forget but needed to face and I’ve done this without facing my own.

Mine isn’t marred by drugs or the mis-use of pain medications. My past doesn’t look too different from most Americans: parents divorced, poor decisions in my teen-age years, times where I walked away from God’s best for me. They seem trivial in the face of what some of the men have been through. And that’s added to minimizing my wounds, my fears, my shame.

A friend came along side to walk with me through this. To gently prod and ask some questions I thought there were no answers to. Questions about feelings and what I had numbed were named. It made me feel weak and what’s a good Christian girl doing feeling weak? It made me feel raw and vulnerable and ashamed of not being able to “get over it”.

“You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.
(Matthew 5:14, The Message)”

I intruded on their weekly meeting. Again. But there they sit, in plain view as I walk past the dining room and I’m drawn to these two men. Externally, they are as different as can be. Short and tall, fair and dark. Add this blonde female to the mix and, yeah, we are those God-colors the bible talks about.

Mike and Dodd. I don’t know if Dodd is his first or last name which doesn’t matter because all I need to know is the light he shines brightly when he comes to share the message of recovery.

Mike, I know. He’s been in and out and in and out of our program and every time he’s been in he’s I’ve been drawn to his easy nature and we’ve hoped for his best seeing that something inside of him that we know is capable of more. And this time….yes, this time, Mike has taken fully hold of this light and has become, himself, a light bringing out the God-colors in our world.

I looked at the two of them yesterday and said, “I like hanging out with you two.” In our dining room on Wednesdays when they meet for their sponsor/sponsee time that I inevitably crash.

Thank you God, our loving parent who is the light inside us, a spark to share and set another light aflame. Thank you for letting us see and be part of the God-colors in our world. Help us see beyond the frame to how the colors spill out and over and can never be contained in what man has made. Let us light up the night so the darkness will be exposed and your way be made clear. 

I Don’t Wanna

“I don’t’ wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna”

She plopped herself on the airport floor, her mama leading her away from the crowd of folks at the gate. She looked all of 5, jacket nearly slipping off of her shoulders as she bounced on her legs, emphasis for her mama’s benefit.

Her mom stood in the parent pose of silent resolve, “I can outlast you”,  you could hear her thinking, her eyes a different determination. It’s tough to be a parent in public these days but she was a superstar.

I watched the scene playing out, thinking if only a video of this could be played for the girl when she’s older. Trying to recall similar scenes of my childhood and thinking how often I’d like to do what this girl is doing now, showing everyone that she doesn’t want to, never knowing what it was she didn’t want to do. Is that even the point? The why? Or just the will?

The quiet truth comes late to me, not wanting to admit my grownup way of showing my will.

I didn’t want to go. I don’t like the show, the ceremony, the dressing up as if we’re someone when I really belong with the no-ones we think we’re helping. I rationalize in every way I can when the truth is I want what I want and I don’t wanna.

There’s no throwing myself to the floor endlessly saying the words. If you’re anything like me, we’re past that. We have more sophisticated ways of showing our will. At least I do.

I make sure to find a seat in the back. I try to lose myself in the crowd, willing not to be noticed or seen. Just get through it.

I try to say the serenity prayer, at least the line I can remember, “help me accept the things I cannot change” and a moment of stillness comes. It’s short lived before someone says something that makes me roll my eyes.

It is a terrible place to be and I can make the place terrible for those around me. Those who have to live with me, listen to me. Or maybe they’ve grown tired of hearing my grownup, “I don’t wanna’s” and just nod at the right places. Sometimes he says it’s not easy being you, with a smile in his voice that I know is his way of trying to soothe. This man is ridiculously patient.

I’ll beat myself up for this. For not being able to let God take over my spirit, for not being able to give these anxieties fully to him and that’s when her words came to me.

Time was short and my eyes skimmed her post but when they fell on this, I saw the truth:

“Anxiety can wear anger’s mask.” Ann Voskamp

It sounds like anger. The words, the tone, the resistance, all masked as anger when truth is it’s that thorn of anxiety I guard as though it’s my life’s companion and I guess it is. We need to break-up but every time I decide to call it quits it never lasts.

You know Ann. You know what she’s going to say, that when anxiety and fear threaten to consume you, to count your thanks, your gifts, God’s blessings that overflow in our lives. But all I can hear is the voice of fear, an uneasiness that is without reason.

This is the real me. The rebellious spirit that rises up that isn’t about rebellion but anxiety over… what?

Oh, I hope you know where I am on this. I hope you get this fear that can take over your mind for no reason except you don’t wanna.

I can gather up my fears or His peace.

The fear is comfortable, it’s what I know, a near constant companion if I’m to be true.

But peace? It is the less familiar, the choice that takes new steps, small and deliberate. It takes a slowing down, a humbling of self, a giving of grace to self and others.

There are words tucked in my mind, words from long ago that I search for, something about “a child shall lead them”. How many times did Jesus gather the children up to him? And He, He was the child the old scribes said would lead them. Lead them to peace.

To the Savior who stretches his arms out to the children, stretch your arms out to me. Pull me up from the floor, from my pouting ways. Let your grace wash over me in an assurance that calms my fears and brings welcome peace.

Looking both ways

There is one last celebration we’ll have with the men before the year ends. It’s one they are required to attend. It’s the one day out of the year no passes will be given. We gather them close to us, under our protective roof as if we can physically keep them from harm.

New Year’s Eve will be celebrated with music, prayer, games, food, laughter. We’ll light candles as symbols of His light in our lives.

It will be celebrated in sober fashion and this will be new for some.

 

We will look back at 2014 and peek at opportunities ahead.

This is a one day at a time program, a one day at a time life, so we will only look ahead at what can be when each day is lived taking the next right step knowing each day is a gift, not a guarantee.

The Salvation Army calls these New Year’s Eve meetings Watchnight. Watching one year fade into the next, mindful of the hope and promise a new year can bring.

We had a time of sharing Sunday. A time to give thanks for the start of new traditions, new lives, new hope.

“This was my first sober Christmas in 15 years. I have love for others because God loves me.”

“From an ex-crack head to a bank account all through God leading me in recovery.”

“I’m trying to walk a new walk but I still have old ways. I had the best birthday and Christmas….I have nothing but I’m happy.”

“Addiction is the only battle we surrender to and come out winners.”

“This is the best Christmas I’ve had since I was a kid.”

Their words humble me. They fill me with gratitude for a Savior who loves us, every one of us. A Savior who never gives up on us. A Savior who restores us, redeems us.

This is a hard time. We all know that. The holidays bring challenges for many of us. Grief is mingled with joy and when the gifts and decorations are packed away, when the family heads home, we are left in the silence. Silence that can envelope us like a thick fog weighing heavy clean through to our soul. The night that is silent but not holy.

We gather these men who know how to party and try to show them a new way. The new way that is needed in our lives too. One that doesn’t lead to destruction but leads to true celebration.

Will you remember our community as you celebrate this year? Remember these men in your thoughts and prayers, asking God to still their souls when they want to run. Pray for their families that there will be peace. Pray for their desires to be fellowship with God and not self-medicating. Pray we will be equipped to face the days that come with wisdom and grace.

This is the work of God and his Holy Spirit. While we are looking both ways, God is only looking at one: at what’s ahead in Him.

When hope is hard

You think it’s just the way you are, the way you don’t have big dreams and hide behind calling yourself a realist. It’s been years since things fell apart and you tell yourself, year after year you keep telling yourself it shouldn’t matter now. When are you going to get over it? When are you going to quit hiding behind that excuse?

What feels worse is it feels silly. Silly to carry scars and shame from the action of others. Silly that 40 years later their divorce still fractures your world.

You hate to admit it but it makes hope hard.

So you carry on and it doesn’t get mentioned much these many years later but it’s always there. Always there how the family was ripped apart from one end of the country to another and ripped apart in ways teenagers can’t understand, even 40 years later.

We lit the hope candle this week. The first week of Advent is about hope, the hope that appeared in a baby whose birth ripped apart expectations and split open the darkness with His light. Of hope.

Ann Voskamp writes: “No matter how we’re hurting — it’s only when we lose hope that the real horror happens.”

It’s hard to cling to something that seems too good to be true. It’s hard to cling to things unseen when you’ve been crushed by what was in front of you. It feels safer to curl up in the cocoon of cynicism that has protected you so long. Even when you failed to see the cocoon was a thin veneer made of fear.

Hope. Real Hope in the person of Jesus. Hope who came from his safety to a world that would crush his body but never His spirit. Hope that is real because His love is real and He is love.

Save me, Lord, from my fears to know your hopes for me are greater than I can imagine. Save me from the past that is my shadow and split the darkness with the light of Hope. In You.

“Look at my Servant.
See my Chosen One.
He is my Beloved, in whom my soul delights.
I will put my Spirit upon him,
And he will judge the nations.

He does not fight nor shout;
He does not raise his voice!

He does not crush the weak,
Or quench the smallest hope;
He will end all conflict with his final victory,

And his name shall be the hope
Of all the world.” Matthew 12:18-21 Living Bible

An old-fashioned invitation

We’re sort of old-fashioned that way. The way we close our Sunday worship time with an invitation to pray. Not the sit-in-your-seat-heads-bowed-eyes-closed kind of prayer. Well, that, yes, but also the kind of prayer that brings some people to the front of the chapel to kneel before God and their peers. That kind of old-fashioned invitation that isn’t always common these days. It’s not easy to make that walk. The one that has you making your way across the legs of the others on your row to walk down the aisle and lower your body in that position of humility that is nothing but strong.

We came up this way, my husband and I. I remember daddy leading that final song on Sunday morning, so often it was ‘Just As I Am’ or “Have Thine Own Way”. The annual youth weekends with several hundred teenagers always had that Sunday morning altar call. We knew it was going to last for-ever and tried to volunteer someone to go forward to get this thing started because no one was leaving this room until someone went to that altar!

It was the same way at summer camp and Men’s camp and Women’s weekend: come, come forward and pray. 

In the traditional church setting weeks could go by with no one coming forward or the one little old person who knelt every week. But it’s different in this community of men fighting addictions of all kind. There is no hesitation when the word is given to come forward and pray for others, for yourself, bring your troubles and joys to God, here. At this mercy-seat.

And they do. One after the other. I figure some are doing it thinking it might score some kind of points with “the Major”. It’s more show than heart but that’s not my concern. God will sort that out.

It was one of those weeks and Michael said it after the service when he turned to me and said, “There was power in here today”. Yes, there was. I felt it when the one I didn’t know stood to give testimony of God using another man to keep him from temptation. I felt the power in his weak voice as he struggled to tell of his fight for sobriety and I felt the power when so many men came forward to pray there was no room at the altar but they came anyway. That one came, on the platform to kneel, off to the side where a rail was covering some instruments. Another came with no place left to lean, and simply knelt in the middle of the floor. That position that could look weak to some, the body lowered to the floor, screams strength to me. God’s strength enabling them to bow without shame, and call on God.

Our prayers are heard from any position. Eyes open or closed. Head bowed or raised. Standing or sitting. Whispered or yelled or sung or silent. I’ve heard a man who would get overcome with laughter at times during prayer and John, John signs his spoken prayers.

Yes, there’s power when there’s prayer. All the time. All the time.

Give me an answer

You could hear the desperate plea in his voice. A family member begging for an answer to this plane that has vanished. Gone like a vapor. Not today. Not in this world. That doesn’t happen. Someone always has an answer.

There’s that black box that’s suppose to play this beep so it can be found but it’s not. The radar – useless. Nothing. No answer.

You can find opinions and speculation but there are no answers for the many hoping for something to hold on to. A flicker of hope their family members are alive.

You can Google everything today. It’s the modern Tower of Babel giving answers in any language at any time. Need an address? Google it. Want to know who won the World Series in 1971? Google it. How about cooking tips or medical questions or family genealogy or when the next harvest moon will be? Google knows it all. Except…this. And we can’t accept, in this Google-age, that there is no answer.

Two months ago, a friend went to the doctor to see why she’d felt so poorly for the past month. Just shy of her 47th birthday, surely it was something simple. Hormonal maybe. Her answer was stage 4 melanoma. Is this answer better than no answer?

People say God answers prayers and I believe he does but…..But it’s hard to understand sometimes. Is no answer an answer and what about those answers we don’t want. Don’t expect. Is that God? Is it man or coincidence or chance or karma or___?

I believe in God. Him first, him only. His answers, his timing, his silence. This faith thing isn’t easy. There are a lot of questions, but this one is first on our lips: why? And when I don’t know the why it’s little consolation to another to say “God knows”. When a heart is desperate for an answer in this instant-answer world and someone tells us God loves but he’s silent now – where is the comfort? Where is the peace? Where is the answer?

I could give you scripture, but is this what you want to hear ? Or do you want to know right this moment why your son is an addict or what happened to that plane?

Maybe I spend too much time around folks who aren’t the church going kind. They cast a doubtful eye at our claims that Jesus is enough and He is all we need. It’s easy to doubt when you’re living in a men’s shelter – again. When you’ve tried to pray away your alcoholism or homosexuality or pornography addiction and after you begged God for the umpteenth time, you still crave that drink.

Wait.

That’s the answer. Wait. It’s hard at first. The hardest thing ever, this waiting for something. You don’t sleep and you pray to God even if you’ve never been sure of His existence. You work and keep busy and you check messages and email a hundred times a day. Your prayers are more like pleading and you do it loud with an ugly tear-stained face until you’re dry. And in this dryness, you begin the waiting.

In this quiet, when my breath is gone and words fail and all seems far away, when desperation grasps at any words to bring relief, not an answer but some kind of calm, now I can hear His words

Pushed to the wall, I called to God;
    from the wide open spaces, he answered.
God’s now at my side and I’m not afraid;

Answers are still absent but the spirit needs to breathe and the poetry of Psalms soothes the weary soul.

I was right on the cliff-edge, ready to fall,
    when God grabbed and held me.
God’s my strength, he’s also my song,
    and now he’s my salvation. (excerpts from Psalm 118 the Message)

God of all, of those who call you Father and those wandering about, God who has mercy on the just and unjust, hear our cries to you. When we beg for answers, show us your peace. When we ask why, give us mercy. When we feel lost and forgotten, give us your presence.