Fragrance of Christ

It's powerful what a certain smell can conjure in your memory. Whenever I smell an orange being peeled, I immediately think of track season, because all the track moms would bring us orange slices to eat in between events. Other smells bring back more specific memories, time-bound memories, and bring crashing to mind the intensity of that moment. They can be positive or negative associations, too. A scent can repel you from something or it can draw you in and put you at ease.

I was thinking about this when I came across Paul's metaphor of us as fragrances in 2 Corinthians 2. In this little snippet of Scripture he says that we are a "fragrance of Christ" to the world around us. A sweet smelling fragrance in the midst of the stench of death and hopelessness.

I don't often feel like a sweet smelling fragrance of Christ. I would not compare my life to the latest Giorgio Armani fragrance, and most of the time I wonder if people can even tell that anything is different about my life. But Paul's reminder is that I don't have to go around wondering what kind of fragrance I'm putting out, as if one day I can produce stench and the other day something intoxicatingly beautiful.

Instead, Paul simply says that I am a fragrance of life among a fragrance of death. This gives me tremendous hope, realizing it does not depend upon my effort. I don't have to try to be a different kind of fragrance, I am a different kind of fragrance already. Christ has done the work.

Our lives tell a story, and our lives give off a fragrance. In Christ we are assured that both are redeemed and given new dimensions. Just because our effort doesn't determine the goodness or badness of our fragrance doesn't exempt us from doing something, however. We are called to go into the world, to bring that fragrance to the world.

So while we don't have to go around wondering what our lives are smelling like, we are commanded to go and bring that fragrance to other lives. Which turns everything outward. It exposes the lack of trust we have in Christ to actually bring about that sweet fragrance. It's easier to ponder how we smell, trying to produce a "better" fragrance, than it is to simply trust that Christ makes us sweet smelling fragrances and that all we need to do is walk by faith.

"Cease striving", the Psalmist reminds us. "Come to me", says Jesus. "Seek first the Kingdom". If we reorient our lives around Christ, He will take us where we need to go. He will guide our steps and take us to the places that desperately need the fragrance of Christ. What a good thought, that we don't have to try so hard on our own. All we have to do is follow Christ, placing our complete trust in Him, and submitting our lives to radical obedience. He will show us the way.

class, haiti, and

So much has been happening this week, both on a cosmic scale and a personal scale. I've been seeing 6am on my bedside clock every day this week, for starters. It was just a small part of the very odd rhythm that you get into when you take a two week class. The days start to melt together and you have to take each day one step at a time or all the pressure just slams down on you.

But this week was more than just about class. It was so bizarre, sitting in class next to my friend Joel who had been scheduled to go to Haiti for a mission trip this next week. We were both trying to keep up with the news while trying to remain focused on what the professor was saying. Every time we'd get a short break Joel would rush out of the classroom to get on his phone and make frenzied phone calls.

It was a week of too many assignments, but somehow they all got done. You can't do this sort of thing alone, and it was good to be able to study, laugh, and be frustrated with several other good friends in the class. It's the kind of week you don't expect to be able to learn anything, but you end up learning so much. Maybe the best word to describe this week is full.

The classes got under my skin, frustrating me while also encouraging me. You don't either love or hate classes like these, you kind of hold the love and hate in tension and end up feeling that it was really worth it in the end.

My favorite part of the week was this afternoon's wrap up session in racial reconciliation. It was the part of the class where we all went around and told about our ideas for being racial reconcilers in our current and future ministries. I love hearing from different perspectives when it comes to this sort of thing, and i was incredibly challenged and encouraged by the ideas my classmates presented.

I walk away from this week extremely grateful that it is over, but slightly sad at the same time.

The Clamor

The world is shouting at us. Voices competing for our attention, for our time, for our belief. The never-ending cadence just gets exhausting to listen to, yet it is so much easier to stay tuned in to its messages than it is to turn off the dial and listen to a different message.

You know how sometimes when you have been watching TV for a while it just gets hard to turn the thing off? It's sort of like that.

Meanwhile God is whispering, speaking, even shouting life-giving and hope-filling words to me that I miss because I am caught in the chasm of my own laziness. The Word doesn't need hours and hours of my time in order for it to be effective and sharp to my soul, but it does need time.

What things is God speaking to me today? I think this is the attitude I want to cultivate as this new year emerges and unfolds.

The Call to Christian Community

I wrote this little essay last year.

I am absolutely convinced that I would rather live life in the raging storm of community than in the dull solitude of myself. I would rather be subject to the flaming fires of people’s unmet expectations than to be merely thought of as a good person. I would rather be exposed as the bumbling, stumbling coward of a friend that I am than to be looked upon with respect from afar.

In these endeavors of community there is an inevitability to the fact that the true person will be revealed. Oh, and what a good thing this is! Especially for the white-washed, too-proud believer, who needs the sunlight of community to expose those glaring blotches of blackness in our souls. I am here speaking of the result which occurs from living and striving for a common purpose in Christ. For the common purpose of ministering in Christ’s name manifests itself in so many different ways, yet flows from a single source: the awesome love of God. We are each gifted with various habits of ministry which show forth God’s glory in multiple ways. But we are thereby united through the love of Christ, and it is to that great beachhead that we hold onto so dearly. For we would quickly disintegrate into the chaos we see all around us if it were not for this single unifying force.

Therefore in all our endeavors we must remember what pulls us back together at the end of the day. Our disagreements in style might seem large to us, but compared to the vastness of God’s love they are but small matters. We should each seek to serve Christ as He has called us, always looking to Him as our source and encouragement, and should employ grace in generous amounts to our brethren who are involved in the same great task. We remember through it all that we serve the God who redeems us through grace, not the work of our hands.

We should recognize, then, that while differences abound, God’s love seen through Christ unifies more perfectly than our differences separate. We should see it as an honor to be so sharpened by our fellow believers, and I do mean sharpened, because sharpening involves pain. To be sharpened is to be cut, to be formed, and to be thus refined. In losing ourselves we truly see the beauty of Christ’s strength being made perfect in our weakness. And when we are weakened, we can begin to live in the awesome power of God’s strength. This is the place where we have the power to forgive those people who have deeply hurt us. This is the place where we have the fortitude to keep running the Great Race when all our energies are spent. And this is the place where we are transformed as agents and enactors of beautiful grace, able to bring hope to a world lost in despair.

That is why it is so important that we take the call to Christian community so seriously. For in showing grace and mercy to our fellow brothers and sisters we are learning the great truths of God. We are active participants in transformational redemption through learning to live with and serve our community. We become more like Christ when we choose to love others in spite of their mistakes and shortcomings. We absolutely MUST learn to let the love of Christ so rattle the foundations of our hearts that we become steadfast in encouraging and forgiving our brothers and sisters.

Christ’s call is not to dive deeper into oneself, but to fall headlong into the raging current of Himself, where love and mercy persist. It is through these holy waters that we must pass in order to come out purified on the other side. Our hidden weaknesses and our glaring imperfections must be brought to light in order that Christ would redeem them; and He does! Through this amazing, wondrous process we find the strength to live in community. We find the strength to struggle through the difficulty of loving our brethren, and we find enough grace to live each day as it comes. The task of Christian community is hard, but more important than ever. Let us bow before our Almighty Father in Heaven as we attempt such an endeavor.

the story of a Christmas snow

It doesn't snow in Dallas. It shouldn't snow in Dallas. But somehow, on Christmas Eve, it did. It began in the morning as a steady, chilling rain, the kind that gets inside your skin and rattles your bones. I was walking around with families at a mission center close to home and wondering at how much we all have progressed with scientific innovation and such yet still an ordinary thing such as the weather can simply make life miserable. Families standing out in the cold rain. There isn't a whole lot more miserable than that.

At first when the rain turned to snow, nothing stuck. The ground was having nothing to do with the snow, melting it before it had a chance to make a home for itself. The resistance kept up through the afternoon. Ground versus snow. As the wind picked up and the flakes turned into a flurry, the ground still stubbornly refused to house the snow. With the setting of the sun, however, the ground lost its greatest ally.

It was so peculiar and so mesmerizing to behold the elements from the other side of the window at my house. With the wind howling fiercely and the tree branches shaking violently in response, there was a kind of coziness that you feel only when you stand safely behind a window watching such a spectacle. And a kind of awe, as well.

When the sun drifted away and the darkness began to set in, the ground finally began to acquiesce to the persistence of the snow. It was like watching someone grudgingly decide to do something. The snow took to the ground, slowly layering itself. The dark ground magically transformed into white.

It was like a great picture, a reminder, if you will, of the force of redemption. Here we have the holidays, the old Christmas Story you and I have heard a hundred times, and it becomes harder and harder to enter into the remembrance of the baby Savior Jesus that this holiday is all about. The story keeps persistently trying to make a home for itself in my heart, but I stubbornly refuse to let it have its way with me. It's easier to just let myself become distracted by everything else going on.

But when I finally relent, an amazing transformation begins to take place. The Story has won out. It takes my own story, simple as it is, and redresses it in a new garment, giving it new purpose and beauty.

It doesn't snow in Dallas. But redemption still finds a way to come to us in the strangest of places.

a few Christmas prayers and wishes

For my imagination to be stretched. For my heart to be expanded. To be transfered from the kiddie pool to the big kids' pool.

To entertain thoughts deeper and more compelling than my selfishness allows.

For the language of the Word to taste like fresh-baked bread. For the creativity and diligence to not separate God from the everyday.

To receive love instead of working to earn it. To give love instead of trying to earn it. To learn the selflessness of love and the exuberance of giving.

To notice. To laugh. To smile. To enjoy.

For renewed hope. For fresh eyes. For a heart of obedience.

Simeon's Hope

Waking up is really an amazing thing. It is something completely out of our control, when it comes down to it, and it is something that we all must do each new day. This morning, like almost every morning in the recent past that I can remember, reminds me of my neediness.

No matter what I'm thinking about before I go to bed, whether it is something stupid or something a few paces from trivial, the undercurrents of sleep seem to wash it away so that when I wake up, I have a few moments where I've forgotten everything. It's a slightly disorienting feeling, until the weight of whatever I'm supposed to be doing for the day comes crashing through the cobwebs and I'm restored to "reality".

In that little moment before reality has set in there is something big at work that I'm not sure I always remember in the moment. It's the little choice to either carry my own burdens or remember I have a Savior.

Do you ever feel like you need to be reminded of hope? I've been feeling it quite often. For whatever reason, my mind and heart wander from the path that is trusting in Jesus and need reorientation every single morning. But there are so many mornings when I just don't care. The day looms and doesn't seem to care either. There are things to be done and places to be. There doesn't seem to be time to sit down and breathe before it all begins.

Simeon, the old man in the Luke 2 version of the birth of Christ, has been teaching me what it means to feel my need to be reminded everyday of the hope I have in Christ. Simeon was a man who was waiting expectantly for the birth of the Messiah, and from the story we can gather that he has been waiting his entire life. He is on the brink of death, but the Holy Spirit has promised him that he will not die until he meets Israel's Savior.

So Simeon cultivates a life of expectant hope. Some days it must have seemed like it would never happen, but Simeon kept pressing on, earning an advanced degree in Hope. How in the world did he do this? I'm not entirely sure, but I think part of the answer is that he submitted himself as a servant to God. He gave himself up, and in so doing recognized his great neediness before God.

I need, every morning, to be reminded of the hope of Christ. I need to have the great Story told to me again, so that my mind and heart can massaged into remembering the radical hope that Jesus has brought to this world. I need it more than I need breakfast.

Hope was the heartbeat that kept Simeon going. Which causes me to think, what's making my heart beat today?