Where is He?

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.  ^"In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written: 

"But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel." (Matthew 2:1-6)

I was packing up to leave work when a bundle of students slowly passed by my door, pressing their hands intentionally against every wall and locker. Noticing I was still in my room, a girl who isn’t one of my students left the group to come into my room and explain that the Bible club was having a prayer walk and “Is there anything we can pray about for you?” I said something about family and how what they were doing was cool. Then she said, “Mr. M, I don’t really know you. Do you know Jesus?” Without hesitation: “Yeah, I know him! He’s my Savior and the reason I live.”

The honest answer would have been to say that some days I feel like I know him, and most of the days I believe he’s my Savior. To say, “Yeah, I know him!” with such zeal is just not true. My confidence about Jesus’ identity is about as steady as a three-legged chair, so I’m grateful God’s grace isn’t dependent on my understanding. I cannot comprehend why it is so exhaustingly difficult to figure out who this Jesus really is.

With all the holiday emphasis on glittering décor and extravagant presents, this Christmas bustle is a great reminder that I am so vacillating in my understanding of Jesus. Reading Matthew’s Gospel, I think the author found himself in a similar predicament, or at least he seems to be writing to those who do. Matthew walked with this man named Jesus, was present for his miracles as well as his death, and he witnessed Jesus’ resurrection. But who is Jesus really?

In the beginning of Matthew 2, the Magi from the east ask, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” The Magi’s assurance confounds me. He’s a king, and we’ve come to worship. They have never met Jesus, yet they are already so sure of this newborn’s identity and what their response should be—they just need to find him.

How did the Magi reach that point of confidence? What happened in their process of belief that led them to travel miles in search of this child in order to bring him gifts? I don’t know, and maybe Matthew doesn’t either, because he remains mute on their history.

In response to the Magi’s question, “Where is the one,” Matthew quotes Micah 5:2 and a prophesy made 700 years prior about a promised ruler (Matt. 2:6). It seems that Matthew is witnessing connections unfold, and as Matthew reads through the ancient Scripture, he finds Jesus there. I think it’s critical to note here that Matthew uses Micah’s prophecy not to validate ancient Scripture, but to validate Jesus. He asserts a connection between Jesus and the prophesied Messiah.

While Matthew watches ancient Scripture and finds Jesus there, a couple verses later in chapter 2, the Magi find the king by watching the stars. Throughout the rest of the Gospel, people find Jesus in deserts, in fishing boats, and in their living rooms. Matthew finds him at a tax collector’s booth, but he soon finds him on a cross. In the last chapter of his Gospel, Matthew writes that eleven disciples finally found Jesus on a mountain in Galilee, and “When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted” (Matt. 27: 17).

I am so like those eleven. I cannot stop doubting the identity of this man, and yet like them I cannot stop worshipping him. The Magi ask, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” and Matthew says, “I’ve found Him in Micah! I’ve found Him in the Stars! I’ve found Him in a tax collector’s booth! I find Him everywhere!”

I may waver when you ask me exactly who Jesus is, but I can say I know where to find him. I find him in the classroom while I teach and on the sidewalk while I run. I definitely found him in that little girl who asked me if I knew him. I find him in so many places, and hard as I try, I can’t seem to get away from him. Maybe we can be content with our inability to pin down who Jesus is. Maybe it’s enough to simply look for Jesus everywhere, and when we find him, for we surely will, fall on our knees in worship.

A New Work

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; Your steadfast Love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands. (Psalm 138:8)

I’ve adopted this verse as my theme and prayer for the summer while working here at the Boys and Girls Home. In the face of discouragement and frustration, which threatens to take me under everyday, God’s promise faithfully lifts me above the water: “A New Work,” I hear God whisper in my ear.

I was studying that verse above, and in the original Hebrew, the word used on that second line for “steadfast Love” is the Hebrew word hesed (Blue Letter Bible). According to several of the Bible dictionaries I’ve consulted, hesed means an enduring and lasting Love, or like my translation of the scripture put it, a “steadfast Love.” One scholar put it this way: “Hesed connotes a depth of loving-kindness unmatched in the world’s various kinds of love.” Hesed, this deep and holy love, is everywhere.

Genesis tells us God’s hesed preserved Joseph as he suffered in prison after being betrayed by his brothers and master.  Exodus tells us God’s hesed saw the Israelites suffering and led them out of slavery into a land of promise. Jeremiah tells us God’s hesed was stronger than the sins of the people and it drew them back to God. Daniel tells us God’s hesed protected Daniel and granted him favor in the eyes of the King. Jonah tells us God’s hesed transformed Jonah in the belly of the fish and gave him strength to fulfill God’s plan for his life. What I find when I study the Bible is unending evidence of God’s hesed, and it’s that same everlasting Love that the Psalmist writes about.

The reminder of God’s hesed in this scripture comforts me, and God’s promise here rouses me. I can’t always see what God’s purpose is for me, but I know God sees it and promises to fulfill it. To think that I am a work—a piece of art or a construction project—is both humbling and empowering; I am not my own, and yet it’s God’s hands that are on me—pressing me, fixing me, and turning me into something greater than what I am right now. Coming vulnerable and weak to allow myself to be changed by a power I don’t quite understand is scary, but when I remember that the hands of God move over and through me in hesed, I realize that the pain I feel is God working out the lumps and smoothing me into a masterpiece of priceless worth.

God has begun a work in my life, and God promises not to give up on me. As the Psalmist writes, “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.”

Worth

[context: working as a Pastoral intern at the Boys and Girls Home for the summer]

The other day, I led a Bible study here at the Boys and Girls Home for some of the newer guys. At first, we just talked about life--the bad stuff we’ve done in our pasts, the mess we’re in now, how cruel life’s been. So I asked the question: 

   What are you worth?

Are you worth more than the life you’ve been given? The situations in which you’ve been placed? The things that have happened to you? Are you worth more than the quality of life you have right now?

Without a hesitation, an adamant “yes” from every guy. So what are you worth? “Everything.” That one word--“everything”--released from the breath of the youngest, invaded the room, filling the spaces between each of us. Whether that one word captured the inner voice of everyone in the room, or whether the conviction in which it was said was so sincere, or whether the ache for it to be true outweighed the need to utter an alternative, that one word “everything” connected us and stole the need to speak.

Silence. So loud you almost smarted from it. Then (of course), I talked. I was probably wrong for what I did—I’m usually very wrong. I looked that young boy in the face, who’s struggling through layers and layers of the injury being rejected has caused, and I told that boy, “No.”

To be honest, you’re not worth it. You’re too risky an investment. Too many times you run away. Too many drugs stay in your system. Too many wounds, too much bitterness, too much. It’s not worth unpacking. Even if you change, even if you don’t totally screw up again, your return would never be worth the investment. Everything? You think you’re worth my everything? All of my goals and passions, all of my desires and needs, my very life—you’re worth that? No. You’re too dirty, too stained, too messed up. Not strong enough. Can never be good enough. You don’t deserve anything because you’re just not worth it.

But for some reason that I do not get, you are loved anyway. Despite the risk, the cost, the loss; despite your brokenness, and helpless; despite how many times you’ll walk away and give up on, no, turn your back on him; despite how many times you’ll curse him, and fight him, and criticize him, and doubt him; despite the fact that you will always disappoint yourself and never do enough right—He will love you.

As dirty and untouchable as you feel, you are accepted by the maker of things as intricate as blood cells and as massive as mountain ranges. You are loved and prized by majesty. The God of all, the God who births all life and works to make it good, says you are worth it. And let the one who knows you best and loves you the most anyway tell you your worth.

Finishing my monologue, I gave every guy a copy of the words from the Psalm: “O Lord, you searched me and know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up…You hem me in, behind and before, and your hand is always upon me…Where shall I go from your Spirit?”

******************

God, take the stupid works of these barren hands and the crippled words from this broken vessel and use them in spite of me. I pray every child here finds a home in you, where your consuming and steadfast love gently tickles our ears with the assurance that, to you, we are worth it. 

I Could Be a Farmer

I think for the longest time I knew only a black-and-white joy because I was a grazer. A fat, lazy cow chomping blades of grass under a burning sun. My movements slow, I'd eat my way from pasture to pasture. School--being fed. Church--being fed. Family and friends--being fed. We need that for so long, being fed, because we can't sustain ourselves. At some point, though, we do get it, and at that point, I think we're invited to change. The choice isn't forced on us--we're allowed to keep grazing off what others have sown if that's what we want. But that choice visions a black-and-white life. The invitation is to plant. To labor in the field farming what others will eat. A choice including sweat and blisters, but illuminating so much more color to life. I guess a lot boils down to what we choose to do.

Here's to being a planter instead of a grazer.

On Earth

You know when Jesus closes his prayer and says, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."? Well, I've been thinking a lot about that lately. This past week in Sunday school, we kept talking about the point of Christianity being Grace, being saved from eternal punishment, a loving God giving us eternal life if we choose it in the way we're told He (She) wants it. Now, I love that Sunday school, but I'm not so sure about the theology anymore. What I've been taught all these years growing up in the church misses the point. It's got to.

I'm reinventing my eschatology, because I'm just not convinced that Heaven's so exclusive and Hell's so default. But good grief! is that too much to talk about in one blog post, and it's not what I want to focus on anyway. I don't think Jesus wanted us to focus on it so much, not in the ways we're doing it now at least.

Okay, here's my theory. Think about what pisses you off, disturbs, or saddens you most about life here on earth (I'm thinking about kids being abandoned, orphaned, left feeling unloved and unwanted). Now imagine the best Heaven you can possible conjure up (I'm thinking about everyone feeling totally loved and wanted, everyone belonging and communing continually). Whatever you just imagined--for that will look very different from person to person--is your responsibility. Jesus said so himself. "On Earth as it is in Heaven." Jesus seems more concerned about widening the gaps to let Heaven crash into Earth here and now than He is about us one day being in Heaven later.

Maybe that little exercise in imagination doesn't work for everyone, but it definitely works for me. We've got to start laboring and toiling and never stop striving to bring to Earth that vision of Heaven each of us has. It may seem futile work (it very well may be), but it seems the only thing worth our blood.

Like Glass

Clay is easier than glass. I'm clay. You only see what I want you to see, and I can display myself anyway I desire. I take care of myself. No one gets in to screw around. None of my sewage spills out. Glass is too weak. I can't fog it enough; you see right through. See the smears and smudges on this man, the inconsistencies and imperfections. The flaws in this plan I'm trying so hard to live into. Glass can break and crumple and it's too trusting in its exposure.

But glass is the only way we can change this jacked-up world. Glass is the way of Christ, the way of descension. It's a denial to self-protection and an acceptance of something greater than me. It's time to be more exposed, more transparent about our hurts, our failures, our shame, our brokenness.

I would blog more, but I need to get off my bum and share my story.

Peace.

about the search (rambling)

I think it's safe to say that everything we do in life is about the search. We all have those days where we feel like there's more, like we're destined for more, like we're only seeing such a small, insignificant part of the whole. It's an aching we have for something more, something beyond just ourselves. I've been trying to assuage the burning with ministry. It's painfully clear that the passion God's given me is to love and mentor youth. I can honestly say that in the past year and a half, the only relationships I've actively and consistently invested in are those: relationships with youth. Ministry revives me, ignites me. Loving on youth hurts a lot of the time, but it's the only thing worth it. It's what gives my life purpose, my toils meaning. But it's so damn lonely.

I realized the problem with only living for ministry, with my only investments being in youth, is that it's often a one-way street. Yes, nothing pours into me like when one of my students offers a simple "thanks" or a youth tells me "I'm praying for you," but it's still one-sided because they can never pour back into me to the extent that I need it. A sage pointed out this phenomenon to me, and in retrospect it seems so obvious. I have such a fire to let youth know they belong to someone, to something, that they're loved and valued, but there's no one doing that for me.

This is quickly turning into a self-pity post, so I'll shift the perspective slightly. Freshman and Sophomore year of college, I had a small group--a group of about 8ish guys that became family to me. We were a brotherhood, and for the first time, I lived within the context of a community of accountability and love and support. When that group disbanded, to bandage my hurt, I quit investing in college friendships, and instead I invested in youth, striving to be the mentor I've always longed for and felt I needed. And now, so often, I find myself feeling lonely.

It's not always. It's usually just when I sit down. Most of the day, I'm running from one thing to another, working on one thing so I can move on to the next. It's when I sit, when the busyness stops, that I realize how alone I am, how alone I've made myself. Yes. I'm being dramatic. But seriously, you have met me, right? The point is, I feel like I don't have anyone or any group to belong to, not like I used to have, and that's tough. Some days I feel like I'm trying to clean another's wounds, all the while I can't stop bleeding. I'm meant to be communal, to need other people, and it's time I stop keeping people out. I try to always parage around and carry a spirit of joy, but that's such a surface-level Keith. I know if I'm going to make it, then I have to start letting more people in.

Finding Love in Bubble Wrap

Sailing to a new country across the seas,
  She's a girl simply trying to appease
   An aching for meaning to life and for Love
  But not anymore from some man above,
   But from one man down here.
Where's this Yahweh now?
  It's time she try another way now.
Too far removed from old family and friends,
  But this man's love compasses to a more solid end.
Feeling reborn in this new time and place,
  There's only acceptance reflecting in his face.
What she sees ahead with him
   Looks better than what she left behind her.
Yet every odd day, it's the
  Ordinary that stands out to remind her
   Of all her yesterdays.
Today it's bubble wrap,
  And with every pop and snap
  She releases a tear for every year
   She remembers when life was different.

*inspired by a real conversation*

"Surrender is the only thing that is our own." ---Mother Teresa

God, why can't I do this?

Why's it so hard to just get it right?

I keep thinking I'm ready so I jump in mid-flight,

and all I seem to do is fall

when faced with the sight

of myself.

God, why can't I do this?

Why's it so hard to surrender?

I try something else and all I engender

is more of the cold, hard pain I feel.

Another man a pretender, and defender

of what? Of Polo and Cee Lo?

Crack Cocaine and Lil Wayne?

More fly sedans and retirement plans?

Lifestyles of haste, our style of life is just waste,

and in the fiscal year of 2010

our budget of Defense was surpassing 285 billion?

What are we defending?

What is it here that's so precious that makes us think

our money is best spent on protecting it?

But me, nah, I got this down pat.

I know Your plan so I spit out the facts

of what it means to do this and that.

As far as being a Christian goes,

I know how to act

and play the game,

but I have no clue about the stakes of this poker match.

It seems like every day I'm gambling and I'm donning a new hat

to try to look the way I feel I should for You.

And I get it. I get it.

I get my life on track,

and I can see a higher path

of love and what a life of devotion

looks like. As a matter of fact, 

I start feeling your presence thick around

and chasing the sound of your music.

Life starts making sense,

with my time spent in your midst

in the presence of the poor and lonely,

those you bring to my attention.

But why is it that my prayers of praise soon turn to contention,

and all of my efforts and time and energy

result in only another invention of just more dissension,

and with three steps forward I turn back

in the wrong direction?

God, why can't I do this?

Why can't I get this right?

Somebody is always trying to fight
for my time,

and since I feel like I have to do it all,

I make nothing the priority

and always give in to what the majority

says I should be doing.

It's not until later that I remember the Authority,

or what should be in my life.

I'm too afraid of what being the minority

means--lonely, unhappy, desperate, lacking?

The fear's too strong and the lows hurt too long

for me to sit back and just wait.

Isn't that what you say trusting is?

Just.
waiting.

God, why can't I do this?

When will my good be good enough,

and my desires end for all this stuff

I keep carrying around in my wallet and closet
and wearing on my face? I know it's time to deposit
all this in You.

But, this conceit lives the life of the leech sucking deep.

My pride works against me, and my mind just conspires

and plays games of vampires--draining my soul.

Everything we ever worked for,

sucked...out...slowly...

God, I feel so lowly

when faced with myself.

Why can't I do this?
Worry's hills are the only ones my eyes look towards.

Not knowing the future
and never to be sure, it's so hard
when my trust is so immature.
It's time I conjure up something new.
My mind and my thoughts in the end point to You,
my soul and my spirit lined with Yours finally true;
my will and my desire,
my possessions and dreams all turn to fire,
all bow down when my self is faced with You.
God, my air, my time, my blood, my life: it all belongs to You.
The only thing you seek
is the one thing that keeps me free
of You and inadvertently the one thing
keeping me back from being me--the me created to dwell in You.
So why's it so hard to give up that one thing,
that one thing you ask of me?
Surrender