"Let Love In"

By Crystal Mohrmann

This morning, Kari sent me a scripture to consider before posting this blog. For those of you interested in reading it before reading my thoughts, it is Ephesians 3:14-21.

When I first read the scripture Kari sent, my mind instantly wandered back to three amazing conversations I’ve had this week. Each of these three conversations were very different in topic, yet strikingly similar in nature. But I’ll talk more about that in a minute.

Before I do, I wanted to reflect on last week’s topic of “getting lost” in connection to what I’m going to write about in regards to being “grounded by Christ’s love.” I’ve spent this summer job hunting since graduating with my master’s degree in May and in that time, I’ve managed to thoroughly confuse myself about what it is I’m even looking for in a job. For so long, I’ve felt led to do something specific, but recently have felt that that vision for my life has been blurred. I thus have found myself feeling completely lost and ungrounded. And I thought that was a bad thing…until I read Dustin’s post on Friday, in which he quotes Thoreau and then proceeds to ponder whether being lost really is a bad thing. He and Thoreau both suggest it’s not and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to agree because it gives us the opportunity to find ourselves again and usually, the person we find is better than the person we lost.

Being lost also provides us with a unique opportunity to wander for awhile and sometimes that leads us to new places, new people and new conversations, which brings me back to conversations I had over a period of four or five days towards the end of last week. All three of those conversations seemed to focus on connecting. The simple act of having a conversation is a way of connecting, but we also considered out loud what it means to connect and the ways that we can connect to other people. Some of the ways I connected with those I talked with last week were through similar losses, similar feelings of uncertainty in regards to the future as well as a similar love for God and how that love in itself connects people and things. In discussing those things, I was reminded that amidst the uncertainty, God’s love also provides us with faith.

To be more specific, one particular conversation I had, involved a discussion of life’s “coincidences” or as we called them, “God incidences.” It reminded me that I have yet to find myself in a time or place in life that I haven’t looked back on and known that I was meant to be there. This helped me so much in remembering that even in my present state of confusion and uncertainty, I am where I am meant to be. It also reminded me that trust and love coincide and how important it is to trust in God knowing he loves me and will lead me wherever I am meant to go.

After having those conversations, my thoughts led me to a story someone once told me about trusting God. It goes something like this: A man was rock climbing one day when he lost his grip and fell. As he was falling, he managed to grab the end of his rope. Well he clung to the rope with all of his strength, he prayed for God to save him because he couldn’t see the ground through the fog below. God answered him and said, “let go,” but the man, worried for his life, continued to hang on. God then said to the man, “I love you, trust me and let go.” Unconvinced, the man ignored God and continued to hang on. When the fog below him finally cleared, he saw that he was only a few feet off the ground and if he had let go of the rope earlier he would have dropped a short distance to safety.

And so from three conversations, I’m left with a few important questions to consider:

Am I willing to let go of my worries and fears and allow God’s love to ground me, as it would have the man who refused to trust in Him? Or am I going to cling to my own rope worrying that I might fall and get hurt?

We all know love and trust can be risky business, but so is hanging on to the end of a rope, when you can’t see the ground below. I challenge you this week to think more about what ropes you’re hanging onto and whether or not you trust God enough to let go so that “Christ [can] dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:17).

I hope you all have a wonderful week. While I have an important promise to keep to two little girls this Thursday night, I am going to try to be done early enough to be present at bread for your journey. If I’m not there, I look forward to reading the blog on Friday to see others thoughts about “being grounded by Christ’s love.”

-Crystal

Not the Only One

So you’re in a group of people and someone’s telling a joke. She gets to the punch line and the whole room’s laughing. Everyone gets the joke but you. Not a good feeling. You’re on the outside looking in. You’re just not getting it.

So you’re starting out your new life. There’s some excitement, lots of newness. It’s an adventure. It’s just… not the adventure that you thought you’d be having at this point. Something’s off. You just can’t see where this is all heading. Not a good feeling.

The online magazine Smith had this great idea to ask readers to write the story of their lives in just six words, and what came from it was a book which got its title from one of the brief life-stories that was submitted: Not Quite Was I Was Planning.

I love this title. At those out-of-control moments of my life, this title shows up in my head like a best friend who understands because she’s been there. Sometimes I just don’t get it. I can’t see what it all means. And I feel like I’m the only one who’s not getting the joke… the only one whose life is not at all what I was planning.

If you’re ever looking for some heroes from history who you can relate to in the department of “not getting it”… you need not look further than the book of the Bible known as The Gospel According to Mark. (It’s really more of a short story than a book, and it’s a good one to read all in one sitting, if you ever get the chance.)

In Mark’s version of Jesus’ life and ministry, Jesus’ closest companions and students, his disciples, just cannot make the clues add up. Over and over again, they show us how hard it is to see what Jesus is up to, what’s his game plan. Jesus did some mighty strange things. Sometimes they were strange and wonderful. Other times… just strange.

Like the time when Jesus and his best buds walked into the Temple in Jerusalem. And all of the sudden, Jesus is turning the Temple economy upside down, literally! He’s making a violent mess of the market tables, chasing people and animals around and sending cash flying through the air. Take a minute to read the story (the link’s on the title of this post), and you’ll see what I mean. While you’re reading, notice the disciples, notice how they’re not getting it, but they are remembering, as if they’re storing up the clues for later.

Yes, even in their confused (and probably terribly upset) state, they are remembering. They’re thinking of old Bible verses they learned as kids, hoping that’ll help them make sense of it all. They’re watching Jesus’ wild behavior, can’t figure it out, but they keep hanging with him, even if they don’t yet understand.

And, perhaps more importantly, Jesus keeps hanging with them. He doesn’t give up on them because they can’t see what’s going on. He still keeps doing the outrageous, unexpected things, turning not only tables upside down but rules and hardened categories and prejudices, too. And even though his team doesn’t get it, he keeps bringing them along, one piece of insight at a time… until it all adds up in the end.

Each one of them, on their own, would have been lost, lost in the confusion of events relating to this strange and wonderful Jesus. None of them were getting it alone. But all of them together, sharing their memories and insights, sharing the life of Jesus that God raised up in and around them, all of them together began to see.

And so do we begin to see... all of us together, each seeing through the prism of our own memories, our own dreams, our own giftedness, our own God-sight. God alone can put all the pieces together to guide us toward greater vision, the vision that is "not quite what we were planning", but far greater in the end.

God, so many of us are struggling and feel like we're alone. Connect us to others so we can struggle together. When we can't see what's going on, make us patient with ourselves and with you. Thank you for giving us Jesus, for all that radical stuff he once did to open our eyes, and for all the radical things his Spirit still does for us and through us. We pray this in Jesus' name.

(To read more about the six-word life stories of Not Quite What I Was Planning, see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18768430)

~ Kari Henkelmann Keyl

Dialogo: Wandering and Connecting

Over the past week I have seen more of New England than I think I have in the past couple of years. A friend of mine came to visit and we headed off through the Green Mountains, the White Mountains, a Boston zoo, coastal Maine, and the many "trails" of touristy areas.




Having been born in North Dakota, a speed bump used to get me excited (it's a bit flat there...). But there is nothing like driving through some of the beautiful landscapes we are blessed with here.





Each day we checked the map to decide where we were going to head out and then jumped in the car and began the day's adventure. What fascinated me about all of this is a rather interesting, though not new perhaps, discovery: the unexpected places held the most fascinating opportunities. Whether we left the highway to travel out into a country road, or drove along one of those gray roads unnumbered and unnamed on our map, there were always more beautiful, more peaceful places to enjoy. It was always in those less expected places where conversations fell silent and we enjoyed the beauty all around us.

Throughout these days though, we spent time in conversation. My friend and I spoke about all kinds of topics and probably talked more in the past week than we have throughout all the years we have known one another. It was a chance to connect, to regroup, to share, to open and heal any old wound, and to catch up on where God had led and is leading us. Like the unexpected gray roads, the gray areas of our lives also turned out to be places where sharing and conversation were the most fascinating.





It is perhaps no small wonder that Robert Frost's "The Road Less Travelled" kept coming to my mind and along with it the thought that Jesus invites us all to take a similar path, one that runs counter to the expectations even we may have for ourselves and our lives.





I encourage you to meditate perhaps on where your journey has taken you these past few days, months, or years. When have you found yourself in one of life's gray areas? What discovery did you make? How did it enrich your life? (Feel free to share them here.)





May you find peace as you reflect on these questions and others that may also surface during this process.