Silence

As we get comfy on our Christmas couch, let's enjoy one of my favorite verses for this time of the year: Galatians 4: 4-7,

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

I love reading about how we are adopted into God’s family and as such, we are His heirs. But I also love considering verse 4…”when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son…” In that verse advent is contained. These words reflect the fact that there was a time that was NOT full. There was a time that was not appropriate, not right. There was a time of wondering where God was. There was a time of silence. There was a time of waiting.

After Prophet Malachi received God’s last revelation to him, he became the last prophet of the Old Testament. Malachi’s statements in chapter 4, warning the Israelites that “surely the day is coming…” the day of judgement and renewal, concluded God’s Word at the time. And the only thing the Jews heard from God during the next 400 years was His silence. There would be no new, “hear, you Israel.” There would be nothing more revealed…until the Word became flesh. God was silent until the time became full again on that silent night, in that little town of Bethlehem.

That night, the Son was given unto us, for the salvation of the world. The Messiah who was long expected finally arrived wrapped in swaddling clothes. He came as a baby, but He grew up to be God’s perfect Lamb and True High Priest, and with His resurrection, His Spirit came to dwell among us to change our relationship with God so He could become our Abba…Daddy.

But before all that came to be, there was silence. God’s deafening silence left the people of Israel lost and confused. This makes me think of my own life. How do I deal with silence? How do I deal with those periods of time when God seems to be distant and I am left down here to wait?

I can tell you, I don’t deal with any of that very well at all…

Silence scares me. It makes me uncomfortable, maybe because it makes me feel inadequate. As a teacher, I have heard about the power of silence in the classroom. I have heard experienced teachers talking about how much of an impact a teacher’s silence has in students. I have been encouraged to implement it as a powerful tool…but I keep resisting. Lately, however, I have, though timidly, begun to intently apply drops of silence here and there in my lessons especially in my more advanced courses…and I have to say, the results are telling.

I have chosen to do this in my advanced courses because I think they can handle uncertainty better. So rather than spoon-feeding them answers, I throw in a subject, a questions, and then I pause…I walk away a bit, and I silently look at them for what seems like a long time. What I see could be a reflection of my own experience dealing with those moments when God is silent in my life. My students look at me, expectantly. At the beginning, I can see on their faces that they are not really thinking, but rather they are just passively waiting for me to formulate my answer. Then, when time lapses and I say nothing, they begin to get a bit restless in their sits. Their gazes shift from me to an unknown void inside their minds. Of course, some just don’t care. But those who are intrigued start to get nervous. They begin to think. It is as if a different level of communication emerges in a more abstract dimension, transported not by sound-waves but by something deeper, something not of the physical realm.

Hmmm…

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 1 Corinthians 13: 11

Like the Master Teacher He Is, Our Holy Father knows when to apply silence in our lives. He knows how to take the conversation to another level, to a spiritual level. He knows when we are “advanced” enough to be able to, with His help and guidance, handle His silence and the wait that ensues.

As a people, Christians, like the Old Testament Israelites, wait for the Lord. But unlike the Old Testament Israelites, we don’t need to become lost and confused. We know that even when He is silent, He still speaks.

As we prepare to celebrate, the advent of the living God, The Emanuel, the God among us, let’s remember that, though He might be silent in the traditional sense of the concept, He still speaks through the completeness of His Word and through the voice and actions of His beloved as they are enabled by the Holy Spirit, the God with us who lives in the heart of every believer.

The silence of God is, therefore, a way to hear His voice through the discernment that only His Holy Spirit can provide. May we know how to listen to His whispering as we anticipate His coming.

The Christmas Couch

Though I pretty much knew that this year I wanted to write an Advent series leading up to Christmas, I did not have a clear idea as to what I was going to write about. One day, though, browsing through Facebook, I saw it! One of my very talented photographer friends, Nataly Williams, had posted a most intriguing picture. It captured me right away. It was a picture of one of the sets she was going to use for her Christmas portraits. I don’t truly know what it was that captivated me so, but the empty couch sitting outdoors with a background of pine trees and a simple white garland hanging over top seemed to somehow speak to me.

I do believe that God has mysterious ways to grab hold of His children when He wants to communicate a message. Perhaps it was the perceived silence of the still shot. Maybe it was the gentle serenity of the scene. It might have been the unspoken implication of something worth waiting for. I don’t know, maybe it was all three, but I do think He called me and pulled me to that frame to give me a theme.

The theme is waiting...

I tell you one thing, I do not do waiting really well.  Waiting is, perhaps, one of those things I'm the worst at.  I absolutely dislike it.  The whole idea around it gives me the creeps.  I think it is because I like to be in control and because I'd like to think I know what's going on.  And, when we wait...we wait precisely because we are NOT in control and because we do NOT know what's going on. Those two concepts combined terrify me. Therefore, it is not so much that I hate waiting...but that I am scared of it.

Waiting reminds me of being at a doctor's office.  Results all up in the air...not knowing whether or not life is going to completely change or if we get another pass for now...The funny thing is that regardless of what happens when the wait is over; it is irrelevant.  It is irrelevant because, in the end, we DO know what's going on.  It is irrelevant, because, no matter what the doctor may say, it doesn't change the fact that we know how the story ends.  It is irrelevant, because our hope is not on good test results.  Our hope is in the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth!  It is irrelevant, because we live by faith and not by what the doctors say.

What I have to realize is that life consists of a series of periods of waiting, and it is while we wait that life truly happens.  It is then that we discover who we really are.  What we do during our time of waiting counts towards the shaping of our characters.  It is then that the Holy Potter molds us like clay in His Divine Hands and makes us into a new creation.  

I need reminded of these things often, since I forget quickly...

So from now until as close to Christmas as I can push, I will be writing my musings on waiting by using different examples of people of the Bible and their experiences with waiting. They all revolve around the time of Jesus’s birth. We’ll explore how from Israel as a people to the shepherds on the field and the prophetess in the temple, all the way to us here, Advent of the 2015 Christmas season, we all wait…we all wait for our King! Since I truly dislike waiting, what do you say we get comfy on this couch and keep each other company as we wait together?

Advent is Here

I can’t believe the Christmas season has officially started. I don’t know about you, but I truly enjoy Christmas! Call me a sap, but the sound of Christmas carols in the air helps me lift the heavy weights I carry around my shoulders all year round, and for a moment, I seem to walk a little lighter. This is not to say that I am happy about the commercialization of the season and about the fact that in order to squeeze the most possible profit out of the Christmas shopping spree, businesses have entirely discarded Thanksgiving and jumped right into Christmas the day after Halloween. By any means, I don’t think that’s right at all. But there is something about the idea of getting Christmas decorations out the attic or wherever we store them for the year right after Thanksgiving that brings joy to my, so often troubled mind.

This year, I’d like to write a series of Christmas posts that I pray reflect not only my love for the season, but the importance of keeping our eyes on the One who Became Flesh to walk among us and be our Emmanuel. For this purpose, I’d like to start with some thoughts about Advent.

For starters, growing up in Panama, I never, really celebrated Advent. At church, of course, they did follow the liturgical, Calendario de Adviento or Advent Calendar. But we never did anything special at home to commemorate this part of the season. There was no Advent Wreath, or candles or readings…nothing really. I knew it was the weeks preceding Christmas and that it was a time to prepare for the arrival of the birth of Christ, but this time really got lost in the hustle and bustle of dreaming about presents and of concocting the best strategies to get them…yes, even in a place like Panama, the kid-year revolves around the hope of a bounty of toys for Christmas.

Once here in the States, for years I still didn’t pay much attention to Advent. Now, however, I want to be more intentional about this period of time. This is why I want to start my Christmas meditations focusing on Advent. The secular definition of the term, according to the dictionary, among other things, is arrival. It is the action of coming into being. And that’s exactly what it is! It is the time we celebrate our Almighty God coming into being in human form. It is the moment we set aside to deeply contemplate the truth of the God Incarnate…the God in the flesh. It is His arrival on this earth.

For us, however, besides it being a time to celebrate and contemplate, it is also a time to wait. Advent is the time we set aside to wait not just for Christmas, but for that other day, hopefully not too far away, when we’ll see our Lord come back again…triumphant, crowned with many crowns, to reign and to rule the world as its Rightful King.

Though waiting is in itself a rather passive action, it IS an action. It requires a number of activities such as active listening, active communicating, and often times, a whole lot of sitting. That’s why I love the picture that is going to anchor all my posts about Advent so much. This wonderful picture of an empty couch in the middle of a Christmas tree field was taken by my very talented photographer friend Natalie Williams and she so graciously allowed me to use it for my Christmas series for free.

I fell in love with the picture because the image of the couch reminded me of waiting, and that is not something I do adequately. I am not a patient woman and waiting is not among my virtues. But so much of life is spent in waiting. Thinking of it as an action, however, brings me comfort. It appeals to my control-freak nature and it makes me feel like time is not a waste. The more I surrender to God’s plan and accept the periods of waiting as part of it; I realize I’ve done my best thinking while in these periods. So why not embrace them!

When I saw this picture, I imagined myself safely reclined on this beautiful couch, covered by a comfy blanket, under the watchful eye of my Savior, listening to His voice while reading His Word. There’s no other place I’d rather be…and that’s what I’ll do this Advent, I’ll wait…I’ll wait for Him to speak to me…I’ll get out of the way and surrender to His designs for my life, which I know are the best…I’ll curl up on this couch in my mind and wait for Him to show me His glory, to show me His face…perhaps you’d like to hang out with me…waiting is always better when done in the company of those we love.

I hope you come and visit me through the season. Enjoy every minute of your days. Hold your loved ones close and wait for the arrival of Our Emmanuel.

The Breaking

“God has to break you in order to build you.” That was a post I saw in Facebook a while ago, which, of course, kept me right on track with the thematic lesson the Divine Teacher has been intently feeding into my soul for the last few…years of my life!

The breaking…sigh…

It is the next step to a life that could be used by the Most High.

Peter went through it, more than once. Let’s look at one instance. The following passage shows Peter boisterously proclaiming:

“Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”( Luke 22: 33) 

Peter said this right after the Lord had just told him how he was going to get sifted like wheat. Peter’s problem is one of pride. It runs way too high. He thinks he can take matters into his own hands. He thinks he is strong enough to do what’s coming. He believes he’s got what it takes to solve whatever… but, does he really get it?

I’m sure he still doesn’t get it, even after Christ tells him this:

Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.” 

Luke 22: 34

Peter only began to get it the moment this prophecy came true,

Peter replied, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly. Luke 22:60-62

Merciful Lord…right on cue…

This passage never fails to give me the chills. He hadn’t even finished speaking when the rooster crowed…and the worst part…”the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.”

He then, did the only thing anyone in this situation would ever be able to do … he wept bitterly… Shattered…broken…

I identify with Peter so much that every time I read this; I want to weep bitterly myself as well.

The next step to a life that is re-shaped, re-built by the Hands of the Maker is brokenness.

The sifting of the wheat is only the beginning. It gets the grain out of the shell; it cleans it and separates it from the chaff, but for what? Well…so it can be pounded and grinded by the millstone until it becomes flour…until it becomes dust…

I don’t have much experience with wheat flour making, but I have witnesseed the ancient process of making corn meal. And I think it is sort of the same. Since before the Spanish, British and other Europeans came to this continent, the inhabitants of the Americas treated corn as their main staple. For some groups it was even currency. But mostly, corn was used to make their bread, tortillas. In order to get to the tortillas, dry corn had to be pulverized first. And, of course, they did it by pounding the golden grain with a stone, against a stone base to break it out of the bran until there was nothing but corn dust. Somehow, I imagine the process of wheat and all sorts of grain milling as following the same basic principle. And, since the current metaphor indicates that we are the grain…the only way our lives could be used to create the bread of life on Earth is if we first go through the mill.

I think that’s exactly how Peter felt at the sound of the rooster’s crow. At that moment, the millstone came down heavily on him like a blow from nowhere. I think that’s exactly how Peter felt when his soul burned at the sight of Our Lord’s eyes piercing his. The memory of each denial pounding on his head, stone against stone…little grain caught in between. Every time he moved his sight away from the Lord, another pounding of the stone. Every doubt, every missed opportunity, every moment of pride crushing him, breaking him until all he could do was cry bitterly…until he realized that Christ is the Only I AM.

For the child of God, the breaking is not meant for destruction. It’s meant for re-construction. Of course we are afraid of the stone that grinds us. But in our fear, we ought to trust the love of the hand behind the millstone. In our fear we need to concentrate on the good that comes after the pounding. In our fear, we look ahead at the glory that we bring to God every time He can use our lives for His Kingdom. In our fear we rejoice because we are becoming the bread that feeds His beloved.

As we enter the Christmas season, let’s think about our Lord Jesus and how He too went through the grind for us even when He was already the Bread of Life. He did it so we would know and follow His example and so in our moments of fear, we would trust He is near.

This Advent, let’s anticipate the coming of Our Emmanuel. Though the stone may crush us, it will not destroy us. It will transform us. Come Lord Jesus, come…don’t delay.

What Are You Thankful For?

I can’t believe Thanksgiving came and went…I tell you, I had serious intentions to write a post before, but life got on the way. However, it is never too late to give thanks! As a matter of fact, Thanksgiving Day is just that, one day. It is only one of the 365 days we are to give thanks to our Lord for the infinite mercies of His blessings. So here’s my Thanksgiving story for this year.

The Sunday before, we were at church and the Elder who was leading us in prayer asked the rhetorical question: What are you thankful for? However, it was not rhetorical. He actually wanted people to answer, right there and then, aloud! After a brief pause, the congregants began to shout out single word answers. Family, health, friends, church were among the first ones. It was moving to hear people expressing, though shyly, their thankfulness to Our Lord in a public manner. Of course I did not say anything…but I looked at Dylan, sitting by my side as always, and I asked him the same question:

“Dylan,” I said, “what are you thankful for?”

He looked at me, and immediately said: “Love.”

I have to admit that I was taken aback by his lack of hesitation. His answer came right from the honesty that only a child can muster. Although also a one word answer, Dylan’s succinct reply encompassed a world of meaning. His spontaneity expressed a world of sincerity.

“Love…”

I look at that child and I’m inundated by it. He drives me crazy, moves me to desperation and impatience, makes my hair grow grey by the second and gives me headaches like no one else…but love is what fills my soul when I’m around him. No matter what…love conquers all other feelings and love moves me to embrace him time and time again.

At that moment, I got a glimpse of God’s love for us. We sit by Him, day in and day out. He is with us always. And even if we ignore Him, give Him only a passing glance or at times even shush Him away, He is surely with us… always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)

This Thanksgiving I had the blessing of spending much quality time with my family both immediate and extended, by marriage and by blood…and found or rather confirmed what I am most thankful for…like my son, Love is what I am most grateful for. Love in the presence of God…Love in the Blood of Jesus…Love in the Sacrifice of the Lamb…Love in the Emmanuel…Love in the eyes of a child…Love in the company of those I call my own.

I hope you also were able to answer the question, what are you thankful for?

The Sifting

God usually delivers messages and teaches lessons in thematic units. Like an effective teacher, He communicates deep insights packed into tangible illustrations and surrounded by reinforcing material. He recycles the concepts and presents them again and again until we begin to get them. Well, in my case, at this time, the lesson He has been teaching me for a long while now is tightly wrapped within the theme of learning to trust Him.

He is taking me by the hand; once again…I am a VERY slow learner when it comes to this topic…to show me the meaning of trials and hardship…the importance of storms…the need for brokenness.

A while back, I heard Dr. Charles Stanley in his radio show, In Touch, talk about Peter. I have always been thankful for Peter. The fact that there is a Peter in the Bible gives me huge hope. I especially love the passage Dr. Stanley was using as the basis for his message, which we find in Luke 22: 24-34. This is the passage during the Lord’s Last Supper when Peter gets told by Jesus two really shocking things that will happen in his near future. Jesus tells Peter:

1. “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

and

2. Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”

I like to think of these events as the sifting and the breaking of Peter. Both processes are extremely painful. I don’t know anybody, really, who may purposely seek to go to any of these events voluntarily, but, yet, we all find ourselves, at some point in our lives, sometimes more than once, attending both of them. Today I want to focus on the first one, the sifting. Of course, I’m no expert, so to find out more about the sifting process I did what every 21st century person does when they want to find out information about anything…I Googled it. Here’s what I found:

Sifting involves a few steps. The first step in the process of sifting wheat is to loosen the chaff from the edible grain, which is called threshing. The old-fashioned way to do this is to spread the wheat onto a floor made from stone, concrete or tamped earth and to beat it with a flail. Yikes! The next step is called winnowing, where the loosened chaff is removed from the grain. The old-fashioned way of doing this is to throw the grain in the air, where the lighter chaff is blown off by even a decent breeze. The heavier grain falls back to the ground below.

Next came the actual sifting to further remove the smallest pieces of debris from the grain. Here, grain was passed through some kind of colander tray by, once again, tossing it up in the air several times, and shaking it on the tray until only usable grain remained…cleaned from all chaff…

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4925686_farmers-sift-wheat.html

It is one thing to read about this process and to look at pictures of it while knowing we are talking about wheat. But it is another one entirely different when we think of it as being about us. Jesus is saying in this passage that WE are the grain. We are the wheat that in order to be usable, needs to be sifted. We are the grain that is encapsulated inside the golden wheat spikes. And for us to be usable, for God to be able to make bread out of us, we ought to come out of that wonderful shell. Then, furthermore, for our lives to be of any use in the work of the Kingdom of God, it has to be sifted so the chaff is removed and only the true grain remains. And unless you think being thrown against the stone to then be flailed, tossed up in the air, passed through a colander to finally fall on the floor again is fun, the process is painful. Don’t think the modern version of this process gets any easier for the grain. Going through a combine and a mill doesn’t sound any better to me.

The good news is that we do survive this! Jesus told Peter, “when you come back…” not “if” you come back. So we do make it out of it alive! More than alive, we make it out of it whole. Thanks to the sifting we come out cleaned and free from the useless garbage and chains that had us trapped before. Thanks to the sifting we become something God can use for the furthering of His Kingdom. Thanks to the sifting we can come back and serve our brothers and sisters along the way.

It is normal to want to resist such pain. Nobody would willingly put himself or herself through the grind, literally! But it is also good to know that the pain is not in vain. God has a purpose for it all. And some day, even if it is not on this side of the wheat field, we will discover what that purpose was. In the meantime, let us continue trusting Him and His plan…even if we don’t fully understand…

Pink Lemonade

You know the saying, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” right? I like that saying…a lot! It’s probably because I do enjoy a nice glass of lemonade. Growing up in Panama, we had a couple of lemon trees in the backyard, and often, I would be sent to pick up lemons to make lemonade. If there wasn’t anything else to drink, there was always fresh lemonade at home. So I’d have to make my little excursion to the outdoors in search of lemons at least twice a week or so.

While I enjoyed the refreshing beverage; however, I did not like the picking up of the lemons. I didn’t like it because the branches were full of thorns. I had to be very careful. We had a long stick with a hook on the end that we’d use, but that stick had a habit of disappearing and once in a while I’d end up having to grab the lemons with my bare hands. The lemons were tiny so I needed a lot of them to make a pitcher. Of course I would concentrate first on the lemons already on the ground, but many of them were too bruised and rotten, so inevitably, I’d have to venture into the branches with my hand if I were to return with enough lemons to make the drink. It’s funny, though, that back then, I never hear of the saying or of any reference to lemons being a bad thing. You know? Now that I think about it, there is another thing I never saw or tasted before I came to the US: pink lemonade.

Anyway, the whole symbolism does make sense. A lemon by itself is not the most delicious of fruits. Across America, not many kids have a lemon in their lunch boxes as their fruit of choice to eat with their sandwiches. Besides, not many people actually want to stick their hand in a tree full of thorns to get them (of course here in America we don’t have to do that since, as we all know, lemons come from the produce isle at the grocery store.)

Another thing about lemons is that they are a fruit that require processing in order to be appreciated. They kind of have to be mixed with other things. It is the combination of flavors and textures what makes the particularly sour taste of lemons, particularly…tasty! At any rate, I see how not many people would want life to give them lemons, especially when we have such a wide range of sweetly delicious fruits to choose from. It takes time to appreciate a lemon. There’s no instant gratification when you get one. It takes work and other ingredients…and we would probably prefer not to have to go through all that if we could choose.

But many times we just can’t…hence the saying, right? When you get them…well…deal with it. Stop whining and make the darn lemonade!

It’s a piece of popular wisdom that refers to the trials that we will get in this life, which we will get…and how to handle them.

Well, personally, I don’t really mind lemons because I love lemonade! God has given me a keen taste for it (which is probably why I end up with lemons so often.) You know what I REALLY like? Pink Lemonade! Since I first tried it, I decided lemonade was not lemonade unless it was pink! So, while thinking about all these I’ve decided that from now on, I’d like to see trials as a tall glass of cold lemonade, handed to me by the hands of a loving God who is unfolding a perfect plan in my life. This perfect plan includes the manifestation of God’s unique kind of love…a love in which trials become blessings, and lemons become lemonade…of course, in my case, it will be pink lemonade!