Where Is Your Heart by Pat Cirrincione

I was thinking the other day of where the hearts of people are today. Are their hearts in the holiday of Valentine’s and the beautiful cards that Hallmark has printed for the season? Or are they in the type of candy, flowers, or yummy Valentine desserts that are all for sale at this time of year?

Where was your heart this Valentine season? Was it emotionally tired? Was it tired of how unkind people seem to be these days? How it’s okay for others to have their opinion of anything and everything, but you are not allowed to have yours? When did our hearts become so cold?

Thinking about all of this reminded me of my younger days:

Do you remember when you where young and your Mom came home with red, pink and white construction paper? Plus glue, pens, and if you were really lucky doilies to make your homemade cards really special for that one person you wanted to impress. It was such a joyous time as you and your siblings sat around the table, folded the construction paper in half, drew a half-shaped heart on one side, and then cut the heart out, unfold it to its big heart size and begin your decorating. This just wasn’t paper, glue, and doilies to you. This was a moment when you thought really hard about who this heart was going to. Would it be met with a smile? Would it be met with embarrassment? Would it be met with kindness? The trauma and turmoil that went into preparing those hearts for the special people in your life. It was so personal, and done with so much love. Fast forward to today’s cards our children give to their classmates. Purchased in a box of other cards, and signed “From”. It’s so impersonal. Everyone gets one. There’s no special time spent with scissors cutting out construction paper and doilies. There’s no real feeling, other than to count how many you received. How can we expect attachment, or real heart felt feelings when nothing has really gone into the giving?

So back to my original question: Where was your heart this Valentine season?

Mine was in thinking about being a more effective witness, more than being just a good example, more than purchasing what the media makes of Valentine.

Mine was in letting friends and family know that becoming a Christian is as close as your own lips and heart. That if we believe in our heart and say with our mouth that Christ is the Risen Lord, we will be saved (Romans 10: 10-12).

Now that’s a Valentine gift I can live with forever.

Not Too Bad for a Protestant by Virginia Hughes

Ann transferred from a local Catholic school into public school in seventh-grade just in time for Ash Wednesday. What I noticed first was her modest blouse, skirt length well below the knees, thick knee socks and sensible shoes. Was I looking in a mirror? No, just recognizing the plight of another girl from a strict upbringing. The darkly drawn cross emblazoned across her forehead set her apart. My church used such terms as “marked and set apart.” I was equally intrigued and relieved that my conservative, Protestant missionary parents knew naught that a girl could be marked with a cross on her forehead before skipping off to school in her modest dress ensemble handed down from two older sisters.

Outward appearances mattered a lot to my parents. We were to be a Christian example in dress and conduct. It was impossible to fit in when teen fads dictated zippy mini-skirts or blue jeans paired with plaid CPO jackets. These clothes I craved were deemed, “Uniforms of wanton women, hobos and thugs,” to quote Dad. I laugh uproariously now. It wasn’t humorous at the time. My parents thought sneakers were foolish as they wore out too quickly and couldn’t be repaired to be passed down. Foolishness and worldliness both translated to “No, you’re not wearing that.” Looking at Ann, sporting a cross of ashes, maybe I didn’t have such a difficult row to hoe after all.

It must be dreadfully embarrassing for her to be marked with a cross. Not at all. She wore her ashes and faith with confidence and asked what had I given up for Lent? Absolutely nothing because my church doesn’t do that. I was surprised to learn of yet another punitive measure we were spared. Ann retorted that I must not be a serious Christian and perhaps my faith was a sham. I had always suspected as much, but didn’t know enough to state how our denominations were legalistic twins, and who was she to say such a thing?

In defense, I launched a rocket of lists of what our family was always doing; and that was attending a church related event from sundown to sunset and all the blessed times in-between. Sunday school, church, neighborhood witnessing and handing out tracts, hospital and prison ministry, Sunday evening church, youth group, weekly midweek prayer meeting, choir practice. “So? So, what?” Ann asked, after each item. Oh, I had more: We go early to everything to turn on the lights because my dad preaches the sermons, we are always the last to leave. I have read most of the Bible commentaries and illustrated concordances in Dad’s study. She didn’t know what that meant so she listened for a minute. I expounded on how reading the Bible was a piece of cake compared to digesting a Bible commentary. She was interested that my family had lived overseas in lifestyles of the poor and not famous. My being born on the field had her momentarily stumped. I was a true alien and could list church events all day. We have two-week long evangelistic revivals at our church at least twice a year and not the wimpy one-week kind. We go to camp meeting in the hottest months of summer in a giant, sweltering tabernacle with no air conditioning.

Oh, we suffer. Yes, we suffer for Christ all right. Ann responded, “You didn’t say anything about how much you love God.” She quoted the verse about how man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart. That was a real verse and I knew it. It was the first time in a lifetime of being deeply convicted of how wrong I usually am. I was impressed. “I didn’t know you knew real verses. Not bad for a Catholic.”

I knew my heart hated everything I was dragged into by my parents on Sundays and all week long at church. It was boring and interminable. I detested our outdated clothes, restrictions, rules, long-winded prayers, the emotional testimonies that got shut down just as they were getting interesting--some folks tended to overshare their guilty sins. One longed for Bernice to get worked up, wave her hankie and jump the pews. The blue-collar Christians at our church were more forlorn than victorious. The church work was unending as war veterans were now arriving by bus from the VA Hospital, shell shocked from Vietnam and nervously standing in line for the warm meal at the end of the long service.

I had a hard and embarrassed heart jaded and crusty beyond my years, but thankfully it didn’t stay that way. I stopped speed reading the Bible and began reading for understanding. Ann and I had great conversations throughout junior high and high school. Her knowledge of her own faith convicted me to love Jesus.

The prophet Joel advises us to rend our hearts and not our clothes. What might this look like?

I believe the beginning of my heart’s rending came from my friend Ann earnestly endeavoring to convince me how wrong Protestants are. Are we wrong? Read, read, read. Do I love Jesus? Pray, pray, pray. Dear heart of mine, melt heart melt and fall in love with Jesus. What is he saying? Keep seeking me. I am the vine and you are the branches. And Ann would say, “You’re not too bad . . . for a Protestant.”

The Royal Sisterhood by Lorraine Triggs

The Royal Sisterhood in training. (I am the sweet toddler princess in the middle.)

We were the ruling royalty of South Kenwood Avenue. Granted, our kingdom only extended to one neighborhood block and we were self-crowned. Nonetheless, my sisters and I were benevolent monarchs, gently cajoling our friends to play all games by our rules all the time.

The finest display of our grandeur was reserved for our annual summer backyard play—written, produced and starring ourselves, the Royal Sisterhood. We managed our own promotion, plastering telephone poles with hand-drawn fliers announcing the date, time and place of the performance. And the loyal subjects, uh, neighbors, would come in droves to watch us.

Then one summer we noticed a decline in the number of subjects in attendance. It turned out that a competing kingdom moved in on Dorchester Avenue, one block over from ours. It was ruled by Pamela. The call to arms came when we discovered that she was going to put on a play.

We spent the rest of the summer spying on her. We would climb the old willow tree in the backyard and have a clear view into Pamela's yard. Better yet was our friend "Tuffy" who rermained loyal and lived right next door to Pamela. We would pretend to swim in his above–ground pool, while keeping a watchful eye on her. We neglected our kingdom and our play planning. We sabotaged her publicity and tore off her fliers from telephone poles on Dorchester.

We drove ourselves (and our mother) crazy with this insane need of ours to compare ourselves with Pamela and always come out better than she. No, we didn't want to put on a play with her, the Royal Sisterhood decreed. No, we would rather die than befriend her. No, we were perfectly happy playing this new game of comparison.

Even Jesus' disciples played the comparison game when they "argued with one another about who was the greatest." (See Mark 9:33-37.) When Jesus asked them what they were arguing about, their silence was telling. I know mine would be. Would I really say to Jesus, "Oh, just spying on Pamela to make sure we were still the greatest."

On a lot of levels, I still happily play the comparison game. I don't tear down fliers from telephone poles anymore, but it's hard to avoid comparing homes, children, achievements, social media posts. We even compare how crazy busy we are.

In his book, Saving the Saved, author Bryan Loritts referenced a statement C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: "C.S. Lewis was right. In order for pride to exist, there must be comparison with what we would deem to be an inferior other."

The fatal blow to my pride is the recognition that compared to Jesus, I am the inferior other—not Pamela. Any attempt to make myself better than I am will always fall short of his glory. And there, in all my inferiority and other-ness, I recollect the amazingly graced words of Ephesians 2:4-5: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…" 

It's time to stop playing my favorite game.  

Emergency Room Laughter by Wil Triggs

My grandfather spent a lot of time in the hospital. At least, that’s how I remember it.

I remember him as an old man who liked to smoke a pipe--a passion he shared with C. S. Lewis.

At Christmas I would buy him a pouch of tobacco or a new pipe. Giving tobacco as a gift seems like such a strange choice from where I sit now, but at the time, it was a treat for me to go to the Sav-On Drug Store, pick out a pipe or an exotic-looking pouch, wrap them up in candy-cane paper and give it to him. He seemed to really enjoy smoking his pipe and as a boy, I was fascinated to watch him light one of his wooden matched and draw the flame into the bowl of the pipe where he packed the right amount of tobacco. The smell of it seemed like a welcome and happy part of visiting my grandparents.

We visited them a lot. I would go over to their home and cut their grass with a rotary push mower. We would go grocery shopping for them. If they needed something moved from one room to the other, we would go and help. These were tasks I shared with others in the family; we took turns making sure the yard looked nice or getting food for them to eat. And the walls inside the house were adorned with paintings from artists in the family and photos of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Back to their yard, my grandmother seemed especially proud of the passion fruit vine that grew along their fence that faced the alleyway. One of my aunts told me about how the passion flower told the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection. She explained it to me. The apostles, the crown of thorns, the nails that nailed him to the cross and more—all part of the flower. It was a little too complicated for me, but it was a pretty flower and I loved the juice once the flower gave way to fruit. Still, if either of them did any gardening, it was my grandmother or my aunts and uncles or mom and dad or me.

With all of those visits, and the big and little things we did for them, I never wondered why my grandfather didn’t mow his own lawn or do other about-the-house chores. All I remember was him sitting in his chair, smoking his pipe. This was just life. I thought of him as capable. It never occurred to me to wonder why he wasn’t more, well, active. It was all good from my boyhood’s perspective. And he was just great as he was.

Now, looking back, I realize that he was not well. He had heart problems.

This was before the surgeries and procedures and replacements that we have today. When the phone at our home rang at odd times of the night, I began to wonder, as others did, was this the call. If it wasn’t the heart, then there was the even more ominous shadow of a stroke that could leave him paralyzed or, as some of the grown-ups whispered, turn him into a vegetable. My young imagination started to have bad dreams.

As these episodes took place and multiplied, so did our night-time and weekend trips to the hospital.

I stated to feel comfortable at Memorial Hospital. I wasn’t usually allowed into his room, but I got to know the waiting room pretty well. I watched the nurses and the doctors. I read Highlights magazine—or rather, played the games and puzzles that were printed in the magazine. There was a television. And I got to watch the nurses and doctors make rounds, deliver food and medicine, and spend time with my aunts, uncles, cousins.

Usually the visits were in shifts so as not to overwhelm the waiting room or the room he shared with two other patients or the beloved patient himself. But one time, everyone thought that this was the end for him. He must have had a heart attack. Everyone came. The family took up about 70 percent of the waiting room.

Things looked so bad that they even allowed us children go in and see Grandpa. They didn’t exactly tell us, but it was to give us a chance to say good bye. Otherwise they wouldn’t have permitted us to go in. But since no one told us, none of us kids thought of it quite that way. He didn’t look that bad to me. I told him that I loved him, squeezed his hand (he squeezed back), and then it was time for me to step out.

We went back into the waiting room, which had become a makeshift family reunion, a couple of my aunts started to laugh. To appreciate this laughter, I need to explain. The women in my family have loud joyous laughs. My mom had it. Her sisters have it. My sisters have it. And, my wife does, too. So when I say that my mom and my aunts started to laugh in the emergency room, understand that theirs were full-throated, life-embracing and heartfelt laughs that couldn’t contain themselves.

It was contagious. Others joined in the laughter. Then everything anyone said became hilarious. And they couldn’t stop. We couldn’t stop.

The few people not in our family who were in the waiting room looked shocked. What’s wrong with them, their faces asked. They are in here for a person in much worse shape than ours, and they’re laughing.

Some of us felt embarrassed by this display. Afterwards a family member said it was just nerves—they weren’t crying, so they laughed. There was probably something to that, but I look back at that incident as emblematic of a feast in the joy of life…remembering it and hearing at the same time the laughter of my mom, her sisters, my sisters and my wife.

My Grandpa pulled through that crisis. I like to think that was partly because he heard his family’s joyous laughter. And if he heard, though silent, I think in his heart, he was laughing, too.

Proverbs 15:15

All the days of the afflicted are evil,
    but the cheerful of heart has a continual feast.

Flight Song by Virginia Hughes

As chair of the board of deaconesses, Virginia and the deaconesses are well-versed in grief and mourning as they rally around families with sweet comfort and assurance of the church family's care and love.

Feathers lay strewn across the bark chips in white, black, brown, grey and speckled array sticking there ruffling in the light breeze. A tiny yellow beak and one remaining claw sink into the fluff where minutes earlier the hawk sat ripping and tearing at the flesh of the little bird. This scant pile is all that remains of the hawk’s hasty meal. I am at fault for placing the birdseed enabling the wily carnivore to snag the unsuspecting bird, so I retrieve the feeder willing the hawk to fly away from rooftop perch and not have my yard open season for hunting.

His eye is on the sparrow, and sometimes sparrows fall. A giant member of the avian species would not swoop down to consume a smaller, weaker member in the early days of creation. Blood spilled and animals eating each other are the sad result of our original sin. Nature after the fall is attack, split and devour. It seems in violent disarray, yet creation in its fallen futility remains part of the divine order. As do our losses, grief and mourning for an end to separation, a longing to make things whole and right.

Our loss, our grief echoes within ourselves, our families and community. We join creation’s groaning when a loved one dies. Loss rakes as it takes the faithful believer. Bitten by death and gnawed by grief, the sharp sting is felt even as we celebrate the passing into heaven of our loved ones. We need comfort, and there are times when the sad outnumbers the glad in cards sent to say we love and care about you, as in the past two months at College Church where many have entered their eternal home, and we miss them.

Grandpa’s death shattered my father. The family could hear Dad crying and playing recordings of Grandpa’s preaching behind the closed door of his study. My father could be tender, but he had never cried in such loud lament as heard through that door and it terrified us. We sat in a huddled mass with ears pressed to his door, weeping along. My brother announced, “Dad is crying like there’s no tomorrow,” bringing another wave of tears along with Mother scolding us for listening at closed doors. When I asked Mom why Dad was crying so much she sighed, “Your daddy never quite got enough of his daddy. All those years he spent in boarding school when Grandpa was off preaching, then Daddy went into the army and next came the mission field. He really misses his daddy is all.” At nine years old I was awed that a grown man could feel so much love and loss for his father and I cried even more.

When my father died we were all so relieved and that didn’t feel right either. Dad had struggled and wasted away on kidney dialysis for 20 years. It was painful to behold his suffering. Death was a terrible blessing. Home after the funeral, I was watching my young daughters twirling and giggling so vibrantly alive in contrast to the dead garden stalks of winter. They were carefree and carrying on as if death had no hold on us. I cried knowing that loss would touch them someday as it touches us all. 

Mourning, yearning, emptiness and quiet. The hollow pain that lingers when a loved one leaves us behind. We may at times be rolled over and snowed under by grief. Tears aren’t enough. Words don’t cover. We are blinded by our tears and maybe angry at the circumstances. How dare the world go on? The sun will rise too brightly and set too beautifully for our grief. Sound is too loud. Metal spoons crash and clang on pans. The chewing of insects is deafening. Snowflakes fall with a harsh tick on the window pane.

Through it all we need comfort and assurance that we are loved, and the community prays, and practical kindness appears in the form of cookies and delicious food on trays at a funeral reception. Special effort in planning, arranging, setting it all out with willing hearts and steady hands. A cup of cool, refreshing water or aromatic, hot coffee. Something sweet to cover the sour feeling. Something savory to balance the sweet. In some small way emptiness may be filled and cold replaced by warmth. Here is a kind word or tender morsel to lighten your step as you trudge through your heaviness. We walk together hand in hand. We cry rivers until we run dry, and here enters grace with a balm of kind words, Scriptures, memories, smiles, tears, prayers and favorite hymns.

There are birds who sing flight songs to draw attention as they fly upward in a straight line. At a memorial service we gather to share our sorrows and affirm belief in our Savior. We do not walk alone through the valley of the shadow, watching death be swallowed up in victory. Our mourning turns to dancing as we join in a flight song that begins together now and resounds into eternity as Jesus taught us:

Our, our, our.
Father, Father, Father.
You are, you are, you are.
In Heaven,
Holy is your name.
 

Visual Art by Vikki Williams

The Lamb Stands at the End of the Wolrd

Clouds Above a Hammock in January by Sarah Burkhardt

It is not uncommon to witness a cloudy day such as this Sunday in January. Today, though, it happens to be 42 degrees. And with talk of a winter storm on the way, I decide that even though it's a little cold, it is probably the last opportunity I may have to lie in a hammock for probably a few months. I scan the campus to see if anyone else thought of the same thing. Apparently not. Maybe it’s a bad idea, but I am learning to stop caring so much if anyone else is doing the same thing as I.

And so I put the atlas suspension ropes on the trees, line up the hammock, and as I set a warm blanket in the hammock and stuff on top of my blanket, I start to think about clouds. I think of my post-grad friends and college friends, all dealing with their own challenges, and how easy it is to feel weighed down by emotional and psychological clouds that are all too real. I think of the cloud of depression that surrounds many and one that has surrounded me at times. It is so easy to lose hope in this world, so I soak in the sunlight that is peeking through the clouds.

I remember the words a friend’s mom shared yesterday, of how she had spent two weeks meditating on different verses in Psalm 139 throughout the year, and this one, verse 11, was a particular challenge: “If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night.” I think the psalmist is describing a huge dark-as-night cloud him. Meditating on this verse for two weeks would only bring to mind all the ways my own dark clouds cover me. 

But the words of the next verse completely change everything: “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.” What we see as a cloud, God only sees as light. To him, there is no cloud. God’s perspective is so different from ours. I cannot explain why we go through some of the trials we do. As Ann Voskamp put it, “Who knows why the Storyteller allows heartbreak, but the answer must be important enough, because the Storyteller allows His heart to break too.” 

God doesn’t always take away our clouds, but he is with us and allows the light to shine through. In fact, he is so much bigger than our clouds that our darkness is light to him. What are the clouds in our lives, the darkness that covers us? Are we giving our clouds to God? We serve a great God, who wants to hear about our clouds, and then help us see the light around us. Also, remember other clouds that surrounded you and the light he let light shine through. Let those times give you hope and renew your faith in what he can do.

Are You the One? By Rachel Rim

“Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3)

John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask this question of Jesus while he himself was unfairly locked behind bars. Perhaps though, even if he could have walked out on his own two feet, he still would’ve sent his disciples. I can’t quite imagine that John would have felt completely unabashed to ask this question of the man he himself had proclaimed to the whole Judean countryside—with waving arms and brutal honesty and cracking voice raised against the winds, no less—as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And, of course, to ask of it of his own kin, when his own existence was inseparable from the prophecy that heralded his cousin’s birth. No, I think that had he been free, John would very likely have sent his disciples anyway. I would have. In a way, I do. Every time I ache to hear someone else’s testimony, someone else’s story or answered prayer, or hear someone else’s tale of grief, I am in a sense asking the same question: So, have you found him to be the one, or do you think I should start looking for another?

Looking seems to be a major theme of both this passage and our modern journeys. Jesus didn’t much look like the portrait of the Messiah painted by the prophets even to the first century Jewish communities he walked among and he doesn’t much look like it now to us. One glance at the news makes me wonder if maybe the Jews are right—how can the Messiah have come if our world is still so broken? The past year alone saw a fissure dividing political parties, families and evangelical leaders alike; saw scores of women come into the open about stories of sexual abuse; saw forest fires, hurricanes, bomb cyclones and tornadoes; saw racially-charged protests in Charlottesville, and Vegas shooters at music festivals. Every time I read the news or watch a commercial aimed at an entertainment-saturated culture or listen to a friend’s story of pain, I ask John’s same question. Every time I look at myself, for that matter, and the selfishness that constantly corrodes me, I ask it. If he really is the one, why am I so little changed? 

And yet I find hope in the rest of Matthew’s account, because what does Jesus say? Does he rebuke John for his lack of faith? Does he point out every prophecy he fulfills, including the one about John himself? He does neither. Rather, his answer is one rooted in looking:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (Matthew 11:5-6)

Jesus’ reply is the opposite of theoretical and dogmatic. It is empirical in the truest sense of the word—appealing to the reality and truth of experience. Go and tell John what you have seen and heard, go and tell him… People are receiving their sight, people are receiving their hearing, those who cannot walk are walking, the dead are living. Good news has come in the form of hands and feet and eyes and a radical subversion of the traditionally hierarchical society. Do you want to see the truth, John? Look around. See by others’ new sight. Don’t you know that belief now has limbs? By all means, keep looking for another if you want to be safe, but meanwhile, keep your eyes open for all the ways I am opening people’s eyes. And blessed are you, John, if you can hear this and not be offended, because God knows I know myself to be an offensive kind of truth. Like getting a shovel in answer to a request for water; like getting new eyes when all you asked was where to look.

This passage in Matthew’s gospel gives me so much hope, almost more than I want or can stand. It causes me to come alive in response to its beauty. It anoints me with this kind of quiet, burning desire to be the answer to John’s question to somebody else. And it awakens in me a sense of almost painful gratitude to all the people—friends and pastors, poets and novelists, theologians and musicians—who are the answer to John’s question for me. What is the church? The body of Christ. Perhaps another way to say it is that the church is the restored hands and feet and eyesight and hearing that Jesus resurrected during his ministry on earth, and we are to be those limbs and senses to a world aching from amputation and sensory deprivation.

Come all ye who hunger and thirst, who yearn for meaning, who sting from suffering. Come all ye who are looking. There is good news here for you, and it is news that walks, laughs, weeps, sings.