Monthly Archives: November 2016

"Set your minds, therefore, on things that are above, not on things of the earth." Colossians 3:2

Many years ago, I ran across a concept in Celtic theology called "thin places." It's the idea that certain places are sacred, and that by being in those places the distance between our physical world and the spiritual world is quite thin. The sacred places offer us the opportunity to look beyond the surrounding clamor of empty busyness, both external and internal, and "see" what is true, real, and eternal. Thin places nurture our souls.

I'd like to expand the idea to include thin times. The principle is still the same. Though the physical world is most obvious, it is the spiritual world with its values and relationships that feeds our true hunger. We need times, both regular and spontaneous, that call us to transcendence.

Thin places may be a sanctuary, chapel, forest, or a place in your home. Jesus retreated often to the wilderness, or a lonely place, after a long time with crowds and their demands. Thin times include daily prayer, meditation, and contemplation, a weekly Sabbath, and other annual holy days such as Thanksgiving and Advent.

As Christians are at the beginning of the Advent season, let's focus on this thin time as an illustration of our general need and how we might make this a sacred experience.

The fact that we need such times is intensely evident, but almost universally overlooked. Survey the crowds in the malls or in traffic and you likely will detect a soul-weariness. Yes, nearly everyone is caught up in Christmas, but apparently no one is happy about it. CNN annually runs a story about tempers flaring at Black Friday events, and in these later years we have the blessing of accompanying video. Charming.

But you don't have to immerse yourself in the hoards to experience the emptiness. All of the great spiritual leaders have pointed out our fundamental spiritual need for thousands of years. The Law, Prophets, and Writings all point to God as the sole answer to our spiritual craving. Jesus used metaphors like water and bread to describe Himself as our essential spiritual sustenance. Paul contrasted the spirit and flesh, and exhorted us to fix our eyes on things above, not things below.

The first noble truth in Buddhism is usually translated as "life is suffering," but in my reading it seems a better translation to say that life is longing. We all know something is missing, something is not quite right, and no amount of what the world offers will fill that fundamental emptiness. The unfilled spiritual vacuum is at the heart of all our anxiety, anger, addictions, and acquisitiveness.

Advent offers a special challenge and opportunity. This is a busy time of year, and we usually spend more money than we should buying presents for people who have absolutely everything they need and just about everything they could reasonably want. This season is marked by a garish noise, and the thin places and times get pushed to the background or forgotten altogether.

The fundamental challenge lies at this very point: the world shouts, but God whispers. Our salvation lies in recovering and cherishing the thin places and thin times.

This recovery does not mean entering a monastery from late November to the first of the new year. If we can't catch our spiritual breath in the middle of life then we really don't stand much of a chance of surviving anyway.

What we need is a spiritual and mental shift that allows us to become aware of God around us and in us all of the time. When you go to church, be there. Allow yourself the luxury of singing the hymns, saying the prayers, and listening to the sermon as if in each part of worship God is trying to speak directly to you. He is! The worship service, or hanging of the green, or Christmas Eve can be a thin place if you're simply present, and not mentally wrestling with the list of unmet and usually unrealistic demands.

This shift truly can make a tremendous difference. The lights remind you of the Light that dispels darkness. Presents remind you of the true Gift. Decorations remind you of beauty. Advent is full of symbols. Taking time to remember their significance helps you make the shift.

Most importantly, we simply must make time to be still. Usually that means physically being still so that we become aware of the spiritual world. It's hard to breathe deeply of things that are spiritual if we're huffing and puffing our way through every hour. However, being still can also mean taking a few moments to say a prayer of awareness in the midst of the busyness. I believe God loves this kind of prayer. The clamor of the world does not silence God. It simply means we have to be intentional in listening for the ways God speaks, and He's always speaking.

A scene from Bernard Shaw's St. Joan illustrates my point. St. Joan claims to hear the voice of God, and with that conviction she inspires men to follow her. The prince, however, is jealous. "Why don't the voices come to me? I am king not you!" he whines. Joan answers "They do come to you, but you do not hear them. As soon as the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it. But if you prayed from your heart and sat in the field and listened for the thrilling of the bells after they stopped ringing, then you would hear the voices just as I."

Real spirituality is simply a matter of being aware, and you have the opportunity right now. Advent is here. The bells are ringing, and God is whispering. Where are your thin places? What are your thin times?

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

November 27, 2016

"Rise and go your way, for your faith has made you whole." Luke 17:19

The story of the ten lepers in Samaria is a perfect Thanksgiving illustration. You may recall that when the lepers called to Jesus to have mercy on them, He replied that they were to go and show themselves to the priests. The implication was clear. A leper only went to a priest to show that his leprosy was gone. As they went, all ten were healed.

Only one of the lepers, however, praised God and returned to thank Jesus. Only one. 10%. I have a feeling that is fairly representative of most of us. We are all blessed beyond counting or quantifying. Yet how many of us regularly think to praise God and thank Him?

In a very real way, we lack for nothing. I don't have some things I want, but I really do have everything, and more, that I need. I think most of us are like that. So, in a sense we are healed. We have so much evidence of God's love and provision.

Yet our minds tend to gravitate to the evidence of things lacking.

Mine does. I have to work to cultivate a sense of God's presence and peace in all circumstances, and I'm not always successful at that. I can recall grievances from the past or conjure up visions of doom for the future. To be fair those complaints and fears could be grounded in reality, but not often. And anytime I let my mind wrestle with those demons, I lose the one present moment where God promises to always meet me, and to always provide.

So while we may be healed, that is, having generally positive circumstances all around us, we're not whole. We're still fractured by our restless minds.

The solution is thankfulness. The one thankful leper was made whole. Not just healed. But whole. How do we achieve this wholeness?

First, we must recognize the constant connection between what we are, or what we have, and God. When this man was healed he immediately began praising God. He did not remark about his good fortune. He did not talk about his future now that he was well. His first reaction was to praise God and thank Jesus.

Every good thing that we are, every good thing we have is a result of God's activity in our lives. This is a remarkable theological truth we call Providence. We take it for granted, but it is life changing.

Abraham Lincoln noted this in his inauguration of the holiday of Thanksgiving. By the way, Lincoln instituted the holiday in 1862. That's powerfully significant. Even a Civil War should not keep us from deep an abiding gratitude.

So Lincoln said, "We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that al these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."

In our laughable self-sufficiency, or in our disabling fear, or in our grinding complaints we forget "the gracious hand." You are the beloved of God, and He is taking care of your every need. Remember the connection between what you are and God's gracious hand. Remember. Be aware.

We find a second quality of wholeness in the immediacy of the man's response. He interrupted what he was doing and went immediately to give thanks. There is the hallmark of a thankful life. That is the difference between a holiday and a lifestyle of thanksgiving. You stop what you are doing and say thanks.

My favorite illustration of this is a story from the author William Stidger who had the wonderful habit of writing one letter of thanks each day of the month of November. Stidger once told some friends how thankful he was for a certain high school English teacher who had awakened in him a love for the poems of Tennyson. They asked if he had ever sent her a letter, and he admitted that he had not but vowed to immediately sit down and write her a note of thanks.

Her learned later that the note had been forwarded from place to place until it reached her in a distant town. Her reply came back in a feeble scrawl: "My dear William, I cannot tell you how much your note meant to me. I am now in my eighties, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely and like the last leaf of fall lingering behind. You will be interested to know that I taught school for fifty years and that yours is the first note of appreciation I ever received. It came on a blue, cold morning and cheered me as nothing has done in years.

There are people in your life who have helped make you what you are. Make time to say thank you, and you will be whole.

God does not want us to be thankful for His sake. He's not offended, I think, if we don't say thank you. All of God's directions, commands, and precepts are designed for our good. So He wants us to be thankful because it is good for us as well as the objects of our gratitude.

Finally, we note in the story that Jesus, of course, was surprised that only one man returned to give thanks, and a Samaritan man at that. He remarked, "your faith has made you well." All ten were healed, but only this man was made whole. It's a different word.

When you are thankful you are made whole. You don't take anything for granted any more. You don't compare yourself incessantly with others. You don't constantly regret what you do not have. You don't spend any time searching for the pinprick of disappointment in your life or in others. You are thankful, and that thankfulness lifts the soul like nothing else!

So let's try to be whole, not just this week, but every day. Thank you for reading this.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

November 20, 2016

"But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language." Colossians 3:8

I'm not a prophet but I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that about half the country is going to be angry Tuesday night. Of course, that's the time when we learn who our next president will be.

Every election cycle has its share of vitriol, and there's always an article about "politics has always been rough." The author, every cycle, brings up the stories of vicious insults about Lincoln's appearance for example. Implied is the idea that we're not facing anything new. I think what we're facing this year is new. Perhaps not in the degree of venom, but certainly in the quantity. After all, those insults about Lincoln weren't tweeted and posted on fb. We have a unmatched megaphone for malice today. And that is NOT a good thing.

I write this GraceWaves a few days before the election not from a political motivation, of course, but from a pastoral point of view. Anger is not your friend. I'm sure you've heard that anger is like taking poison and hoping the other person gets sick. It's true. Anger exacts a huge spiritual toll. It's like feeding a wolf inside you. One day it will turn and devour you. Get angry, and you may get your way but you've poisoned your soul.

I can hear the wheels turning now, "But what if I have a right to be angry?" Let's leave aside for the moment the BIG reasons, like the Holocaust. Sure there are really big things that deserve an angry response. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the dozens of daily events that can provoke us to anger. Do you have a right to be angry? I suppose. But is it useful? Or does it just hurt and anger people around you, and make you mentally simmer?

I believe there is a message in our anger, but when we're angry we're very poor at reading that message. We need cool headed people to help us understand where our anger is really coming from. We need cool headed people to help us "get rid of the anger and rage."

The other common objection is "well, Jesus got angry!" That's true. He did. And He was the Son of God. That's probably significant. So don't use the cleansing of the temple as a justification for your next road rage incident.

Now specifically as this topic applies to the election, let me tell you an election story that will probably make some of you angry and unsubscribe to GraceWaves. The election of 1968 featured Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace (bet you forgot him!). The 60's were a tumultuous decade of war, assassinations, riots, general unrest, and a lot of anger. The race was close and the results reflected that. In the popular vote Nixon beat Humphrey 43.4% to 42.7%. Wallace garnered nearly 10 million votes or 13.5%. So a lot of people were unhappy with the results.

My mother was a Republican and even though I was only 10 years old at the time I can remember some of the political discussions in our home. There was anger and probably a little fear (which are first cousins by the way). Mom had definite opinions. But I can clearly remember her saying something that has stayed with me all of my life. As a kind of final verdict she said, "whoever we elect is going to be my president."

I don't predict elections, but I can predict what will happen next January. We will have an inauguration and the change of power will take place without mass killings or violent riots in the streets or tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue. In fact, by comparison to some countries around the world, the next president will take office with hardly a ripple.

And the next president will be my president because I am an American raised to respect, not just the office, but the person who holds the office. Additionally, I am a Christian who, in my scripture, is exhorted to "honor the emperor." In case, you've forgotten the emperor at that time was Nero, not exactly a friend to Christians. The church thrived under Nero. You may not care for one or the other candidates, but I doubt either one is going to throw us to the lions. Get rid of anger.

Think of how different the mood of the country would be if Mr. Trump said, "If Mrs. Clinton is elected, she will be my president." And if Mrs. Clinton said, "If Mr. Trump is elected, he will be my president."

I know you're thinking that if you said that about the other candidate you risk throwing up in your mouth. But if you get rid of anger, then you can say it, mean it, and probably be at least 10% happier generally.

There are times when the Bible we profess to love so much really irritates us, and this may be one of those times. But when Paul wrote, "get rid of anger" he didn't say except when your candidate loses. The prohibition is simple, direct, and pervasive.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SUPREME COURT NOMINEES!!

Stop. Quit feeding that wolf. Be politically informed and active. But get rid of anger.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

November 6, 2016