Each Day…

EACH DAY

Each day as dawn approaches,
the King sits in majesty
and blesses the holy creatures:
To you, my creatures, I speak,
before you I declare—
Creatures who bear the throne of my glory
with all your heart, and willingly with your soul—
Blessed is the hour of your creation,
and exalted is the constellation
beneath which I gave you form.
May the light of that morning continue to shine
when you came into my mind—
for you are a vessel of my desire
prepared and perfected on that day.
Be silent, creatures of my making,
so I might hear my children pray.

-Author Unknown

This anonymous poem, translated by Peter Cole and published in Poetry Magazine, is part of the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah. This tradition is all about seeking to enter into God’s throne room through prayer and meditation. The Kabbalah tradition has resulted in some captivating descriptions of what that most holy of places is like. I love this beautiful little scene of morning in the throne room as the King of creation blesses the angels who He refers to as “creatures.” It is only those who are praying down below who are called “children.” “What is man that thou art mindful of him, the son of man that thou cares for him?” the psalmist asks. The Apostle John adds, “Behold! What great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God!” More amazing to the ancients than the notion that the God of the universe should be surrounded by splendor and majesty, is that He would care enough to listen to our prayers.

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear…

The Legend of St. Christopher

St. Christopher was an extremely tall man who was in search of someone powerful to serve. Once when he was traveling in a forest, Christopher found an old hermit who told him all about Christ. When the hermit had finished, Christopher asked to be converted and baptized. Following his baptism, Christopher asked the hermit how he should serve God. The hermit answered that Christopher should become a hermit and devote his life to prayer and fasting. This didn’t suit Christopher very well. He enjoyed the company of others, had trouble staying still enough to pray, and was so tall that he constantly had to eat to keep from being famished. When Christopher objected that the life of a hermit wouldn’t really suit him, the hermit suggested that he find another way to serve Christ that would be more suited to his talents.

St. Christopher thought long and hard about this as he walked back toward town through the forest. Suddenly he happened on a deep river with powerful currents. It was then that a marvelous idea came to him. Christopher decided that he would live by the river and help travelers across. This way, he wouldn’t have to stay still, he could talk to all kinds of different people, and he could put his gift of tallness to use. So that is what he did.

One night, a young boy approached St. Christopher and asked him for help crossing the river. Christopher happily obliged, and lifted the small child up onto his shoulders. He was light as a pillow. So Christopher began to cross the river with the boy on his back. But as Christopher progressed further and further into the river, the boy became heavier and heavier. By the time, Christopher was midstream, he was really struggling. His knees were buckling beneath the weight. By the time he was within steps of the shore, he had more weight on his back than he had ever carried. He was grunting and gritting his teeth as he trudged the last few steps, trying desperately not to collapse.

Once St. Christopher and the boy were safely out of the water, Christopher asked the boy why he had grown so heavy as he labored to set him down. The voice he heard was not the voice of a boy though. It was the voice of a man. But not just any man. It was the voice of Christ himself, who explained to Christopher that when he was carrying him, he was carrying the weight of the entire world.

With this Christ vanished and St. Christopher knelt and praised God. For he had been able to serve Christ using his very special gifts.

St. Christopher is known among many things as the patron saint of travelers. Though, because of my line of work, I think of St. Christopher as the patron saint of youth pastors. We youth pastors know what it is like to carry a child across the river of adolescence and to feel their weight increase, hopefully as they grow more and more in the likeness of Christ. This parable teaches us that not everyone is called to the same Christian lifestyle. We all serve God in our own unique ways. It also teaches us that when we carry Christ with us, it is the heaviest burden we can bear. However we find to serve using our unique gifts, we should serve eagerly and joyfully. No matter how great the burden seems, we should serve each person as if we were serving Christ himself. Because, in truth, we are.

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear…

The Turban

The following is quoted verbatim from a story by Jonathan Pearlman in The Telegraph:

A 22-year-old Sikh man in New Zealand has been hailed as a hero after putting his religious beliefs aside and removing his turban to help cradle the bleeding head of a 5-year-old boy hit by a car.

Harman Singh, 22, was at his home in Auckland when he heard the sound of an accident on the street and rushed out to find Daejon Pahia, 6, lying by the roadside after being struck by a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Mr Singh has been strongly praised by the Sikh community

He immediately removed his turban and lay it under the boy’s head – an action which the boy’s mother said helped to save her son’s life.

“I saw a child down on the ground and a lady was holding him,” Mr Singh told The New Zealand Herald.

“His head was bleeding, so I unveiled my turban and put it under his head … I wasn’t thinking about the turban. I was thinking about the accident and I just thought, ‘He needs something on his head because he’s bleeding.’”

Mr Singh has been strongly praised by the Sikh community but modestly insisted that “anyone else would have done the same as me”.

Gagan Dhillon, a Sikh passer-by who also assisted, said he saw Mr Singh without a head covering and “thought ‘that’s strange’”.

“But then I saw one hand was underneath the boy’s head supporting it and his siropao [turban] was stopping the bleeding,” he said.

“But being a Sikh myself, I know what type of respect the turban has. People just don’t take it off – people die over it … He didn’t care that his head was uncovered in public. He just wanted to help this little boy.”

Sikh leaders said Mr Singh’s decision to remove the turban in public was a rare and significant act but was consistent with their faith and its emphasis on kindness and humanity.

This true story of a Sikh man helping a stranger in need hits us with all the force of a good parable. It calls to mind the priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, who are unwilling to help the man bleeding by the side of the road because of their purity codes. It also calls to mind the story of Jesus healing on the Sabbath. When confronted about his disregard for the religious prohibition against work on the Sabbath, Jesus asks, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” In other words, Jesus knew that his inaction would profane his religious principles far more than action. Harman Singh saw a little boy in need and was willing to put compassion above prohibition. We would all do well to follow his Christ-like example.

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear…

What More Should I Do?

A disciple once came to Abba Joseph, saying, “Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, my little fast, and my little prayer. And according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my mind of all evil thoughts and my heart of all evil intents. Now, what more should I do?” Abba Joseph rose up and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He answered, “Why not be totally changed into fire?”

I found this short little story about Joseph, one of the Desert Fathers, in Richard Foster’s book “Prayer.” I’ve kept Foster’s wording because it stunned me in my tracks. What a beautiful illustration of a fundamental truth of the spiritual life- that it is about more than just participation, it is about transformation. We miss the point when we think small. The goal of our little prayers, and our little fasts should be to be completely transformed by the one who is the Consuming Fire!

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear…

Fresh Fish Sold Here Daily

“Fresh Fish Sold Here Daily” read the fish merchant’s sign. He had just painted it, hung it above his window, and he was beaming at the sign with pride when a neighbor passed by.

“Why does the sign say ‘daily’”, the neighbor asked, “Surely no one thinks you mean to be open once a week selling fish?”

The merchant thought about this for a second and said, “That makes perfect sense!” So he took the sign down and painted over the part that read “Daily” so that the sign now just read, “Fresh Fish Sold Here.”

He was admiring his edit when another neighbor passed.

“Here?”, the neighbor asked, “Where else would you be selling the fish but in your shop?”

After thinking about this, the merchant said, “That makes perfect sense!” So he took down the sign and changed it to read “Fresh Fish Sold.”

No sooner had he hung the freshly painted sign when a passing neighbor remarked, “’Sold?’ How silly! Surely you weren’t planning on giving the fish away for free!”

Of course this made perfect sense so the merchant took his sign down yet again and made the correction. It now read “Fresh Fish!”

He was merely holding it in his hand getting ready to hang it when another passerby chuckled, “’Fresh?’ I should certainly hope so! Surely no one thinks you plan on selling rotten fish.”

“That makes perfect sense!” The merchant thought so, yet again, he took the sign into his shop and removed the unnecessary word. Now the sign simply read neatly and concisely, “Fish.” There it hung in big bold letters. The perfect picture of simplicity.

“We know it’s fish! We can smell it all the way down the road!” The neighbor remarked as he passed by.

The merchant thought about this for a second. “That makes perfect sense!” So he set to work on his final edit. So he hung a sign in the store window that read, ” .”

The sign hung in the window for a week and the merchant didn’t receive a single customer. “That sign might be bad for business,” the merchant thought to himself, “but at least it makes perfect sense!”

All advice must be received with discernment and just because something “makes sense” doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. This humorous Jewish story reminds us that it is a fool who follows the advice of every passerby and takes every critique to heart. An inward sense of your own purpose can help you sift the good advice from the bad. “What am I setting about to accomplish and for whom? Does this counsel help me achieve what I am called to do?” This story can also have a deeper meaning for followers of Christ. As disciples we can be tempted to edit from the gospel things we think the people don’t need to hear or what we assume they already know. But if our communication neglects the essentials, then we’re just a fancy sign with no words.

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear…

The Prince and the Monster

Once there was a young Prince schooled in all the ways of war. He was taught martial arts by a great ninja master, he was taught to shoot arrows by an expert marksman, to use the lance by a brave soldier, and he was taught to wield his sword by a mighty Samurai.

There came a time when the Prince’s kingdom was under attack by a monster with impenetrable skin. The prince rode out to meet the monster. First he shot his arrows at the monster with the precision of a great marksman. Those arrows which landed on his hide, near his vitals simply bounced off. Even the arrow which landed on his eye rolled off. The monster roared and advanced on the Prince, snorting smoke and drooling.

The Prince, still on his horse, charged the monster with his lance which splintered into a thousand pieces on the monster’s skin as if it had been made of bamboo. The monster, with a mighty thrash of his tail, threw the Prince off his horse, and the Prince used his martial arts training to land without breaking a bone. Before the Prince could unsheath his sword, the monster grabbed him and raised him to his mouth about to eat him with his sharp jagged teeth.

“I would not do that if I were you!”, shouted the Prince.

“The fool speaks!” The monster sneered, cruelly, “I have beaten you, no weapon can penetrate my skin! Now do you wish to bargain for your life?”

“No,” replied the prince, “I wish to bargain for yours! I was trained by an enlightened monk in the art of internal warfare. If you let me into your body, I shall have the opportunity to strike you with my sword where you are weakest and your skin will not be able to protect you!”

Startled by the Prince’s confidence, the monster dropped him and ran away. Many days later the monster approached the Prince, bowed to him, and asked to be taught the art of internal warfare.”

This Buddhist parable at first seems like a simple story about “seeing a problem from another angle” but like all great parables, the more you chew on it, the more insight it yields. Evil must be fought from within not without. With wisdom and cunning, the Prince humbles the belligerent monster. The irony of course being that he does succeed at a kind of internal warfare that changes the monster’s outlook. In his letters to the Ephesians, Paul reminds fellow followers that their war is not against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers of darkness. We must remember that the impenetrable hide of evil cannot be pierced with the weapons of war but must be fought internally. Thomas Merton once said that before we can overthrow the dictator across the ocean, we must dethrone the dictator in our own hearts. That may be as good a place as any to begin our internal warfare.

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear…

Dying of Thirst…

When Spanish ships first started sailing to the Americas, there were many new challenges associated with the long voyage. One particularly challenging ordeal was an area known as the doldrums. The area, about 30 degrees on each side of the equator, is one of the most still areas in the Atlantic Ocean. A ship could hit this spot and go days, even weeks, without a breeze. Ships that did this were in real danger of exhausting their food and water supply. There is a record of one such ship being so depleted of water after a month in the doldrums that by the time they approached the Americas many of the shipmates were dying of thirst. They didn’t know their latitude so they had no idea how much longer their journey would last until they happened on a Peruvian boat. When the Peruvians saw their sickly condition, they called out, “Can we help you?”

“Water!”, they called out, “We need water!”

“Lower your buckets!”, the Peruvians replied.

Every good sailor knew not to drink sea water. The salt is dangerous and can kill you. “No!”, they called back, “We need fresh water!”

Again, the Peruvians called out, “Lower your buckets”

Unbeknownst to the Spanish sailors, for the last week of their journey they had been sailing where the mouth of the Amazon river empties into the Atlantic Ocean. This is the source of 20% of earth’s runoff water. It flows into the ocean with such force that for hundreds of miles in every direction, the water is fresh. The sailors had been dying of thirst in a sea of drinkable water.

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water,” Jesus tells the Samaritan woman in the 4th chapter of John. Jesus compares himself to “living water.” A lot of times we miss what he’s telling her because we’ve spiritualized the term “living water.” Living water was an idiom used to describe spring water or river water as opposed to pool water or well water. Living water is continuously flowing and so is an inexhaustible supply. Living water does not have to be stored or rationed. It flows freely. As disciples we are anchored at the foot of an inexhaustible supply of fresh life giving water. We have no excuse to be dying of thirst.

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear…