On going out

Anne Willis writes in this morning’s Fruit of the Vine about the parallels between her life on the road with her husband, LeRoy, and God’s call for Abraham and the Israelites to trust and to follow. In Genesis 22, God calls Abraham  to take his son “and go to the land of Moriah.” The strangeness of God’s call for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is tempered by Abraham’s faith, expressed in verse 8, that “God himself will provide,” and God does. Later in Exodus 13, God doesn’t just call the Israelites out of Egypt, God also leads them “in a pillar of cloud by day ... and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light.”

Anne writes that in her own life, selling a house, retiring, and “leaving Kansas for life on the road” didn't just happen. “I had issues to work through. Could I leave our family?” she asks, writing about her children, her mother, and her church. “How could I leave all that behind?”

Last Friday I left Newberg with a group of 53 others for a weekend in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We explored caves. We rafted the White Salmon River. We went without showers and wifi. We slept on the ground. Some of us were cold at night. But we also came home, back to our normal lives.

We had an adventure. And it was good. But what if God is calling us to something more? Anne writes that “God’s question to me, and to all of us, was and is, ‘Who comes first in your life every day? Are you really willing to follow my lead?’” And if God calls you out, are you willing to leave?

These are hard questions. But Anne reminds us that we can trust God, especially when our “comfort zone[s], like those of the Israelites, [are] seriously threatened.” And she offers this prayer for today, as we consider what God might have for each of us: “Lord, help me to make you my focus and to see my day through your lens.”

Eric Muhr

I leave the windows open

During the summer I leave the windows open in my upstairs apartment. Instead of the forced air and low hum of air conditioning, I listen to my neighbors’ voices float in with the evening breezes – sometimes late into the night. But in the early mornings, an hour or so before sunrise, it is quiet. This is my favorite time of day, presenting as it does so much silent space for thinking and for waiting. A kind of hushed and almost, tinged with creative expectancy. And almost every morning at this time I open a book of poetry and read from wherever I last left off until I find a line that moves me, something to hold on to and repeat, especially in the stressful moments that always come just before lunch or late in the afternoon when I’m tired and hungry.

This morning I started in a second time on Nancy Thomas’s new collection, Close to the Ground. And I stopped at the end of the first page – just like I did my last time through – in order to read it again. And then once more. Because that first poem describes so perfectly what mornings have always been for me. Because that first poem describes so perfectly what it is to live sacramentally. Because that first poem describes so perfectly – for me – what it is to hope.

Morning Watch

William Stafford, that kind poet,
once told me how he got up
at 4:00 every morning
to sit in the quiet and wait for a poem.
It always came. Stafford filled notebooks
with the fruit of his attention and freely
shared it with the world. I’m grateful
to have been included in that world.
So here am I, sitting in my own
quiet spot by a window. The morning
grows light before me. Trees emerge
and the far hills. Like Stafford,
I’m waiting. Waiting.

What are you waiting for?

Eric Muhr

Are you willing to go?

In this morning’s Fruit of the Vine, Ron Woodward focuses our attention on Paul’s selection of Timothy “as a member of his itinerant team of gospel proclaimers.” Ron points out that Paul’s message for Timothy (1 Timothy 4:12-16) is a message for us: “As you continue to learn while serving, be an example of what it means to live a consistent Christian life.”

That word – are you consistent? – introduces a question of integrity. It is also a question of perseverance. As you move along this journey of life, how is it going? And how are you going?

But Ron wants us to consider another question as well: Are you willing to go?

As a twenty-one-year-old seminary student, Ron received a phone call from Dean McNichols at Bell Friends Church, asking “if I would consider being a part-time youth director.” Ron had no experience, and he would be following in the footsteps of “much-loved C. Peter Wagner, then a student at Fuller, and later the author of a number of popular books on church growth.” 

In spite of all this, Ron said yes, and his three years in service at Bell Friends were “an experience of learning while serving.”

Have you said yes? How’s it going?

Eric Muhr