Gifts of the Church

 

For the past couple of months I’ve gone back to my roots with a deeper appreciation.  By roots I mean a black baptist/pentecostal faith and tradition.  It is a different world (with some similarities) than the world of post-evangelical, missional, and emerging type churches that I’ve had the privilege of being a part of over the past couple of years. I still consider myself very much a part of this emerging church conversation/movement.  But the issues are different in many ways.  There are similar concerns but the way things play out  are different.

Today, during intercessory prayer (yes, for you emergent haters I pray), I prayed with some of the  mothers of my church.  And I was prayed over and reminded of some things that had been spoken to me by elders in the church many years ago.  I’ve recently joined the prayer team which has been a good reminder of the joys of waiting on the Lord in prayer.  To press into what the ancient Celtic Christians called the ‘thin place’.  That place where we encounter heaven in our midst or what the ancient Hebrews refer to as the Shekinah.  And if you’ve ever prayed in a black church then you know what I’m talkin’ bout. God is not philosophical ground of being, a substance-less signifier, or simply an anthropomorphic concept writ large on the cosmos by humans to deal with and survive their contingent existence.  What I meet in these prayer sessions reminds me of the days when I was a little boy growing up in Birmingham, Alabama watching my grandma on the front porch reading her bible and praying to God: the living God.

One of the gifts of the church is to offer space where we can corporately meet the living God together.  To pray til someone has an unction, til the Spirit manifests, til someone finds healing and deliverance, til there is comfort for the pain of daily struggle.  I’ve almost forgot about this gift of the church.  I’m grateful to have stumbled upon it again.  Thank the Lord for that.

As I walked out of the prayer session this morning I was reminded of the words of philosopher/scientist/mathematician Blaise Pascal:

“Fire. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, The God of Jacob. Not of the philosophers and intellectuals.… The God of Jesus Christ.”

 

My Navy Anniversary

This day in 1991 I went to basic training (boot camp) at a Naval Base in San Diego, CA. I remember leaving my mom at the bus station to head to the MEPS station in Montgomery, Al. I’ll never forget that first week (we called them P-days).  We went an entire week with little to no sleep.  I can still remember the exhaustion I felt. Marching in the hot sun, getting all of my hair cutoff, being yelled at, taking a shower with other men, and having my personal identity stripped down to nothingness. Today has me reflecting on my very brief military career.

My favorite part of that journey was where I would end up (I went to different Naval bases)…aboard a Trident ballistic submarine (USS Michigan SSBN-727, blue crew).  I was a Navigation Electronics Technician (Nav ET).  My job was to tell the nuclear warheads and the actual boat where it was located relative to its prospective target.  I have alot of sea stories.

The most memorable one is when I received my dolphins (April 1993).  The receiving of one’s dolphins was a major rite of passage in Submarine life.  I was what they called a hot runner.  I would receive my dolphins around what was called half-way nite on my first patrol.

 

I miss going through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and preparing to submerge or dive into the Pacific Ocean (Dive! Dive!).  I miss when we would surface in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and have steel-beach parties on the back of the submarine…with no land for hundreds and hundreds miles. We’d swim in the middle of the ocean.  An awesome experience.  I wonder where the rest of the guys are.

 

 

Wrestling with God’s mortal no and terrible yes

What is that about? Have you ever had moments in your life when you are standing in the face of a major life choice and you have the ominous sense that one path could be mortal and the other choice will not be easy but very difficult?  I know…a long question.  I believe I’m on the edge of the very serious with God.  I’m standing on the edge of a wave that could take me in one of two directions.  One direction seems ominous the other difficult yet with the possibility of peace, healing, love, mercy, justice, and the in-breaking of sunshine at the end of the wave when it settles on the shore of my life. 

In contemplation of these paths I sense God saying no to the ominous and a difficult yes to the other.

Avoiding the ominous and choosing the difficult yes to God will not be easy.  It will probably be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life.  Pray for me.

Lord God,

I don’t want to kick against the goads.  I want my life to give you glory.  I want my life to be a gift to others.  I don’t want to be on the receiving end of Your displeasure.  Help me Lord God in this difficult hour!  I pray that my brothers and my sisters will tarry with me. Amen. So be it!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.

 Beautiful, horrible; magical terrible,
Reason to laugh and smile,
Reason to cry yourself to sleep at night, start a fight.
Make up break up wrong or right.
Heaven for all it’s worth, can equally be hell right here on earth.

And no one really knows anything about it but everybody needs it.
We can’t live without it.
And that’s the way it goes, dark as day bright as night.
Just some other thing you might hear if you ask what love feels like:

And it feels like joy, and it feels like pain.
And it feels like sunshine, feels like rain.
An excuse for dieing, reason to live.
And if you don’t know that’s what love is…
Love is… - Mary J. Blige What love is