Living the Gospel

James Martin (a Jesuit priest, author, and all around brilliant man) posted a link on Facebook a while back to an article about a nun who had passed away.  His profound comment on the link he shared struck me:

Sister Anne Montgomery had “a lifetime of living the Gospel.” 

I really hope someone will say that about me when I die.

More importantly I hope I will live a life that will warrant someone saying that I spent a lifetime living the Gospel.  

There are a lot of standards you could use to measure the “success” of your life: how much money you make, how high up in the hierarchy of your company you move, how big your house is, how well your children grow up, how happy you are, how many books you publish, how well known or respected you are in your community, how many hours you spend volunteering, etc.

But this is the standard I want my life to be measured by: when I die, will someone be able to honestly say that I spent a lifetime living the Gospel?

I know I will never be able to live the Gospel perfectly.  I will fail again and again to love my neighbor as myself.  I will fail again and again to share God’s love through word and deed.  I will miss or ignore opportunities to care for people in need as Jesus instructed his followers to do.  I will never be able to love God and follow God's commands as God instructed God's followers to do.

But I pray that by the grace of God, God would give me the courage, the faith, and the strength to spend a lifetime living the Gospel.

Jumping Off Cliffs

A little bit ago I read a book called Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris.  The authors are teenagers and the book is written for teenagers, but the book has messages that can apply to anyone at any age.  The premise of the book is that our society has incredibly low expectations for teenagers, we see the teen years as years when teens have virtually no responsibilities and we expect our teens to accomplish very little.  In reality, however, teens are capable of doing incredible things and accomplishing far more than we expect.  God has given all people (including teens) gifts and talents and God expects us to use these gifts to do God’s work here on earth.

The lake, islands, and land surrounding my family’s cabin in northwestern Ontario were carved out by glaciers thousands of years ago, leaving some magnificent geographical forms including some cliffs.  My sister, cousins, friends, and I spent quite a few summer afternoons jumping off of cliffs near our cabin.  It’s nothing too extreme, but we sure had fun.

One day some years back, someone from my parent’s generation decided she wanted to jump off the cliffs with all the young people (this woman has given me permission to share this story, but I won’t reveal her identity).

We all went in the boat to the cliffs and as we usually did, we young people started climbing to the top of the cliffs and jumping into the water.  The woman knew she didn’t want to jump off the big cliff, so she made her way to the jumping off point of the smaller cliff.

She stood there at the top of the cliff for 5 minutes…10 minutes…15 minutes…  During this time we demonstrated how to properly jump by being sure to push off of the rock really hard.  We reassured her that we had all jumped dozens of times and we were all perfectly fine.  30 minutes…45 minutes passed… by this time we had all jumped numerous times and had just about had our fill of jumping and were about ready to go home.  Our tactics of polite encouragement and support had turned to frustration as we called out “Just jump already!!!”  There were numerous times when she started to jump off, but stopped herself before she actually jumped.  She got closer to the edge of the cliff looked down, said she was going to jump, backed up, got a bit of a walking start, stopped, looked over the cliff, backed up, started to go again, stopped, said she was going to jump…  (And the best part of this story is her husband was videotaping this entire episode, waiting for her to jump.  He didn’t want to stop recording for fear that she would finally decide to jump when he had stopped recording.  So somewhere there is a tape of a woman standing on a cliff for an hour.)

More than an hour passed, and then with little fanfare or announcement she jumped.  When she surfaced we all clapped for her and her accomplishment (and because we were glad we could finally return home).

How many of us have stood on a “cliff” terrified to jump off?  Who hasn’t been afraid to do something hard and big even when we knew we should (for a variety of reasons)?

I know I have often stood on a “cliff” feeling paralyzed to jump off. 

But life is all about jumping off those cliffs. 

I don’t know for sure how this woman felt after she jumped off that cliff, but I imagine she felt better after having jumped than she did standing at the top of the cliff.  Preparing to jump is often terrifying, but looking back we often realize that jumping off a “cliff” is one of the best things we ever did.

If you had told me four years ago that I’d be doing the work I’m doing now, I would have told you you were completely insane.  But in the past four years I have stepped out of my comfort zone, learned to do new, hard things, and risked failure and rejection.  I jumped off a lot of “cliffs.”

So why have I done these hard things?

It’s certainly not because I wanted fame or money.  It’s because I keep ending up in situations where I feel drawn to do these hard things.  God has presented me with opportunities to take on these challenges.  I’m not sure where I have gotten the courage to jump off these “cliffs”…this is a topic for another day…

Meanwhile there are still plenty of “cliffs” that I need to jump off, and I’m sure there are plenty of “cliffs” that you need to jump off, too. 

So on the count of “three” let’s all take a deep breath, get a running start, push off of the “cliff” and jump into the water below.

One…two…three…

I'm going to need a lot of Trust.

Some personal reflections on my most recent trip to El Salvador:

The first two or three times I was in El Salvador I found myself being challenged to understand new things, to think in new ways, and to grow in my faith.  My understanding and faith were challenged by all I learned and saw and heard and experienced.  And as difficult as it was to be challenged and to see and hear such horrible things as the atrocities of war and poverty, I loved it.  I love to wrestle with issues and to think about big issues of justice and theology.  I loved being challenged to grow in my faith.

This was my sixth time in El Salvador and I had seen and been to all the places we were going to.  I knew the history.  I knew the stories.  I had seen the poverty.  I had heard how difficult it is to live life in El Salvador.  It’s not that the stories and history of the Salvadoran people are any less amazing, it’s that these stories and the history I know have already moved me as much as it will ever move me (or at least that’s what I think is true). 

About halfway through our trip, I was getting a little bored and starting to get a little jealous with seeing my group members be moved by their experiences.  I was getting impatient with wanting the Spirit to move in me and through my experiences in El Salvador as had happened to me often before in El Salvador.

But then I felt the Spirit.  On our fifth day in El Salvador I had an experience to remind me that I shouldn’t doubt the Spirit’s presence and ability to move.

We went to visit a church that my church could potentially partner with.  The church is in a small community of about 40 families.  The poverty there is more than evident.  And gang violence is a significant problem in this community.  My heart ached for the people in this community as the pastor talked about the people he serves and the difficulties the people face and as we walked around the community.

Our group's Bible devotion for that evening was based on a passage from Luke 8.  It's a story about one of the times when Jesus and his disciples are in a boat going over to the other side of a lake.  They are all on the boat and Jesus has fallen asleep and a huge storm comes up on the lake and the wind was blowing and the waves were raging.  The disciples, in their usual fashion, freak out because they were afraid that the boat was going to sink.  They wake up Jesus.  Jesus calmed the waves and the raging waters.  The disciples were amazed at Jesus’ power to calm the storm.  Jesus responds to them asking them where their faith was.

One of the reflection questions for our devotion that evening was: what “raging waters” is Jesus calling you to go out onto?  In other words, what is Jesus asking me to step into with faith while trusting that Jesus will be with me and will protect me?

Back home there are very few raging waters.  Sure life presents challenges, but nothing compared to the raging waters in El Salvador.  

As I reflected on what my “raging waters” are, I realized that evening that God was calling me to join the raging waters of life in El Salvador, to walk with and along side the Salvadorans as they endure hardship, violence, poverty, broken families, and so much more. 

I don’t know if I’m called to enter the raging waters of the Salvadorans in that church we visited that day, but I do know that God is calling me to walk with, to accompany Salvadorans, to join them in their suffering and joys in a more direct way than I currently am.

And frankly, this call terrifies me.  I’m afraid of what it will mean for me and my life to accompany Salvadorans.  I don’t know what this will look like yet…It may mean bringing more groups down to El Salvador, forming a partnership between my church and a church in El Salvador, living in El Salvador.  I don’t know yet.

The one thing I do know is that it’s going to require a lot of trust.  Trust that God will bring me where I need to be when I need to be there.  Trust that God won’t let me take the wrong path if I seek his will for my life.  Trust that God will give me everything I need to fulfill this call.  Trust that God will give me the patience to wait for his full will to be revealed.  Trust that God will give me the courage to accept whatever he calls me to.  And trust that God will indeed be with me through whatever raging waters I am called to, just like Jesus was with his disciples through the raging waters of that storm.

A Very Overdue Recap of my 6th Trip to El Salvador

I never really wrote anything about my second trip to El Salvador this past summer.  Eight people from from my church went down to El Salvador with me mainly to discern if our church should partner with a Lutheran church in El Salvador. 

It was an incredible trip and I couldn’t possibly do more to tell you about what we did and experienced than what has already been written on our church blog.  Each of the group members wrote about a day from our trip.  If you haven’t read these, you really should.  I would also highly recommend that you read the posts the group wrote leading up to our trip.  You can read all these blog posts here: Our Savior Blog Posts on El Salvador.

But I would like to brag a little about the group from my church I brought to El Salvador.

I could not have imagined a better group of people for me to bring down there.  From the beginning they were incredibly excited and eager to learn about the history of El Salvador, to meet Salvadorans, to experience just a little what life is like for Salvadorans.  The group was incredibly open to all we experienced in El Salvador.

I loved seeing “light bulbs” go on in people’s heads as they understood something.  I loved seeing the quizzical and shocked faces as people tried to make sense of events and situations that are beyond human understanding. 

Beyond the serious aspects of the trip this was a very fun group.  They especially liked to make fun of me.  One of my group members liked to call me “mom” because I had to be like their mother telling them what they can and cannot do while in El Salvador.  My goal was to keep everyone safe and healthy while in El Salvador (I promised wives and friends of those on the trip that I would bring everyone back safe), so that meant there had to be some rules like not wondering off, not petting dogs and cats that might have parasites or other things we don’t want to catch, not going swimming in the ocean with very big waves and rip currents, not eating street food, etc.  For the most part they followed the rules (and everyone did come back safe!). 

We had some great bonding experiences- some of our own creation and some God blessed us with (e.g. when the running water stopped running, we were all dirty and smelly together for a couple of days).  It’s amazing what community and fellowship can happen in a week!

Most of all I loved seeing this group fall in love with El Salvador and the Salvadoran people.  Seeing them fall in love with El Salvador reminded me of the first time I went to El Salvador and my heart was broken yet my faith was strengthened by the hope and faith of the Salvadoran people.  Since we have been back from our trip, that love and compassion for the Salvadorans has been evident in the way the group has shared with the congregation about what we experienced.  We are working on discerning next steps, but I continue to be beyond excited for what God has in store for my church and our partnership with Christians in El Salvador to work together for God’s Kingdom.