Excelling at Love

Blogging the Baptist Hymnal... "Love Divine, All Love's Excelling"   Page 2



I don't know if you've noticed lately, but there is a bit of a quiet revolution going on in the world of Believers who are not satisfied with what is being done today in the name of Christianity. It's a simmering stew of folks from all walks of life who are looking at this whole thing a little differently. And when I say simmering, I don't mean as about to boil into an angry mob, I mean simmering as in slow-cooking, great smells in the air all day, ready for a feast when it's ready-type simmering. It's a Love Stew and it's on the menu in cities big and small all over the country.

Way back in the late 60's, I was part of an amazing thing that moved across America. Hippies found Jesus and suddenly The Way of the Master was a cool thing and the Jesus Movement somehow made its way into even my little Southern Baptist church in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I was about 14-ish when I heard my first message by a groovy guy with hair long enough to give Moses a run for his manna...and being a girl who never in her life had the word cool attached to a sentence with her name in it...well I was hooked. Here was a way....One Way...as we groovy people called it...to love me some Jesus and be accepted all in one fell swoop.

But a revolution, as this surely was, by definition means turning the people around to a whole new way of life and leaving the old behind. The Jesus Movement didn't go over so well with the old guard who wanted things to stay the same. We had a new American Revolution on the march....one that took the words of Jesus seriously. ("The Red Letters are coming! The Red Letters are coming!") Some didn't like these young up-starts telling them how to love their neighbor. They knew perfectly well how to do that...as long as neighbor was defined as someone who looked like you, talked like you and didn't rock the boat you had built.  They were not so big on melding a family out of just an old material. The Anointed Groovy Ones tried to show them a different way....a way of accepting all peoples and reaching out to the least of these...not just bringing things to the poor every Christmas, but asking the poor to join them every day of the year. The Elders (those Non-Melders) didn't want those words pointed out to them...at all. They stuck to their preferred passages and ignored the ones about loving your neighbor and giving your coat to the cold. I think they were just a little more comfy with a God who was angry and cast people out...their kind of guy.

I see it happening again....this 21st century version of the Jesus Movement...complete with Jesus Freaks and enough Love to sink an Ark. It's happening and I am old enough now to dig feeling groovy about this new revolution in a way I couldn't at 14. This time I get the love-thing in a way that you can only get when you have spent your life looking out for you....selfish...self-absorbed...me with a capital M. Suddenly there is an answer to the dreariness that long ago took over your interior weather patterns because YOU have been the only cloud in the sky.  Love 'em like Jesus. That's what's in my forecast...and it doesn't even have to be hard! Just set out everyday to be kind to those who cross your path. To help someone when you have the means to help them. There are soooo many hurting people in the world. 

When books like "Crazy Love", "Love Revolution" and "Irresistible Revolution" (three books that changed my life) are bestsellers...then I'm feelin' the winds of change and I'm praying for a big ol' storm. When you see it coming....don't run for the basement. Stand on the roof and say "Here! Over Here!"  I for one am truly welcoming this revolution that is sick and tired of things being done in the name of Jesus that don't have anything to do with the life he gave us as an example. Love. He was all about the love.

"God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power...and he went about doing good..." Acts 10:38

Groovy.

Story Time

One of the main reasons to tell your story is to make it easier for someone else to tell theirs. I like that sentence and I believe it is true. That doesn't make it easy to tell my story, but I am my sister's keeper and so I think of her...whoever "her" may be. I am thinking of her as I begin my road of words...traveling down them...sometimes skipping merrily, spreading laughter among the mayhem and sometimes jumping in ditches to survive the blasts from the land mines I set for myself.  I have wanted to do this for awhile...this spilling of guts that may help me understand the girl I was and the woman I became...and in turn perhaps shed light on "her" story. I would tell her not to be ashamed of what she has done....for she should see what I have done...and yet I have found grace and forgiveness and the  peace that is found in the shadow of the Cross.

The two things that most shaped me...for better and for worse...were being raised in the Southern Baptist Church and spending a lot of my youth in the microcosm of society known as the trailer park. These are descriptors...when attached to your name...do not get you nominated for homecoming queen. But honestly, I was well into high school before I had an understanding of this stigma and how it could impact my life. My folks took good care of us and I always thought the trailers we lived in were oh-so cozy in the long Wisconsin winters...and with the exception of tornado season...I always felt safe. Mom, Dad, two sisters snuggled up on the couch watching westerns.  I kinda liked the idea that the trailer park was just John Wayne putting the wagons in a circle. 'Cept that we put it in a circle and then put cinderblocks under them and stayed put for a few years.  We were hard-working, honorable people just like the pioneers who headed west in their covered wagons. Our wagons had tin roofs and we only got as far as the west-side of town...but still.

The Church was a little more subtle in its sabotaging of my life. Here, in a place I thought was safe and different, ultimately came the confirmation that I was an outsider...not quite good enough...and that God himself was not pleased with my kind. Why else did he give tornadoes a hunger for trailer parks? It felt like when God cleaned house he liked to use His Heavenly Hoover on the likes of us....which totally confirmed the little messages I received along the road to maturity. I was powerless. I would never be anything special. It would be many years before I understood that it wasn't God who damaged me, but people. Flawed human beings who just happened to quote scripture and smile while not choosing me for their team.

Sometimes I am envious of people who didn't grow up with the words Revival and Evangelist in their vocabulary...who didn't have two uncles as Baptist Ministers and parents who were Sunday School teachers. Then I would have found Jesus later in life and what a revelation that would be! His Saving Grace would be new and fresh and I would have stood on the street corner proclaiming his Glory....which I suppose is not too late to do. But when you grow up with Him from the age of zero you kinda take him for granted. It was hard to grasp that He was the Savior of the World....honestly he sorta felt like a special, much loved uncle. Yes...that who he was...Uncle Jesus. It would take me over forty years to call him Abba....Father.






My earliest memory is of walking across a stretch of desert outside of Palmdale, California with my daddy holding my hand. I was two and half years old. We had moved to southern California for one winter, while my Dad completed a temporary construction job digging ditches. My sister, Julie, was born while we there.  If I close my eyes I can feel the hot desert wind whipping against me and I can see the vastness of the sandy spectacle. In the Bible when God has something special in mind for a particular person....a call to greatness that He needs to prepare them for...he sends them to the desert.  He sent me to one when I was two and sometimes I feel like he forgot to give me the Google map to get out. But that was a special day....I was in the desert with my Daddy...and today I am in the desert with my Father...the wind is beating the heck out of me....but it has not blown me away. I spend my days in preparation...growing in the grit that comes from being spiritually sandblasted and on the look-out....always on the watch for what He would have me to do. I sure as heck don't want the desert lessons to be lost on me.

So I invite you to take a trip with me. In this blog I will tell you my story. In this story I will hand you my heart. My sisters and I often tease each other and say..."Love yer guts!"  Which is in essence saying I love every single thing that is inside of you...even if it is yucky and slimy and I wouldn't want to hold it in my hand. And that's how my Lord God loves me. He loves my guts. And He's the one giving me the guts to begin Story Time.





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