Category: God working in history

Answering the Call of Christ, Authentic Faith, Creative Nonfiction, Experiencing Community, Following Jesus, God and Creation, God working in history, Offering HOPE

Together With God

by  • 1 Comment

In this poetic essay I engage with the idea that we need to get involved—with others—in what God is doing in our world. Will we listen to what the past and present are saying, so we can move together WITH our loving God now … stepping into the possibilities that call us to a renewed future?

WITH

When the angel said to Mary, “For nothing is impossible with God”

and when Jesus said, speaking of the rich young man, “With God all things are possible”

did they mean that God would single-handedly make seemingly-impossible things happen?

Well, surely “with” means with. Possibilities are not actualities. But they can become so.

First, choices will be made . . . by God, by us. . . .

Choices matter in each

  • attraction or encounter.
  • touch or grasp.
  • reaction or response.
  • intersection or dead-end.
  • word spoken or thought silenced.

And, as in the case of Mary, life-giving choices and actions don’t happen alone but

WITH.

Whence comes this ability and necessity to choose, this invitation to respond and cooperate?

—From One who speaks potentiality, beauty, and creativity out of Love . . . connecting us as persons, relating us to all of nature, to every part of ourselves, and to God (through Christ who gives us life and the Spirit who is with us). We are image-bearers. We are all in some sense

WITH.

Living here in time and space, each of our moments is thick with the past—and pregnant with the future—calling us to be creators, curators, visionaries, encouragers, healers, leaders, servants.

Will we

receive the breath

heed the voice

cleave to the nearness

of God?

Will we give birth to actions of faith, hope, and love

WITH?

Look up—attend, listen to this present moment.

Look back—see the river of the past feeding into the now.

Look down—see that we are standing in an estuary of the potent, teeming present.

Look toward the horizon—see the future rolling and swelling. Which waves will break upon the shore?

Look around—all that surrounds us, that the river currents and ocean tides wash in, how it is mixing. At this time, in this place, what can we do to bring

  • clarity not murkiness?
  • free flow not stagnation?
  • sweetness not putridity?
  • abundance not scarcity?
  • hope that helps people know they are

WITH?

We are part of the becomingness of everlasting life!

Will we face the moment, listen to what it is saying about us, about the past that has influenced who we are, about what we are bringing into the future, and what the future may be bringing to us?

God—being revealed through Jesus, the Scriptures, and creation—is patient, persistent, longsuffering, even slow . . . convincing, helping, here

WITH.

Like compass needles, we seek, seek True North; and True North wants to, wills to, be found.

Yet, bent, we wobble and resist.

But God is not a faraway star. God is

  • the true atmosphere giving us breath.
  • the true magnetism holding us together.
  • the true dawn waking us again and again.

Does the needle think it is the true one and North should get in line?

God “strengthens the humble but opposes the proud.”—

This is to say, when we set ourselves in opposition, we cannot join hands

WITH.

No matter where we go, where we have been, where our feet stand now in time . . . we are not alone, never away from God’s influence, care, wooing. If “God with us” holds all our times past—keeps our “tears in a bottle”. . . . If God at every moment sees all the possible steps into the future. . . . If God imagines the myriad possible intersections of our path with the paths of others. . . . Then let us act, step out, take hold, clasp hands, join hearts

WITH.

Forces exist that would divide us, separate us, within, without.

God—Love—would bring us together.

In this estuary of the consequential, substantial present . . .

The young gambol in swirls of fresh water, thinking they’ll forever play among the land mammals, trees, and sun-drenched grasses.

We who have traveled longer sense saltiness in the water and feel the undertow pulling away from familiar moorings. We will soon find ourselves in the waters of what from here appears to be dark swelling mysteries and unfathomed depths … to a separation temporal, but a connection and communion everlasting.

Fresh water and salt water mingle here and now, but these waters continually recede, like breath and blood flowing in and out of lungs—rhythms of life attuned

WITH.

If we have a God who speaks, comforts, helps,

and in whom “all things hold together,”

then surely God is continually present to us and all creation?

And if God’s Spirit is manifest “wherever two or three are gathered,”

then surely God the Spirit is speaking and influencing here, there,

WITH.

In this moment, are we thriving?

How can we continue to stand, let alone flourish, if divided against ourselves—lacking harmony in our inner lives, our families, our churches, our nations, our world?

We say we believe some form of:

  • “God created the heavens and the earth.”
  • “God called creation ‘good’.”
  • “God so loved the world. . .”

Then God isn’t against us but

WITH!

Can we agree, in this in-between time of grace and faith, as we open our hearts and minds to the Alpha and Omega, to seek God’s reign and will “on earth as it is in heaven,” and work together

WITH?

This moment carries roots and leaves of past moments and seeds of all future moments. What we do—now—matters. Is this present mix of waters rich with life and health both ecological and societal? Jesus said we are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” We are caretakers of creation and each other when we partner

WITH.

Why do we blindly and stubbornly waste personal and corporate energies on greedy squabbles and turf wars?

Can we

  • accept slowness; unplug, listen, “fear not”?
  • trust together in creation’s innate ability to heal and renew, and accept our part in that?
  • acknowledge our own need for healing and renewal?
  • choose a mindset of benevolence for all?
  • have faith and hope in goodness and salvation?

Surely our God of creative, gracious, relentless love, will help us to join

WITH.

We need each other.

Will we lead the way by giving up worn-out stances, protectiveness, fear?

Let us be conservative—conservers of the truly good.

Let us be liberal—truly generous and tolerant.

We can each take responsibility to do something to make a positive difference, to be life-giving, to partner with God and each other in what Love seeks to do and calls us to participate in, as co-laborers. This labor is not burdensome, when we are yoked

WITH.

I know some people who choose to listen to, love freely, and work with God to sweeten the waters where they stand:

  • A prosperous, conservative Christian couple who cultivate acres of gardens to grow produce for their local food bank.
  • An evangelical pastor who has organized a ministry of prayer, friendship, and outreach to Muslim refugees in his city.
  • A retired professor and writer who follows God in vulnerability, revealing her trauma and healing to help others.
  • Contemplatives and poets who listen to and articulate a language of the heart to reach and touch fellow longing hearts.
  • Theologians reaching across institutional divides with hopeful understandings of God’s essence and presence.
  • A quiet man who invites neighbors into his home, where he and his wife pray and care for them, and share life together.
  • Wounded healers who listen, love, and pray with all who come; inviting, seeking, finding Jesus in broken places.
  • My friend who sits with people dying alone in hospital, so they will not die alone but know they are

WITH.

We stand here in a richness of the influential past and the potential future

as hope enlivens the waters. Will we:

  • vision together a more healthy and happy future?
  • seek healing for wounds we carry from the past?
  • affirm the good in this pregnant moment?
  • join hands together and partner

WITH God?

~Catherine Lawton

“With” (here slightly revised) was first published in the book Partnering with God. (SacraSage, 2021)

Unsplash Photos: 1) Joshua Gaunt 2) Nick Fewings

 

Answering the Call of Christ, Authentic Faith, Engaging Culture, Following Jesus, God working in history

Are We In the Midst of A “New Reformation”?

by  • 0 Comments

“The fundamentalism of the last century is waning. And the liberalism of the last fifty years has failed to reform the Church.” –Adam Hamilton

If you don’t sense deep, unsettling change in our ways of doing church and being Christians in the world today, then I don’t know what planet you live on, or what church you attend (or have quit attending). I certainly have felt the winds of change, not only as a Christian writer/publisher, but as a church member and a person seeking to live on mission as a Jesus follower today.

My studies at Northwind Seminary (where I received my Masters Degree in Specialized Ministry) guided my thinking to gain a broader perspective on what many are calling “a New Reformation.” You’d be right if you said, “Didn’t we have a Great Reformation already?” But look back through history, and you will see that many times of renewal, revival, awakening, and reform have occurred during periods of upheaval in the world and a mix of self-satisfaction, apathy, and spiritual hunger among Christians.

If you want to be involved in what God is doing in the church and in the world, you pay attention, you listen to the winds of the Spirit; and you join hands, prayers, and efforts with other “listeners.”

In that spirit I want to share Northwind Seminary’s take* on the “New Reformation” we seem to be experiencing:

Ecclesia semper reformanda is a common Latin phrase used by church reformers to remind the people of God that “the church must always be about reforming.” The early Jesus Movement and Apostolic Church, the Imperial Church of the Holy Roman Empire, the Protestant Reformation, and Roman Catholic Counter Reformation, all had their day and role to play in the growth of the Christian tradition. At least three “Great Awakenings” in the history of American Christianity served to renew the Church at critical times. The “Great Emergence” of new church forms and fresh expressions of ecclesia at the turn of the third Millennium of Christianity served to prepare the way for a Global Church—no longer centered in Europe or America, but growing in the global south, Asia, and Africa. What next ‘new thing’ will the Spirit of God do in the world? What new ways and forms will characterize the next Church?

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; do you not perceive it? –Isaiah 43:19

…Affirming a both/and approach, we affirm the great classical Creeds of the Christian tradition as well as the prophetic radical edge of what it means to follow Jesus today in a postmodern, post-Christian, traumatized world. As Richard Rohr reminds us: “The prophets of old were both radicals and traditionalists. With penetrating insight and wisdom, they saw into the heart of their own tradition and called the people of God to embrace a new day. We shouldn’t be surprised if we find ourselves falling in love with our tradition and wanting to radically change the way things are.”

…“I believe that Christianity is in need of a new reformation,” writes Adam Hamilton….“The fundamentalism of the last century is waning. And the liberalism of the last fifty years” has failed to reform the Church. “The new reformation will be led by people who are able to see the gray in a world of black and white.”

…”The new Reformation,” says theologian Elaine Heath, “is all about the emergence of a generous, hospitable, equitable form of Christian practice that heals the wounds of the world.”

According to Robert J. Duncan, founding president of Northwind Seminary, “The Church is moving from the modern to a postmodern world, fueled by digital media and innovative uses of new technology. We have an opportunity to redeem the technology of the global culture and use it for ministry in the digital age….Electronic circuit riding in the twenty-first century is the new form of evangelism and mission.”

Professor Leonard Sweet identifies an important parallel between the modern and the postmodern Reformations: “If the technology that fueled the Protestant Reformation was the printing press, and the product was ‘The Book,’ the technology that is fueling the Postmodern Reformation is the microprocessor and the product is ‘The Net.’

As a Christian futurist, Professor Sweet adds: “The NextChurch has two challenges: getting clear and clearing out.” Getting clear about who Jesus is and clearing out spiritual deformities that dis-order the church’s structural life and dis-able mission.” In the process, “the role of pastoral leadership is dramatically shifting from representative to participatory models” in the priesthood of believers.

…Professor Thomas Jay Oord sees a light at the end of the revolution. As we walk in God’s light we are becoming all that God has called us to be… as our ever-loving and relational God “guides us, inspires, nurtures, nudges, and coaxes us” into greater creativity and wholeness.

*The entire article, originally written and posted by Michael J. Christensen, can be found here: https://kairos.edu/2023/10/27/partnership-spotlight-northwind-theological-seminary/

and here: https://donkeysdelight.blogspot.com/2023/08/northwind-seminary-shares-its-mission.html

More about Northwind Seminary here: https://www.northwindseminary.org/

The beautiful photo by theologian/photographer Thomas Jay Oord is used with his generous permission.(I added the bolding of phrases.)

On hopeful paths of prayer and poetry,

~Catherine Lawton

 

Cladach Authors, God and Creation, God working in history, Memoirs, Nature Writings, New Releases, Nurturing Wonder, Offering HOPE

Bobo, Ouyang, and Susan: Experiencing Community

by  • 2 Comments

Beauty, comfort, and caring community can come to us in surprising ways.

Ouyang is a Chinese friend of our author Susan Elaine Jenkins. They became acquainted while she lived and taught school in China for many years. Ouyang appears in Susan’s memoir SCANDALON: Running From Shame and Finding God’s Scandalous Love. If you read Scandalon, then you know how Ouyang helped Susan adjust to life in China and how Susan helped Ouyang better understand Christianity. Their conversations shared in the book are deep and moving and show God’s hand at work across cultures.

So I was delighted when Susan and Ouyang contributed a story, “Bobo the Hedgehog,” to our most-recent release, The Animals In Our Lives: Stories of Companionship and Awe.

“Bobo the Hedgehog” relates a moving childhood experience of Ouyang during the dreary days of the Communist Revolution in China—a period of time with very little beauty, comfort, or caring community. Seemingly by accident Ouyang found all those things—beauty, comfort, and caring community—when he happened upon a rare thing, a rose garden, one of the few gardens sanctioned by the government. And inside that “secret,” gated garden was a kind old gardener who befriended Ouyang. When the old man found a hedgehog by the river, he kept it hidden and let it be Ouyang’s “pet” for a while until the risk became too great and the hedgehog was released back into the wild. But the comfort and joy a pet hedgehog brought to the boy never left him and became a part of who he is today.

The kind gardener (however clandestinely) sharing the creature with him, at a time when families were not allowed to own pets, a terrible time when starving people were eating whatever animals, including pets, they could find … is the type of experience that can give needed hope to a child in a bleak environment.

Ouyang’s childhood memory, written for him by Susan, provides a rare glimpse into what life was like in those difficult times. It also gives a glimpse into the life and character of the boy who became the man, Ouyang.

Soon after The Animals In Our Lives was published, Ouyang found this little hedgehog (pictured above with him) on a river bank. Happy, formative, hope-giving memories again flooded back to his heart and mind.

Ouyang’s story of “Bobo the Hedgehog” is one of many included in The Animals In Our Lives, that demonstrate how animals of all kinds can give us companionship, the experience of awe, and a sense of God’s presence.

 

 

Book Publishing, Engaging Culture, God working in history, Memoirs, Offering HOPE

Grace in Horrific Times

by  • 0 Comments

There are 110 million displaced people in the world today, more than ever before in history.

There are more natural disasters occurring than ever before in recorded history.

There is a growing spirit of division among people, as evidenced in current discourse, events, politics and elections. So much of this division seems fueled by fear, anger, and distrust.

There have been horrific times before in history. We humans like to think we have learned from those experiences and that we wouldn’t let such things happen again. Can we learn from history? Will we? Or must history repeat itself?

Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) And he said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27)

Cladach has released books that feature true stories of God—and his people—at work even during the most horrific historical times. For instance:

All these personal memoirs happened in extremely tumultuous times and/or circumstances. Each describes injustices, cruelty, and evil forces unleashed on nations, people groups, and individuals. Each of these stories also gives witness to God’s personal presence, providence, and grace.

We offer these stories in the hope that readers will find renewed perspective, compassion, understanding, and hope.

Photo by theologian/photographer Thomas Jay Oord
Engaging Culture, Following Jesus, God and Creation, God working in history, Offering HOPE

Showing Love and Offering Hope in the World

by  • 2 Comments

We can each do something this day to increase shalom, well-being, and flourishing in our world—to participate in “God’s kingdom come.”

I like the quote by Anne Frank, that I photographed summer 2017 when I was visiting Birmingham, Alabama. This monument was erected in the context of the Civil Rights struggles of that city, quoting a young Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis. If she could think and pen such words, shouldn’t we—as followers of the Messiah—who revealed to us God’s heart of Love and compassion—be looking for ways to “improve the world” that God created, Christ gave his life for, ever lives to intercede for, and is coming back to reclaim and re-create? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” John 3:16.

As a believer and follower of Jesus, the Creator and Redeemer, I want to reflect his character of holy love into this groaning, strife-filled world.

One way I seek to do that is by publishing books that offer hope. I believe that hope is what sets “Christian books” apart among general book publishing. Whether through fiction, nonfiction, memoir, or poetry; a story, essay, or poem may portray a context of brokenness, sin, and conflict. But into that milieu will shine a ray of hope that gives the reader renewed courage to reach up and take hold of “the helping hand at the end of God’s long arm of love.”

————

Experiencing peace, Following Jesus, God working in history, Offering HOPE

Hope for Refugees

by  • 0 Comments

Lang with her brother and three sons in our backyard

On this World Refugee Day (June 20) I think of the refugees I have known. First, years ago my family helped sponsor a family of Vietnamese “boat people.” Lang, a South Vietnamese Army officer’s widow, and her brother and her three sons, escaped for their lives off the shore of Vietnam in a small boat to wander the sea along with many others. They gave everything they owned to the boat’s owner. They suffered on the sea. But they were fortunate that a ship accepted them on board and took them to a refugee camp.

Lang with my daughter

They arrived in our town frightened, slightly sick, “lost” in a completely different culture. While we waited for an apartment to open for them, this sad little family stayed in our home. Our little girl gave up her bedroom for them. Our way of living was so different from theirs. I showed them the glasses in the cupboard. They took one and drank water from it, then returned it to the cupboard. I bought five plastic glasses and wrote their names on them and lined them up on the counter for them to use.

They had experienced dangers and horrors that I could barely imagine. Even though I made beds on the floor, at night they all slept side by side on one double bed.

The word “refugees” changed in my mind from strange, almost-suspect stories into warm, real human beings.

Using gestures and a Vietnamese-English dictionary, I tried to tell Lang about Jesus’ love. Tears welled in her eyes. I tutored her in “English as a second language” for a short time. Eventually they moved to another city and I lost track of them. But I’ll never forget all I learned from them. And I have prayed that the welcome we gave them, and the bit of God’s love we tried to show them across cultural and language barriers, would grow like a seed planted—and that I will see Lang and her family again in Heaven. I look forward to worshiping around the throne the One who gave us freedom, who rescues us from sin and evil and death, and gives us the opportunity of new life and hope and peace.

Because of this experience, and then later getting to know the many Laotian refugees who came to our church, I had the opportunity to write and publish the book, No More Fear: From Killing Fields to Harvest Fields, the story of Physa Chanmany who came to America as a Cambodian refugee.

Physa also had some things in common with many refugees today. As a boy, Physa saw indescribable horror and genocide. Taught to fear Westerners, especially Americans, he had never heard the truth of Jesus. But as a lost and traumatized refugee, he had a dream in which he encountered Christ, who set his life on a new course of hope.