The Best Birthday Present Ever: Deflated Soccer Balls

I’d like to introduce you to St. Andrew’s youngest missionary (at least in spirit) – Emma Angilan, who just turned 6.

A month or so before her birthday, Emma came up with an idea that never would have crossed my mind at her age: For her birthday party, she wanted her friends to bring presents not for her but for “the kids in Haiti.” (Our congregation has a partnership with a school in Maniche, Haiti, which serves about 150 students.)

The challenge is how to get anything to the kids at our partner school. There is no parcel-delivery service in rural Haiti – not even mail (not even roads, in the sense we’d understand that word). But a group of missionaries from St. Andrew’s will be going to Haiti on Nov. 12; so Emma’s parents, Jason and Courtney, came to me to see what the students might need that we also could carry with us.

Finally, we found the answer: deflated soccer balls and an air pump.

Kids in rural Haiti don’t have toys other than what they make for themselves, usually from trash. And the school in Maniche certainly doesn’t have any athletic equipment. But they do have a yard. And now, thanks to Emma’s bountiful generosity, the kids at this school will have 12 new soccer balls to kick around.

It will likely be several years before Emma goes off on a mission trip. But in a sense, she’s already long gone. At 6 years old, Emma understands at a deep level that God is sending her somewhere – for now, in her heart – to “seek and serve Christ in all people.”

We don’t have to fly to a distant location like Haiti to be missionaries. Any of us – all of us – can be missionaries like Emma, being sent by God into relationships with people we’ve never even met. All it takes is a heart filled with love, a touch of creativity, and a willingness to follow where God leads.

Swimming Out of the Whirlpool

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed this week. The specific reasons don’t matter much – they won’t be resolved anytime soon; and even if they were, new stresses would take their place.

A lot of this stress comes from my job. But working as an ordained person doesn’t necessarily mean I’m under any more stress than anybody else in this culture. The stresses are different, but their effects are not.

When I feel this way, my reaction is to look for ways to pull back emotionally from the sources of the stress. That’s not a bad idea, particularly if it helps me identify ways I’m using time or energy unproductively.

But I’ve also learned, finally, that feeling overwhelmed is a symptom of spiritual illness: too much reliance on oneself to cope with pressures and meet expectations. At times like this, I find myself asking God questions like, “Is this really how you want our lives to look?” or “Is this really how you intend the Kingdom to feel?” And I’m both blessed and stopped short by the answer: “No.”

I believe God does not intend us to work ourselves to the bone. I believe God does not intend for discipleship to feel like a burden. And when I stray into that territory, it’s a sign that I’ve forgotten where solutions to my problems really lie. I cannot rescue myself from the whirlpool du jour. I can only rise out of what brings me down “through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) – “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).

Avoiding the Sabbath

It might seem strange to be writing about keeping the Sabbath (or not) on a Thursday. For most of us, Thursday is just another workday, a marker along the journey toward the end of the week. For me, at least most weeks, it’s a day off. Clergy can’t exactly take Sunday as a day of rest, so we’re supposed to find another day during the week to make up for it.

It’s tempting for me now to launch into all the reasons why I and my colleagues often don’t get a day off to make up for Sundays: Everybody else is at work on a weekday, and you fall behind if you don’t join in. Church events can’t be scheduled around clergy days off, so you often have meetings or gatherings to attend anyway (like this afternoon and tonight, for example). Pastoral issues don’t take a day off, so people often have needs (real or perceived) that lead them to expect relatively immediate attention. And then there’s the work itself, which will never be “done” until God sees fit to bring in the Kingdom in all its fullness.

All these things are true. But they aren’t the reason why I avoid taking Sabbath time.

Properly observed, Sabbath is about putting into practice God’s direction in Psalm 46: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Because of the way we’re wired, some of us just have trouble being still; and I’m not sure that’s anything needing forgiveness. It’s the second part of the verse that’s problematic: “Know that I am God.” If we actually took Sabbath time, if we really took a break from our obligations (and the hyper-scheduled “fun” that wears us out), we might hear something from God that challenges our independence and our self-importance. If we actually took Sabbath time, we might realize that God really is God, and we are not.

Hmmm. Probably time to move the laundry. And maybe check e-mail, just for a minute. Something important may have happened, and I wouldn’t want to miss it....

Dogs, Backpacks, and Mission

It’s always good to understand your own job. On Saturday and Sunday, God gave me a couple of glimpses of divine purpose that helped me see what I do in a little clearer light.

Saturday morning, about 10 St. Andrew’s people came out to staff our booth at the annual Strutt With Your Mutt event in Brookside (our neighborhood). Along with the pet stores, dog trainers, and providers of alternative canine healing, there we were – a church. We weren’t “doing church” (at least not by traditional definitions), but we were offering to bless dogs as their owners came by. Fr. Fred, Mtr. Anne, and I conveyed God’s blessing to 100 or so canines that morning, and I think it’s safe to say that a similar number of owners felt blessed by the experience, too. To many passers-by, we church folk probably looked out of place – especially the three of us wearing clericals and stoles. But the symbolism was perfect: God cares deeply about every part of the good creation, human and nonhuman. I hope that was the message people took away from the crazy clerics getting their stoles dirty in the puddles on the parking lot.

Then, on Sunday morning, during our Adult Forum, we had a presentation about the BackSnack program featuring three people from our partner school, Benjamin Banneker Elementary in east Kansas City. St. Andrew’s is one of many churches and organizations here that fill backpacks with food for kids to take home from school on Friday afternoons so they have something nutritious to eat until Monday’s breakfast and lunch back at school. Then, after the 10:15 service, parishioners stuffed backpacks to be delivered this week. The message, I hope, was a different shade of what we also communicated on Saturday: God’s deep care for us and for all creation. As God’s people, we’re called to incarnate that care and bring it to the places that need to feel it most – in this case, an economically disadvantaged school in east KC. Every backpack a Banneker kid receives is divine love enfleshed.

And that’s what mission is all about. We’re called to take God’s love into the world. It’s not that God’s love isn’t already there – of course it is. It’s just that God needs us to put some flesh and bones on it.

Anniversary Roses

I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage recently.

First, we had a wedding at St. Andrew’s that was called off just weeks before the big day. The couple discerned that what had seemed like a right and good and joyful thing wasn’t right for them, at least not now. I can’t imagine how hard the decision must have been for them, but I have great respect for their maturity in putting the brakes on a process that, too often, seems to have the momentum of a train that can’t be stopped.

Then came yesterday, the 19th wedding anniversary for Ann and me. As we sat with the kids at the table last night (the two of us will celebrate another evening), they asked about the dozen roses in the vase in front of us. All the roses are red but one, which is white; and they asked why. I said it stood for the new life that’s created when two people come together and let God make them one at the deepest level of their being. For Ann and me, the details of our life together certainly haven’t turned out as we might have expected 19 years ago – a little bit of tragedy and a lot more unexpected blessing. But through it all, the new creation of the marriage grows and thrives.

And then I look at the calendar and remember that my parents’ anniversary will be this Sunday – 57 years of marriage. I can’t even begin to imagine how that feels. But I do know their white rose has incredibly deep roots.

“The bond and covenant of marriage” may not sound terribly attractive to many in our culture, given the premium we put on the Gospel of Me. Living for ourselves sounds like freedom, and we’re all about that. But, ironically, to give up this kind of freedom returns to us a much greater gift: being rooted in the soil of God’s love, with souls entwined, becoming so much more than we can be on our own.

It’s amazing the rose God can make of us when we give ourselves away.

Mission Trips Into the Reign of God

I took a little trip to Haiti this afternoon.

Really, I only had coffee with Drs. Stan and Kathy Shaffer at the Roasterie, doing some planning for the mission trip I’m leading in November. But in a week of … well, a typical week at church, it was a wonderful foretaste of what our week in mid-November might feel like.

I don’t yet know precisely what we’ll be doing in Haiti, but I do know we’ll spend our time working with our partner school in Maniche – among other things, teaching about good hand-washing technique, visiting kids’ homes to teach the families, and doing some painting at the school.

Whatever we do, I also know this: We’ll be making a concrete difference in the lives of children of God whose place in life we can’t even begin to imagine. For the children of Maniche, simply progressing through school might make the difference between a life of hope or a life of subsistence. For the children of Maniche, the school lunch we provide might make the difference between adequate nutrition or wasting away. For the children of Maniche, learning to wash their hands after using the latrine and before eating might make the difference between living to adulthood or dying young.

So, for an hour or so this afternoon, sipping my coffee, I got to travel into the future – the immediate future of a November mission trip, and the longer-term future of the reign of God. Someday, no child will starve while others feast. For now, those of us who go to Haiti will do what we can do to help that day come a few moments sooner.

Want to go? Let me know: frjohn@standrewkc.org.

Burden or Blessing?

A recent event and two recent conversations make me think God’s trying to tell me something.

The event came last week, when my wife’s step-grandmother died. It was a blessing, healing her of cancer that had progressed beyond the point of treatment. We traveled to Ft. Smith, Ark., to gather with that side of Ann’s family and celebrate her step-grandmother’s life. Near the end of the visit, we received a great gift – her car. It’s not exactly new, a 2002 Honda Civic; but it’s in great shape with very low mileage. Gifts like this have fallen into our laps a few times before, and they always make me stop short. They are moments when gratitude washes over you, when you get a window into just how richly you’re blessed and how often you miss it. We’re trying to discern now what to do with three cars; but with two kids nearing driving age, we may well keep them all and make one a gift for their use.

Then this week, I had a conversation with a parishioner about prayer. She is very wise in many ways, but one thing she said particularly stuck with me. She was talking about a truly difficult time, when she wasn’t sure how to pray or what to pray for. What carried her through was the intentional practice of thanksgiving. When she couldn’t pray anything else, she could take note of all that God had given her – children, work, relationships, plenty to eat, a lovely home, and so on. It was a bridge toward a place of deeper healing because it kept her orientation Godward in a time when the temptation was great to turn away.

And yesterday I had a conversation with another parishioner, this time about illness and recovery. He had endured heart surgery to correct problems that would have killed him, and he’s still dealing with the rigors of recovery and rehab. But what he was taking away from the experience was deep gratitude – not just for the gift of renewed health (which is significant enough) but for the gift of relationships with those who had supported him through the process, everyone from his spouse and children, to friends who showed up, to physicians and caregivers who were God’s agents of physical healing. For him, heart disease was an opportunity to see the blessing of relationship and say thank you.

I struggle with lots of things, but one of the more consistent wrestling matches God and I have is about orienting me toward gratitude. And when I’m feeling especially hard-pressed (or, perhaps, self-pitying), God seems to come through with examples of the contrast reality that the life of the kingdom is all about. The lines between our perception of burden and God’s reality of blessing can be terribly thin. But the choice is ours as to how we’ll chalk things up. Do we choose to see burden or blessing? The answer will tell us whether our primary residence is the kingdom of anxiety or the kingdom of heaven.