The daily grind

It’s been two and a half weeks, and I’m finding my rhythm. 

Every morning at 9:00, I make the trek to work (all five flights of stairs) and help Maher stay on top of all of the written communication that needs to go out (newsletters, prayer updates, project proposals, grant applications, progress reports etc). It’s not difficult work, but it can be tedious and very time consuming. Each foundation/donor organization has its own template and set of questions it wants answered, and I’m not always sure of the level of detail expected. Some want super wordy, in-depth descriptions; others want bullet points. Oof. 

I’m loving being back with my tribe. It feels so natural to be working shoulder to shoulder with them, even though we all do different things. 

YFCL staff and volunteers

After work I’ll sometimes take a walk down Slaf Street to buy fresh produce at the corner stand. The locally grown fruit is delicious, but I get most excited about the fresh mint leaves. They use mint in everything here, and it is completely delightful. 

If I’m feeling more adventurous, or simply desperate for some fresh milk, I’ll make the slightly longer trek to the grocery store chain nearby. It’s only a 10 minute walk, but you take your life into your hands as you contest with the mad drivers on the road. An especially tricky part is crossing Dekwaneh Circle, a roundabout of sorts that has cars coming from six different directions and everyone has the right of way. It’s intense. I’d take a photo of it...but I’d be hit by a car...so I’m making survival choices. 

My evening ritual is to sit on my balcony with a cup of fresh mint tea and watch the light transition behind the city skyline. Every night there’s a football (soccer) match on the pitch just below me, and I like to observe how the cars weave through and around my block. If you forget about standard rules of the road and think of how pedestrian traffic flows in, say, midtown Manhattan, you’ll get a better sense of how things work here. Mmm...but even Midtown is ordered and precise compared to this, so never mind. 

In addition to drinking mint tea in the evenings, I barricade myself in the living room with the AC on and practice my Arabic. So far I can say very useful things like, "I like to make eggs for breakfast" and "I want to make chicken for dinner, but you're not invited." Perhaps the most useful phrase though is this: Arabe tabahe mish'm'nieha bas ambet haalem (phonetically spelled to say: My Arabic is not good, but I am learning). 

That one's going to be on repeat for a while. 

Trust the sunscreen

Being a red head, I have pretty fair skin, but I am also fortunate enough to be able to decently tan as long as I wear proper sunscreen. If I cover my whole body with SPF 30, I can spend an entire day at the beach, say, in southern Spain, and not end up with a serious sunburn. I might look a little pink that evening, but by the time I wake up the next morning, I’m fine. However, while I’m at the beach I can easily get a little nervous because I see my skin getting a bit red and I think, crap, I’m gonna burn. 

But I’ve learned to trust the sunscreen.

Earlier this week (Monday), I moved from Spain/Sweden to Beirut, Lebanon. Towards the end of my first full day in my new apartment (Wednesday), I ran out of water. When I went to take a shower before heading out for dinner, there was barely more than a trickle and I was told that the government water hadn’t been replenished in several days (not an entirely unusual phenomenon apparently). Upon returning from dinner, Wael, my YFCL colleague, friend and fixer, had his guy at a private water company bring their truck and refill my tank. At 10:30 p.m.  

Thank the Lord for friends who have contacts and are willing to wait an hour for the truck to arrive and give this damsel in distress a hand. 

Just before flying out to Beirut, I spent the weekend in Switzerland. This was SUCH a gift. Not only because I got to spend time with two fantastic new friends in a country that I’ve been dying to visit for a long time, but I was able to reconnect with some people who have meant a lot to me in recent years. These individuals are the most unassuming, unpretentious people you will ever meet, yet they are, and regularly rub shoulders with, highly placed people within international governance and humanitarian work. Their warmth and generosity, their genuine interest in me as a person and their love for the Kingdom of God are beyond what I have words to express. 

The fact that all of us are in this one picture is incredible in itself. With very little notice and a very narrow window of time, we all converged at Wilf’s house for a bbq in Berne. I still have no idea how that came together, other than the fact that Jesus freaking loves me. 

My Swiss launching pad  :)

Although I’ve been preparing for this move for a full year, it’s still a big deal and a significant adjustment. But I feel like I have been generously slathered with SPF 30. I’ve been showered with so much love, prayer and support from friends and family all over the place, and I have no doubt in my mind that they are my protective factor. There’s no way for me to know all that will happen in the two years I’ll be living here, and I’m under no illusions that it will be smooth sailing the whole way, but I know that regardless, I’m covered. My skin might get a bit pink, but it won’t burn. I can trust the sunscreen. 

The panoramic view from my balcony

A new reformation?

This year marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Reformation, a movement that saw nearly an entire continent transformed and millions of people gain access to the Word of God for the first time. 

Fast forward to now, the transformational effects of this reformation seem to have waned. Our society is in distress, our relationships are broken, the Church is polarized over any number of issues, and Christians struggle to have positive impact on public policy and debate. 

We need another reformation, but of what sort? We have the worship movements, the prayer movements, the missions movements, but still we see society going in the opposite direction of God’s commands. So what’s missing? 

One of the greatest revivals recorded in the Bible took place under the reign of King Josiah. It is written of him, “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses” (2 Kings 23:25). 

Josiah places among the last in a long line of kings of Israel and Judah, most of whom did evil in the eyes of the Lord. But even at a young age, he had a heart after God and took steps to repair the temple. At one point, the high priest finds the Book of the Law (known to us as the Mosaic Law in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) underneath a pile of rubble and brings it to the king. Upon hearing the Book of the Law read aloud, Josiah tears his robes because he realizes how far away God’s people have strayed. He then inquires of the Lord - who in turn was pleased with his responsiveness and humility (2 Kings 22:29); he gathers the community together - the elders, the priests and prophets, and “all the people from the least to the greatest” (23:1-2); he has the Book of the Law read aloud to the people; and finally, he renews the covenant in the presence of the Lord, essentially instigating a societal transformation (23:3). 

The parallels between this story and our present day are really quite striking. Our temple (both physical body and church) is in disrepair. Many popular pastors and teachers don’t preach from the Old Testament apart from Psalms and Proverbs, and very few broach the subject of Mosaic Law. Instead we focus on the life and teachings of Jesus, forgetting that Jesus himself said that he came to fulfill the Law, not abolish it.

This begs the question, what is it about the Law that was so important to God and to Jesus? And how far have we strayed?

The Mosaic Law is commonly summarized in the Ten Commandments and was even more succinctly interpreted by Jesus as the following: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31). 

In essence, the Law was given to guide people into right relationship with their God and right relationship with their neighbor. The intention was for God’s chosen people Israel to be set apart, holy, different from the rest. That is still God’s intention for his people. Since we gentiles have been grafted in, it’s his intention for us to be set apart, holy, different from the rest. Which we believe and preach in theory, but are we really that different in practice? 

Let’s look at capitalism. Our entire system is built on debt and interest. Yet this goes directly against God’s framework in Deuteronomy: “Do not charge your brother interest…” (23:19-20), and “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts…” (15:1-4). How far have we who call ourselves Christians gone to question these mechanisms in our economic system? How many of us are drowning in debt? How many of us play the stock market and invest in funds that we really don’t know that much about? We trust financial planners to invest our money, but do we do the research to find out whether or not our money is funding industries that honor God’s principles? 

Let’s look at work ethic. The Sabbath (day of rest) was of utmost importance to the Lord. Yet how many of us struggle to find work-life balance? How many of us consistently work late, or on the weekends and during times when we should be prioritizing family and other relationships? How many of us make career decisions based on salary and upward mobility rather than on what’s best for the marriage, the kids or the extended family? 

Let’s talk about the criminal justice system. Most of us would agree that criminals should pay for their crime and serve time in jail. But how aware are we of the fact that prison didn’t exist in Hebrew culture? Offenders didn’t get removed from society like they do today. Instead, the offender and the community had to live with one another, forcing them to find the means to restore what had been broken and seek forgiveness from and restitution for the people who had been hurt. This is relational justice, and God is not anything if not relational. Criminal justice should seek the wellbeing of the victim, the offender and society as whole, but this rarely happens. How often do we as Christians question the destructive and non-relational dynamics of our prison system? 

By largely discounting the Mosaic Law as no longer applicable since we are now ‘under grace’, we’ve essentially neglected God’s commands and left them under our own pile of rubble.

The first reformation brought people out of spiritual darkness. Today we need a reformation that will bring us out of relational dysfunction. Let us follow the example of Josiah, the king who turned to the Lord “with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.” Let us seek the Father’s heart behind the seemingly harsh and culturally irrelevant rules of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Let the Book of the Law be read aloud again and let us renew our covenant with the God who loves us, who has plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future (Jer. 29:11). 

The Alcotts and what they did for America

Orchard House - Concord, Massachussetts

Today on my way home from work I stopped for a spontaneous tour of Orchard House, the home where Louisa May Alcott lived and famously wrote Little Women. Like so many others, I have read the book, loved the movie, cried every time poor Beth dies….

But I didn’t realize until today just how extraordinary the whole Alcott family was. Louisa’s parents were both social reformers in their own right: Bronson Alcott kept getting fired from his teaching jobs because the establishment thought his ideas about recess, educating girls, and refusing to publicly humiliate a child were quite simply absurd. Abby May Alcott became a women’s rights advocate at the age of 15 and remained so all her life. Both Bronson and Abby were passionate abolitionists, and their home was part of the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. Bronson was known to tutor anyone who came to him, including runaway slaves. Today I stood in that very study. 

Louisa was not only a (gasp) female writer who (gasp) made enough money during her relatively short life to pay off her father's debts and finance her sister's art education in Europe, she was also a strong believer in the importance of physical exercise - which for a Victorian woman was seen as distasteful, scandalous even. Additionally, she worked as a nurse during the Civil War and was known to treat both Union and Confederate soldiers. Because though she was a fierce abolitionist, she was not a “heathen.”  

May Alcott, the youngest sister (depicted as Amy in the book), was a very talented artist. Thanks to her sister's profitable writing career, May was able to study in Paris, Rome and London, and actually achieved some critical acclaim amongst the Parisian artists of her day, including that of her friend Edgar Degas. But the story that nearly inspired tears at the end of the house tour was this one: 

A young man was failing his courses at MIT because all he seemed to want to do was sculpt. His parents despaired and hired May Alcott to tutor their son in his artistic expressions since he didn’t seem to be good for anything else. She quickly saw that he had a talent that far surpassed what she could teach him, so instead she introduced him to other talented sculptors and gave him her own unused sculpting tools as a way to invest in his talent and encourage him to pursue it. This young man’s name was Daniel Chester French, otherwise known as the man who went on to create this: 

Anecdotal history has it that Chester French carved out space on the backside of the Lincoln statue, placed there May Alcott’s tools that she had given him, and sealed it up again as a symbolic gesture of what her encouragement had meant to him. 

Are you not inspired!?!?!

Abby Alcott died before women were granted the right to vote, but without her championing the cause for so many years, who knows how much longer women would have had to wait to be recognized as legitimate voices in the democratic process! 

Bronson Alcott died before his ‘absurd’ ideas about education became normalized in the American school system, but without his perseverance, how long would it have taken this self-proclaimed “greatest nation on earth” to champion the education of females and slaves? 

Louisa died at the age of 55 after chronic sickness caused by mercury poisoning. During her service as a Civil War nurse, she contracted typhoid and was treated with medicine containing mercury, and her health was never the same after that. Even so, she was quite the formidable woman... America's Jane Austen? 

May Alcott died at the age of 39, six weeks after giving birth to her only child. She never reached the peak of her career as a painter, but she was the encouraging force behind the man who gave us one of our most precious national monuments. 

Oh to be a person who is willing to put up with being ridiculed because I have vision for a future that doesn’t yet exist. Oh to be a person who nurtures and encourages the school dropout who ends up gifting an entire nation. Oh to be such a social reformer who thinks and lives beyond herself; who lives not extravagantly, but generously and expansively. 

Today, I am inspired. 

Extremes are easy; the center is hard

This article first appeared as Can we live faithfully in a time of vitriol? on Sojo.net. 

Scripture is rife with paradox. Live by the Spirit but be firmly anchored in the Word. Seek justice but love mercy. Love sacrificially but maintain healthy boundaries. Be gracious with people but hold to the standard of holiness.

Followers of Christ and children of God are called to center ourselves in the example of Jesus and navigate these tensions continually. Instead, we seem to have evacuated the center to migrate toward the wings of easier-to-digest theology, in all directions. In this season of Lent, perhaps it would be beneficial to examine our tendency toward extremes, and how Jesus navigated paradoxes during his time on Earth. 

Extremes are easy — clear-cut, straightforward. They’re comfortable and certain. But they don’t accurately represent reality, nor do they require us to develop a capacity for complexity and delve into the mud that is life experience. With our appetite for extremes — or in our fear of others' — we’ve created narrow corridors of opinion that are impossible to deviate from, lest we be ostracized or vulnerable. And this kind of atmosphere enables authoritarian figures to rise. The fact that so many Christians have not only acquiesced to President Trump’s administration, but enabled it, is very confusing. 

Scripture exhorts us to walk humbly before God and live in peace. Are we doing that? 

To continue reading, click here: https://sojo.net/articles/can-we-live-faithfully-time-vitriol

What does it mean to be blessed?

This post also appears as "It's time to stop confusing blessings with stuff" at relevantmagazine.com.


Let’s talk about Asaph and Psalm 73. I feel like if I were to meet Asaph over coffee at Starbucks, we would have so much to rant about together. Here’s the thing: While Asaph is busy keeping his hands clean and his heart pure (without much to show for it), the wicked are prospering and scoffing at guys like him. Their cups are full, his is empty. Naturally the guy is angry. 

When I look around, I see a whole lot of Christians (including leaders!!) who are cheapening and perverting the Gospel and getting away with it. They’re building their names, gaining a faithful following and making a whole lot of money. Why doesn’t God shut them down?!? He’s certainly powerful enough to do it. Instead, He lets them prosper while His true disciples are in the trenches, often living from paycheck to paycheck, suffering for the Gospel. I scratch my head and heave a sigh. 

Clearly, Asaph and I are having the same issues. But he understood something: For a full 15 verses, Asaph complains about how the wicked are prospering and the godly are not, but then a shift happens in verse 16: “When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply, till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground.” 

Let’s take an ‘enter the sanctuary’ moment and ponder this. What if our definition of living a prosperous, abundant life is misguided? When you look carefully at Scripture, Jesus never actually talks about material wealth and physical comfort as being a blessing. Instead we hear him say, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!”, his tone more sorrowful than critical. 

Jesus never said that money was bad, or even that having an abundance of it was bad. Instead He invited us to consider what money does to us. It corrupts our character, it distracts us, it ties us to places and things; ultimately it makes us less dependent on Him, which is the real sin. Could it be that from God’s perspective, material comfort is not a blessing but rather a burden? 

Two of the wealthiest kings in the Old Testament, David and Solomon, lived materially blessed lives. But through their stories, we see that even though they were used by God in tremendous ways, their vast wealth contributed to their making some really poor choices. Their familial relationships were a mess, and Solomon especially met his end in a state of melancholy and disillusionment. 

Christians, especially American Christians, LOVE to talk about how God’s desire is to bless us, which is a totally biblical concept. But very rarely do we separate the idea of “blessing” from material comfort. Let’s allow ourselves to be challenged by this: When Jesus talked about poverty, he talked about it in relational terms: the brokenhearted, the captives, the spiritually oppressed, those without family or safety net (Isaiah 61). It would stand to logic that He also thinks about wealth and blessing in relational terms. 

I’m certainly guilty of defining a prosperous, abundant, blessed life in terms of material comfort, which is why it is extremely tempting to get bent out of shape when ungodly people (including many church leaders) prosper. I’ve allowed envy to blind me to the fact that God’s perspective is wholly different from mine. I need to have more ‘enter the sanctuary’ moments and immerse myself in heavenly perspective: 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

    For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn,

    For they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

    For they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

    For they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,

    For they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart,

    For they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

    For they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

    For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 

Matthew 5:3-10

To live a blessed life is to live in right relationship with God and our fellow man. This may require us to forfeit material wealth and comfort, to experience persecution instead of popularity, to live in total dependence on God instead of our own resourcefulness and giftings. But we gain favor, anointing, relational wholeness and the eternal smile of God. 

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I’ve been delighting myself in the Lord for many years now, but I’ve also been focused on the desires of my heart. What if the true meaning of this verse is “Delight yourself in Me and I will become the desire of your heart”? 

I think this is the revelation Asaph had in verse 17 and what he articulates in verses 25-26 when he says, “Whom have I in heaven but You? There is nothing on earth I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” 

Asaph was blessed. I want to be like Asaph. 

Make the American Church great again

This article originally appeared on Relevantmagazine.com as "Fake news and other traps damaging the church"

With populist nationalism on the rise, there is fear among citizens that the operational aspects of democracy are being debilitated by elements such as ‘fake news,’ corporate lobbyists and voter apathy, resulting in a fairly intense polarization of western societies. Similarly, evangelical Christians in America are witnessing an ever widening divide within our own community. Many are losing faith in the evangelical church and cannot see eye to eye on matters of politics or orthodoxy. 

As believers, we need to be very concerned about the state of our Christianity, because the issues that threaten to invalidate our system of democracy are the very issues that threaten to invalidate the American church. Abortion and gay marriage are not the threats. Christians who don’t know their Bible, who worship God with their lips but shy away from holiness, are the threat. Our country has never needed the Gospel more than now, yet instead of rising to the occasion, the church is busy building its media empires, reevaluating Scripture, and bickering amongst ourselves. The parallels between our floundering democracy and our floundering church are striking, so let us take an introspective moment to ponder them:

’Fake news and alternative facts’ meets ‘False teaching and alternative truths’

‘Fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ became an issue in the last election campaign, and unless voters can learn to differentiate between truth and fiction, our democracy is in serious trouble. Unfortunately, the same malady is debilitating the American church, and we’re losing our ability to discern what is scriptural truth and what is seeker-sensitive interpretation. 

For example, there are some very influential evangelical voices who are choosing to adjust the principles and laws of God regarding family and sexual ethics to fit the latest norms of secular society. Everyone should feel welcome and safe in church, and everyone should feel convicted of sin and challenged to pursue holiness as we grow in our relationship with the Lord; these two things are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps we need to revisit how we define the terms ‘welcome’ and ‘safe’. Jesus certainly made sinners feel welcome and safe, but he never let them continue in their sinful patterns. His command was, “Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11).

’Lack of voter knowledge and understanding’ meets ‘Lack of Scriptural knowledge and understanding’

Democracy does not work if a nation’s citizens do not have access to information or take the time to understand the issues. We have never had such easy access to information, yet we have never been so uninformed. Part of the reason for this might be the proliferation of fake news, but mostly, we just don’t take the time to read and understand. We want bullet points and catchphrases, but it’s impossible to get a nuanced understanding of anything based on bullet points and catchphrases.

One of the biggest threats to the American church is Christians who don’t know their Bible. Much of our understanding of Scripture today comes from a book we read, or from a few choice Psalms and ‘key verses’ that serve as the basis for our understanding of God. We may be able to recite the Gospels from memory, but how regularly do we study the Law and the Prophets? Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). If we don’t know what the Law says, how can we know who Jesus is?

’Corporate lobbyists’ meets ‘Prosperity Gospel preachers’

We cry foul when wealthy lobbyists in Washington unfairly wield their power to the detriment of the ‘little people’, yet we seem blind to how deeply wealth and power have corrupted the church. Why is it that we continue to flock to mega churches, eat hungrily from the hands of ‘prosperity gospel’ preachers, and buy ‘Christian living’ books that aren’t much more than humanistic doctrine camouflaged as biblical exhortation? 

The outrage is palpable when a president we didn’t vote for does stuff we don’t like, yet where is the corporate outrage when ministers of the Gospel get investigated for financial fraud? Or when tele-evangelists prey on the vulnerable to fund their ministry empires? Or when a celebrity minister continues to hold a position of spiritual leadership even though she’s on her third marriage and has publicly denied the trinity? There is only one instance in the whole New Testament in which Jesus gets violently angry, and it’s when he encounters the money changers in the temple. He overturns tables and drives the merchants out, saying, “How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” (John 2:16). He’s still asking that question. 

’The cult of personality’ meets ‘The cult of charismatic church leaders’ 

Last year, one of our presidential candidates was caught making lewd remarks about women; his ‘apology’ was more defiant than repentant. This person is now our president. In January of this year, a Florida pastor was caught in adultery with one of his parishioners, but in his ‘confession speech’ to his congregation he said he won’t resign from his pastoral position because “God has already forgiven [him].” His congregants stood up and applauded. 

These stories are far from unique. What is it about charismatic leaders that have us so entranced that we willingly overlook their corrupted character and continue to follow them? The term ‘grace’ is not a euphemism for enabling our sinful nature to continue unchecked. Grace is what allows us to hit pause and properly deal with our sin. Only after the restorative process has been completed should a leader step back into a position of influence. Every person’s story in the Bible is about character over gifting, process over destiny. What makes us think that our leaders are exempt?  

’A culture of consumerism’ meets ‘Our consumerist attitude towards God’ 

How does it help us that today’s church events are branded and marketed as if they were products to be consumed? If we need the stage design, the lights, the eye candy and the app to keep our attention on the Lord, then what is the point? We don’t consume God, He consumes us. There are at least eight references in the Bible to him being a “consuming fire,” but do we allow his fire to burn us? Because that would mean allowing every part of us to be placed under his Lordship and held accountable to his Word. Fire doesn’t consume discriminately. God wants all of us, but as long as we go through the Christian walk expecting it to be about us and what God can do for us, we’re missing it. 

That’s the crux, isn’t it? As long as we’re the ones doing the consuming, we decide the terms. We don’t have to deal with our sin beyond what’s sufficiently uncomfortable to feel holy for a minute. We don’t really have to pursue God in any genuine or transformative way. Which is fine; we can choose to do Christianity that way. But then we also have to stop complaining about the ‘liberal agenda’ experiencing so much success where the church has failed; we have to relinquish any notion of being agents of change in our culture; and we have to accept that the world will not give a rip about what we have to say. We’ll stand in front of a holy God on judgment day and risk hearing him say, “Away from me; I never knew you” (Matthew 7:22-23). 

The Old Testament prophets spoke harsh reality to the people of God, but they also offered redeeming hope. God’s promise to his people has always been that if we return to him whole heartedly, he will forgive us: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14) But if we do not humble ourselves and seek his face, he will come and remove our lampstand from its place (Revelation 2:5). Which is it to be?