A Little More Lenten Help Along the Way

I took a vow that I would not watch television during the 50 days of Lent. Along with this vow, I also promised that I would take the supplements provided by the kinesiologist I chose to see on the high recommendation of a friend.

God is often very funny when he takes us at our word. Not only have I been too busy to watch television, our DirecTV cable does not work. I tried to turn on the television for my granddaughter and her friend, Jake, but for some reason, it just wouldn’t cooperate.

Checking the cable connections in the back, the little notations on the back of the television over the electronic holes were all written in techno-Greek, and it truly was techno-Greek to me.

But I got the point—God was gently reminding me that I had made a vow and He was going to gently help me keep it.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a little time, fiddled with the remote commands, and got the television working. We had a clear HD picture, clear audio, the channels switched as designed. “Television’s working,” I reported to the houseful of people who were wondering what had happened to the TV. “Don’t ask me how.”

But I didn’t stay to watch it. I marched upstairs (only to get out of bed and take the handful of supplements I had forgotten to count out and swallow) and finally, went to bed.

“Present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable worship.”

This is the Scripture I’m chewing this month (some teachers call it meditation, but the word in Hebrew, I’m told, means “to chew on”). It is Romans 12:1. I am slowly working out what it means to be holy and acceptable. I still have a lot of figuring to do to fully understand this, but I know it has something to do with me getting healthy, learning how to sleep deeply, and not spending hours zoned out in front of the television.

God has made that perfectly clear (and there are people who say they don’t hear His voice, can’t guess His intentions). That is not my experience, not my experience at all.

I spy God!

And Works His Lenten Purpose Out Through Internet

On Friday, as I was spending the day pulling my sermon for Sunday morning together, a news story popped up on my computer screen. I did not call forth this story—it actually interrupted my Web research—and I almost erased it, but then noticed it was about the traffic sinkhole that opened up in the small town of Seffner, Florida, taking out the bedroom where a young man, Jeff Bush, age 38, was sleeping.

The story caught my eye because one of the points of my sermon was the fact that there are lies we tell and lies we don’t know we are telling. According to psychologists, these hidden faults are called lacunae. Webster’s dictionary defines a lacuna as a hole, a ditch, a gap in what used to be. I was emphasizing that these hidden lies are dangerous if we don’t pay attention to them. Just as I was thinking about closing the news story, I realized that God had given me the perfect illustration for the black holes in our soul that we must come to terms with when we develop a lifetime practice of becoming people of penitence.

Can you imagine how powerful this story was to the hearers of this sermon?

“The rest of the family were wakened by a loud crash, then the cries of Jeff Bush. By the time his brother, Jeremy Bush, reached the bedroom, the furniture was going, the floor was gone and he could hear his brother’s cries from the bottom of the sinkhole. Bush frantically tried to rescue his brother by standing in the hole and digging at the rubble with a shovel until police arrived and pulled him out before he too became a victim to the still sinking hole. Eventually the cries were no longer hard and monitors found not sign of life.

“I couldn’t get him out,” wept the brother. “I tried so hard. I tried everything I could.”

These quotes were also given to me: The first from Fyodor Dostoevsky in Notes From the Underground:

“Every man (and woman) has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.”

The second quote was from Joseph Conrad’s book Lord Jim, in which the character Marlow says:

“It is my belief that no man ever understands his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.”

At the close of the sermon and before taking Communion, we all meditated on Psalm 51. “Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be innocent and blameless of great transgression.” In other words, “Help me to become aware of the sinkholes in my own soul so that they will not be able to suck me into themselves.”

It is an incredible feeling to realize that you are in a communicative collaboration with God your Maker. Indeed, He helps us to do His work in the world.

I spy God!

The Work of Lent: Noticing What I’ve Failed to Notice

Sometimes (most of the time) the sermons we preach to others are really the sermons that we should be listening to ourselves. In the sermon I gave in our church, using the life and music of Johnny Cash as a springboard for thoughts about repentance (Lent According to Johnny Cash), I mentioned this quote from R. D. Laing:

The range of what we think and do—

Is limited by what we fail to notice;

And because we fail to notice—

There is little we can do to change

Until we notice how failing to notice

Shapes our thoughts and deeds.

Admittedly, this quote has to be read several times to understand what the little saying means, but it is profound in its potential impact.

Failing to notice (or neglecting to pay attention to) own motivations, character frailties, or inner knots is a human default. We don’t really want to know what it is we don’t want to know about our selves.

Lent is a time set aside by the early church fathers (and mothers) as a 50-day period to notice, to consider our own souls, to self-reflect on the error of our ways, so that we can develop the capacity for self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the goal of any introspection, and when we reach it (finally and often with some kind of agony), one of the byproducts is the capacity to notice what we have not been noticing.

No matter how old you are (I am 70 years of age), this process never ends. And because I preached a sermon last Sunday on this process, I have been asking myself, “What is it I am still not noticing?”

Since I have taken a Lenten vow not to watch television for these days leading up to Easter, I’ve also diagnosed the reason for too much time spent as a couch potato is the fact that I am fatigued by 3:00 in the afternoon and just holding on until I can go to bed by 9:00.

A friend sent me to her kinesiologist, and we began the process of discovering at what points I am nutritionally and chemically deprived that might contribute to fatigue, why I am not sleeping well, and what is causing the cycle of allergic reactions that plague me all through the year. To put it simply—watching too much television is only the presenting problem. The causes of the afternoon and evening fatigues that overwhelm me are rooted somewhere in the intricate balance and imbalances that make up the sum total of human entity.

It has been an intriguing journey, and I am popping all kinds of supplements morning and evening, but a month into this experiment, I am feeling better. I’m paying attention. I’m looking inward. I’m definitely noticing.

“That it may please thee to inspire us in all our several callings,

to do the work which thou givest us to do, with singleness of heart

as thy servants, for the common good.

We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.”

—The Book of Common Prayer

Familiar Faces at the Gate

The e-mail messages for this trip to the Dominican have been flying in flurries; there is so much to remember and to do. Copies of the film script need to be made in case we misplace our work scripts, and there may be a reason for other people to look them over. The shoot list, a schedule of must-get shots, needs to be prioritized and sent to the videographer; a day agenda of where we will be shooting and when must be compiled. The translator who volunteered to help needs to be contacted with information as to when we will need her. (Nothing complicates an out-of-the country shoot any more than the film team and the principals speaking different languages.)

David coached me on making sure we hit the bottom line of the script. My adult children, many who are involved in media—film, video and television—reminded me that this is a visual medium. Content is important they said but if we don’t get enough B-roll, there isn’t enough to work with in the editing room and the project is left with way too much talking heads.

I e-mailed Dr. Bibiana MacLeod, the Regional Coordinator for MAI in the Caribbean, and said, “Two days out from departure and I am getting the nervous-jervies; I am certain there is something major that I am forgetting.”

Phone call from the videographer: “Say, Karen. Are you sure we have reservations at this hotel? I’ve called and e-mailed, and they say they have no record of our names, and the hotel is full for the night of our arrival.” We both had visions of arriving in Santiago, gathering our luggage (including two carts of video and sound equipment), finding a taxi and arriving at the hotel, only to discover they indeed had no room in their inn and we would have no place to stay. Our couple on the ground was working in Cuba, to return shortly before arrival. Another e-mail to Bibiana for translation.

Last week I was worried about getting myself from the airport at night in a taxi, a woman alone in a mostly strange city. Then Paul and I compared arrival notes, discovered we were taking the same American Airlines flight from Miami, and that the three of us—videographer, audio guy, and myself (general gofer and untried director’s assistant, as well as script doctor and script editor) could take one taxi together to the hotel that we didn’t know whether or not we were booked into!

E-mail from Bibiana: “Not to worry. (Bibiana is an Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish.) I talked to the desk clerk (calling from her home in Canada). He has rooms for the three of you under my name.”

I don’t know why I can’t remember this; it seems as though I forget it every day (every day). God does not abandon us ever, not when we are in pain or sorrow, not when we are ecstatic with celebration, not when we are confused by chaos, not when we are lost or on standby, not when we travel.

Our flight to Santiago, Dominican Republic, went smoothly. We sailed through immigration control, picked up our bags, were waved through customs. Then we saw familiar faces at the gate where those long lines of family and friends and drivers waited to meet and greet all who disembarked from Flight 4537 from Miami.

Our translator had come to find us along with Hiram DeLeon, our contact on the ground who speaks about as much English as we speak Spanish (maybe more, which is not a lot) and without whose services this film project could not be a success.

Help me not to forget, Dear Lord, that You are always waiting at the gate to greet us, in the loving guise of people who sincerely care about doing the compassionate thing. Help me not to forget.

I spy God!

God in Small Things

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:


This week Karen is in the Dominican Republic directing a film shoot for Medical Ambassadors International. She would appreciate your prayers as you read these blogs. Filming in another country, on a low budget and without knowing the language can be tricky indeed. Shoot crews are well aware of their need for God’s help. Thank you.

In small things do we see His hand. I need to fly into the Dominican Republic, go through immigration and pick up my baggage. I am scheduled to arrive at 8:40 in Santiago and will probably complete all the arrival complications by 9:30. Then I am supposed to make my way to the curb, through a crowd of milling Dominicans who are waiting for family and friends, find a taxi, ride off into the approaching midnight with this cabbie stranger and direct him to the hotel without my knowing a modicum of Spanish beyond “Ola!” and “¿Cuál es su nombre?” (“What is your name?”)

Today, however, five days before I am supposed to depart, I was working up a day schedule for the shoot. When I entered the arrival times of the crew, of myself or of the principles, I realized I was scheduled to arrive in Santiago about the same time as the videographer and the sound man.

“Is there any possibility that we will be arriving on the same plane?” I shot off in an e-mail inquiry. Sure enough, the two film guys and I are scheduled to fly out of Miami on the same flight.

I praise God for His manifold loving provisions, for His care. Today (I am writing on Ash Wednesday), the Scripture read in the liturgy this morning reminded me:

The people: We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord.
The liturgist: That it may please Thee to inspire us, in our several callings, to do the work which thou givest us to do with singleness of heart as Thy servants, and for the common good.
 :    
The people: We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord.
The liturgist: That it may please Thee to preserve all who are in danger by reason of their labor or their travel.



Male companions in a taxi for a night ride is a small thing, but I am not so small before the Lord that I am not worthy enough to be a recipient of His loving care.


I spy God!

Tap-Dancing During Worship

Dick Ryan, the director of InterVarsity’s outreach to art students on campuses across the country, arranged for me to be part of the team that seeks to encourage professionals in art-related fields to mentor these young and eager creators. So the last week of January, after traveling in Mexico and then going on with my husband to visit sites for a film shoot in the Dominican Republic, I arrived at Armerding Hall on the campus of Wheaton College, with an active allergy that had been blasted into my system by the pollen, smog, car emissions, etc. that settles in the valley where the city of Santiago rests and doesn’t go away.

It was a wonderful day, and the lectures, conversations with other professional mentors, as well as exchanges with the art students, reminded me how little of this I have right now and how much I miss and need it. I also spent eight years of my life serving on the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship board of directors, where I learned to know and love many of the IV campus staff. How wonderful to be interacting again, even briefly, with these young adults who’ve given up careers that could have been much more profitable financially in order to dialogue with and introduce Christ to the students in our country’s university systems.

At the end of the day, we were led in worship by a young man who played the harp. I have actually never seen this before—praise and worship music backed by harp music. He explained that all were welcome to bring their art discipline into the worship experience. Papers had been hung on the walls for those who chose to paint or draw. Musicians were invited to bring their instruments or voice to the platform and join in. “And if you dance, please feel free to dance in the aisles or up here with me.”

It took a little while for the arts students in the audience to warm up to the idea, but eventually some began working on the papers on the walls, a young woman took her violin from its case, and in time many of us were content to sit in our seats and join in the worship in our own way.

This whole Saturday, due to my very active allergy, I went through the schedule with a box of tissues in one hand and a pocketful of cough drops. As much as I enjoyed the day and luxuriated in the company of people with similar passions, I really needed to get home, dose myself with Nyquil and go to bed.

I noticed a young woman quietly dancing in a doorway. I could see her out of the corner of my eye, but she was hidden from most of the rest of the audience. Suddenly, a tall young black man stepped onto the stage and started to tap dance out his artistic discipline, turning it into worship. We all were electrified. He was beautiful; his movement was exquisite and holy. He had brought his tap shoes in case this opportunity presented itself.

The day ended with a prayer of blessing given by Michael Wilder, the Dean of the Music and Art Conservatory at Wheaton College, and then another prayer by myself.

Oh Lord,
Help these people to be true;
True to the vision of what You have meant them to be
And are helping them to become;
True to Yourself who is creating in them more than they
Could ever have dreamed or imagined;
True to others, with a kind of integrity that respects
How You have made us all different and unique;
And true to the community of the world into which
You seek to help us pour out our gifts and peculiarities.
Help them to be true.
Help them to be true.
In Christ’s name,
Help them to be true.

This prayer was designed on the spot as I was watching that young man tap-dancing during worship, being true to what it was God intended for him to be.

I went home, took Nyquil, hooked up the electric heating pad and went to sleep, but I was better in my soul because of that day, because of the arts professors and the InterVarsity staff and the eager students and because of one lovely young man dancing before the Lord.

I spy God!

Out of Debt

Through the extraordinary generosity of a friend who has been a long-time supporter of our ministry, we have paid off the last credit card debt that accumulated when we launched the Global Bag Project in 2008. We opened a home equity account to pay for purchasing portable camera equipment that works best in developing countries so that we could record the stories of the bag-makers. The $30,000 loan would also enable us to capitalize the start up of this idea to help women lift themselves from beneath the poverty line.

Great ideas being what they always are—more difficult than originally imagined—we weren’t able to do much more than keep up with the interest payments.

However, this friend’s gift, divided half between a 2012 donation and then half at the beginning of this year, enabled us to pay off all credit card debt, finish off the home equity loan, and pay back a small loan given to us by a ministry that seeks to help new businesses that specialize in microenterprise ventures, which is the nature of the Global Bag Project.

I can’t think of a more eloquent example of grace than this kind of donation given so freely and so cheerfully. Simply, God has paid off our debt. He and His Son agreed that an ultimate sacrifice would be made so that we would no longer have interest payments to make, and that we would also owe no more money. Sometimes I get used to this story of redemption, but being in ministry all my adult life, where we have been dependent for our very living on the generous offerings of not only friends but strangers, reminds me, quite frequently, of the joy, the exuberance, the wonder of having my debts paid.

When I called my friend to thank her for this huge gift, she said, “Well, God has been very generous to me. I also want to be generous to others.”

In 2 Corinthians 8:7 it says, “But just as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.” Giving, on whatever level, is nothing more than understanding that God has been generous to us all—He has forgiven our debt—and we need to be generous to others. Dollar debt, forgiven, is an incredible metaphor for this unbelievable spiritual transaction.

I spy God!