The Paths We Walk by Wil Triggs

One thing social media has given us is the ability to rediscover people from our past. In other words, you no longer need to go to a reunion to find out what’s happened to an old friend.

You can discover professional and academic accomplishments. You may see spouses or realize that a friend has remained or become single. You get to see children and relatives of friends. But you may also see a person whose face you honestly don’t know.

There have been times when I have absolutely not recognized a person from their posted photos. Of course, the same might be said of me from someone who knew me years ago.

Weight gain or loss and hair loss or change combined with passing years can really affect a person’s appearance to the point where there’s no recognition. Which person at this restaurant is my old friend? Sometimes I have no idea.

This kind of freezing people the way we remember them is still a thing. I tend to freeze kids at their Kindergarten age. A few years later I see one and I sometimes think to myself, “Oh, look. It’s James' older brother. No. Wait a minute. That is James!?”

Time plays tricks on our memories confusing people as they used to be with who they have become. We mainly talk about outward appearances, not necessarily who people are on the inside. Because who but God knows what’s really going on inside?

There are different dimensions to this when it comes to faith. On one hand, through social media I discover that someone I knew who was not a Christian is now a believer—answered prayer. The flip side is one of my good Christian friends who is now describing herself as both lesbian and Buddhist. The reconnections can go in both directions.

Apart from Jesus, it’s all vanity. But we are not left to ourselves. Jesus doesn’t check our social media activity to find out how we’re doing. So why do we focus on the outside person and not enough on the inner? Do we sometimes define ourselves by the way we look to other people?

Honestly, most all of us do in one way or another, and yet, it’s God’s gaze that matters most of all. The eyes of others can lead us astray. But God’s eyes never will. Instead, they point us to where we have gone astray.

Examine me, O God, and know my mind.
Test me, and know my thoughts.
See whether I am on an evil path.
Then lead me on the everlasting path.
(Psalm 139:23-23)

We look back. We bring the past into our present day and think we understand things better if we could only do it over again. But what about the choices we face this very day? And what of the days ahead?

Our inner beings. Are they better today than they were two years ago, five years ago? Ten? Social media seems to be so much about what is happening now or what has already happened. But how might we look forward to what lies ahead? How are we to find the eternal path? I don’t think it’s by looking back.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.(2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

Lead us on the everlasting path. It’s not where we’ve been, but where we’re going.

One Sunday, many years ago, we got home from church. Mallory, our seven-year-old neighbor at the time, asked us where we had been. We explained that we had been to church, thinking that she would understand that this is something people do on Sunday morning.

Mallory responded with a look of incomprehension and childlike pity. In her religious tradition her mother would rush out Saturday late afternoon for a quick turn at churchgoing to get it out of the way before stay-up-late Saturday nights, and then the family could stay in bed and sleep in almost til the neighbors (us) get back from their Sunday morning church.

The churchgoing choices have broadened since then. With livestream broadcasts, we can watch our own church service from the beds or couches of our homes. I wonder if Mallory rushes in and out of her church Saturday afternoon or goes Sunday morning, livestreams some other church or has chosen another path altogether away from us?

The footsteps on the everlasting path may be unremarkable in the short run. They can be simple, but they are headed somewhere truly remarkable. Last Sunday, I first recounted with five-year-olds the story of the prophet Elijah, wildly popular after the triumph against the prophets of Baal, walking with God, emulated by Elisha and then caught up in the whirlwind to heaven. From the whirlwind of Kids' Harbor, I went to the bookstall and met some people for the first time. I also spoke with Paul and Lynn and Liita and Ken. I listened to the preaching from the Gospel of Mark and considered the warning of religiosity and pharisaism and the miracles of Jesus. The loving arms of the Good Shepherd often are visible in the loving hands of his people, tearing open the rooftop or shaking your hand when you come into service, throwing cloaks down in front of a donkey on the road the Jerusalem or giving you a cup of coffee or a glass of water on Sunday morning.

If we’re sick or infirmed, livestream might be all we have. But I keep thinking about the people tearing apart the mud-dried roof to lower their friend down to Jesus for healing. This was not a remote experience done from the comfort of their own houses.

And a highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Way of Holiness;
the unclean shall not pass over it.
It shall belong to those who walk on the way;
even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.
No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
And the ransomed of the LORD shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.(Isaiah 35:8-10)

It’s Back to Church Sunday tomorrow at College Church. Let’s pray together. Let’s worship together. Let’s hear from God’s Word. Let us find healing and hope and lean on the everlasting arms of the Savior. Together.

God's Faithfulness by Ellen Elwell

From Prayers for Every Occasion by Ellen Elwell

Generous God, at times I’m slow to learn your ways and quick to forget how faithfully you provide—just as Jesus’ disciples were. After witnessing Jesus perform the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, then later feeding a crowd of four thousand from equally meager fare, the disciples were concerned when they forgot to pack food for the next part of the journey. So swiftly they forgot!

Yet my memory can be just as short. I see your hand in my life and delight in the ways you have sustained me, but days later, I toss and turn, worrying about new unresolved problems. I need to hear the echo of the words Jesus said to his disciples: “How many leftovers did you pick up afterward? Don’t you understand yet?”

Lord, help me to remember how many times you have fulfilled my needs. Help me to get it! With you, my mighty God and Creator, there is no shortage of bread, no lack of resources. You have proclaimed to all of us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.” Thank you, Father, for filling me up.

Bookworms by Lorraine Triggs

Thanks to a link my literary husband sent me the other day, I now know that bookworms are actual worms—real live pests. In 1928, librarians at the Huntington Library in southern California noticed that something was feasting on their rare book collection.

Bookworms were the culprits, and as preservationists at the Huntington Library discovered, the bookworm had “an astounding resistance to traditional pesticides, its voracious appetite not just for book pages but for leather covers, for even the starchy glue that holds book bindings together. “

My heart resonated with those librarians in the rare book collection, and not because I am a voracious reader, but because as a college student, I worked part-time at the Newberry Library, an independent research library on Walton Street in Chicago.

It was a plum job for this Moody Bible Institute student, especially after I had quit the first job Miss Robertson of the Institute’s student employment office had secured for me at an exclusive women's athletic club once I found out that, at the time, the club discriminated against Jews and Blacks.

The Newberry did practice a discrimination of sorts when it came to its Rare Book Room. I still recall the first time I went into The Rare Book Room. Even as a staff member, I had to be escorted into the room, but not before a Rare Book Room librarian checked that I was an employee, even though she had just greeted me by name. Next, I had to wash my hands in a designated restroom, and as soon as I was done, pull on a pair of gloves. My escort unlocked the door to the Rare Book Room, and I was in.

My eyes darted everywhere, my gloved hands twitching to open books from the Renaissance or Medieval times. Instead, the librarian ushered me to a specific spot, where she pulled out an original work by . . . Geoffrey Chaucer. (I don’t remember the title, but I’d like to think it was The Canterbury Tales.) I held out my hands—my gloved hands—to take the book. Ha! What was I a lowly part-time employee thinking? I was never allowed to touch or handle any book in the Rare Book Room.

The Institute—one block over and three blocks down from the Newberry Library—had a different expectation of its rare and prized book. It was set in one of the stones of the main hall: the Scripture reference of 2 Timothy 2:15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

From the start, our most treasured book was meant to be handled.

God wrote the law and commandment on tablets of stone and gave them to Moses. In Exodus 32, Moses hurried down the mountain with the two tablets that were, according to verse 16, “the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.” Moses was carrying in his human, ungloved hands the very words and writing of God.

Those two tablets didn’t fare very well, so on the second set of tablets Moses wrote the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 34:38) This covenantal language was of relationship—not to words etched in stone but to its Author, who is slow to anger, compassionate and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

David probably would have been banned from the Newberry's rare book room, with his talk of honey dripping from honeycombs, but no matter, God's Word was more precious than gold, and would revive his soul, make wise the simple and warn him from presumptuous sins. Long before the author of Hebrews, David knew that the word of God was living and active.

We joke that the answer to every Bible study question or Bible school lesson is Jesus, but maybe it’s not the joke we think it is. The Apostle John didn't think so when he began his first letter with these words, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life." (1 John 1:1). Or consider the way he ended his gospel writing of Jesus and books, "Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." (John 21:25)

The most prized book in history is one that we touch and open and read with unclean hands. Its author is the one who invites us in. We can eat this book and, unlike the bookworms of old, there is no destruction of its pages, but it lives in us and gives us the words of life. The Word became flesh, became living and active, and drips the sweet taste of forgiveness for all who see, listen and live.

Teachers Along the Way by Wil Triggs

With the start of another year of school, my mind goes back to the years when I started school.

New clothes. New classes. New friends and old friends.

Most everyone, though, wondered and worried about the biggest question of all:

What teacher or teachers will I get?

I remember my fourth-grade teacher. Mrs. Boodie. She had an infamous reputation. It was rumored that if you disagreed with her, she would push you down the hallway stairs. Behind her back we dared to call her Mrs. Bootie. While terrified, we were also appalled at the injustice of the kids who lucked out and got the younger, prettier teacher just across the hall.

My fifth-grade teacher was nice as could be, Miss Gaudino. Midway through the year, she was engaged to be married. She showed the students her engagement ring. The class was abuzz. It was like she was becoming royalty. Our moms organized a bridal shower, and they let us give her wedding gifts.

Then the engagement was mysteriously and suddenly broken, and she took a long time off, at least, more than a week. We liked her, so having substitutes wasn't really fun. When she came back, we could all tell it was hard for her. But she said she wanted to be with us, and we believed her.

As long as I was in school, the fascination with teachers never stopped.

My music teachers, Mr. Elmgreen, Miss LaRue, Mr. Sandburg and Mr. Lutke were always challenging me to play better, take breaths at the right place, practice to increase my range and skill. But all four also seemed to believe in me as a person, not just the body at the end of the brass instrument that made music in the band or orchestra.

My communications teacher, Miss Delbridge, took believing in me to a whole new level. She convinced me to do speeches on prostitution, on abortion, on existentialism. She cast me in reader’s theater scripts that didn’t seem to fit me, except they did. She saw it. I didn’t. She was shaking me up to discover something new. And when I failed, that was all right, too.

How can this be? I learned to use my voice, not in singing, but in speaking. It’s amazing the different moods and expressions that just our speaking voices can summon. How can this be, but somehow it was.

Nicodemus asked that same four-word question of Jesus.

It was in response to Jesus saying that a person had to be born again.

We are so used to the term “born again” now that it’s hard to imagine how it must have hit Nicodemus’s ears two thousand or so years ago. Jesus had a way of shaking up peoples’ ideas about this world and the next and what it takes to get new life.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, what none of us want to be, but at some point or another, it’s pretty hard to resist making rules that help us think we’re getting closer to God without actually yielding ourselves to him. We may not be perfect, but we can do this list of things and contribute well to the social good. That’s just the way we are wired. Let’s put on our Sunday best - shorts or suits, either will do.

How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb? It’s not hard to see that Nicodemus was asking the question for himself, about himself. He’s acknowledged that Jesus comes from God and yet he’s missing it.

In the discussion, Jesus goes to Moses and the lifting up of the snake in the wilderness.

The people were dying, and yet all they had to do was look up and live. It was the same for Nicodemus as he sat there with the Son of Man. It’s in their conversation that the Bible verse we’ve all memorized was first uttered.

“For God so loved . . . “

Jesus, the most incredible teacher, challenges people to something new, shakes us up, sees what’s in us and not in us, throws us down the stairs even—the teacher who is God himself. All for us to do is just look and believe.

Another dear promise from Jesus also involves Nicodemus. Swirling around Nicodemus was debate about Jesus. Some people wanted to arrest him, while others wanted to follow the One who just asserted: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37)

Nicodemus appears in the debate of what to do about Jesus and asks the others “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” (John 7:51)

He's defending Jesus. And their response is not an answer to his question, but a dismissal and an accusation. Even if the law doesn’t judge, these people of power and influence and leadership consider it their role to do just that. “Are you from Galilee too?”

Scripture doesn’t tell us of any reply from Nicodemus.

Myrrh and aloes. Seventy-five pounds of it. That’s the next time we see him. Surely that was a heavy and costly package of, was it, faith? Had he cast off trusting the suit or shorts or robes of his own righteousness? As he was wrapping the linen cloths with the spices, did he think back to the snake that Moses lifted up and what Jesus said about it? Did he remember the call to be born again? How heavy and heavily scented Jesus’ body must have been when they placed it in the tomb.

I know enough to know that I don’t know enough. I like to think of Nicodemus as a life-long learner. Me too, I hope. What did Nicodemus do after Easter Sunday?

Beyond thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought, beyond our Pharisaic habits or traditions or false ideas of righteousness, beyond earthly life itself we keep running into our own helpless failure. But we’re looking in the wrong place. We must take our eyes off ourselves and look to the cross and tomb. Only then does the white flag of helpless surrender rise, and blood and living water flow down.

The Walking Dead by Lorraine Triggs

A ‘Reversible’ Form of Death? Scientists Revive Cells in Dead Pigs’ Organs.

This was no tabloid headline. It was straight from a regular news story.* My inner unscientific journalist applauded the headline and the beginning of the article: “The pigs had been lying dead in the lab for an hour—no blood was circulating in their bodies, their hearts were still, the brain waves flat.” Who wouldn’t continue reading?

The author explained how a group of Yale scientists “pumped a custom-made solution into the dead pigs’ bodies” and though the pigs didn’t start wiggling and squealing, their “seemingly dead cells revived” including hearts, livers, kidneys and brains.

This research, though related to the viability of organ transplants long after a person’s death, did raise questions about “the definition of death,” according to a Duke University law professor who studies the ethical, legal and social implications of emerging technologies.

The law professor asked the question: “We presume death is a thing, it is a state of being . . . Are there forms of death that are reversible? Or not?”

Given my penchant for answering rhetorical questions, I automatically responded, “Yes!”

It’s the form of death the Apostle Paul described in Ephesians 2:1 as being dead in trespasses and sins, and just in case he wasn’t clear the first time, he repeats it in verse five: “even when we were dead in our trespasses.” We were as dead and helpless as those pigs lying in that lab.

My husband chimed in a bit too eagerly, “It’s like we’re Zombies, the walking dead.” Though I'm no fan of horror movies, I must admit that his description is apt.

Ironically, there are Walking Dead fans of fatalism. Everything is fixed in advance, and they are powerless to change these cosmic events, or change themselves. Dead is dead and there’s no room for improvement there.

Other Zombies attempt to mimic life. Like the rich fool in Matthew 12, they build bigger homes, bigger investments and bigger names for themselves. They and the rich fool take this so-called life easy: eat, drink and be merry. The dead live. Sadly, theirs is a second death as they store up things on earth, and wind up paying the wages of sin.

As it is, there are days I forget to consider myself dead to sin and see how close I can get to the Zombies—only the nice ones though, the Zombies that are most like me, not those others, those Walking Dead ones.

But dead is dead no matter how fatalistic or rich or Christian we are. When God’s custom-made solution that flowed from Immanuel’s veins has been pumped into our veins, our hearts, our souls, we are made alive with Christ. Our inner Zombies no longer exist.

English poet and hymnwriter William Cowper—a classic Walking Dead—shared the formula for the custom-made solution when he wrote:

There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains:
Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

And that is why this little former Zombie goes joyfully, joyfully, joyfully all the way home.


*From an August 3, 2022, New York Times article, "A 'Reversible' Form of Death? Scientists Revive Cells in Dead Pigs' Organs" by Gina Kolata.

A Prayer for When We Wait

From A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell Hawley

Almighty and ever loving Father,
whose mercies are without number,
whose grace is without measure,
whose purposes can never be thwarted,
we bow before you in humble recognition that you are
the divine proprietor,
the administrator of the affairs of men—
indeed the whole world, the universe.

Your absolute sovereignty over all things is our conviction . . .
but Lord we confess that often we are frustrated by your seeming
inactivity.
We feel the pressure of the moment,
the circumstances that need changing now,
and we are sorely tempted to do something—
to take matters into our own hands—instead of waiting on you.
Help us, Lord, not be as King Saul who did not wait for a word from you,
but tragically took matters into his own hands.

Help us to wait upon you.
Wait . . . wait . . . wait.

It took years before Naomi’s heart turned toward Bethlehem.
But all the while you were working on her behalf.

Help us to wait upon you.
Wait . . . wait . . . wait.

In the fullness of time, God brought forth his Son . . .
and that “fullness of time” was preceded by centuries
of divine preparation.

Help us to wait . . . wait . . . wait.

Forgive us the sin of impatience.
For you have told us through the prophet Isaiah that
you hear and understand our case,
and you promise to give power to those who are tired and worn out,
and you offer strength to the weak.
Once again we bring our unanswered prayers to you and the situations that
seem irresolvable, unless you act . . .
We try to leave it all with you.

Help us to wait . . . wait . . . wait.

Amen.

Seasons of Drought by Wil Triggs

When I lived in California, we had droughts, but they didn’t seem like what’s being reported now. Restaurants stopped bringing glasses of water when you sat down and before you ordered. You had to ask for it which made it special. The tinkling of ice in a glass seemed like jewels--small treasures that would bring refreshment if only for a few brief moments until you drank the water and asked for a refill or the ice disappointing as It melted into nothing but a little more water. We were told to flush toilets only when necessary. If it’s yellow, let it mellow. I remember seeing signs like that in public toilets. But the Wall Street Journal reports that the drought California is facing now is the worst on record, so whatever is going on there now is much worse than what I’m remembering.

I’ve been reading an article about a family of wheat farmers in Kansas and their upcoming harvest. Because of the war between Russia and Ukraine, wheat prices were high at one point; good news for the farmers in Kansas save one problem: drought. The lack of water meant that the harvest was delayed and the wheat itself was not growing as full as a normal season The rising price of diesel and fertilizer add layers to the uncertainty. Describing the dilemma David, a farmer, says, “It feels like we’ve been pulled into a high-stakes poker game . . . What happens if we have a crop failure or prices crash? It’s a scary time.”

In another story about drought, this time in Romania, an 81-year-old woman says she’s never seen a drought like the one they’re facing today. "We have children, we have cattle,” she says. “We make an effort to plant tomatoes in the garden and they dry out and we have nothing to eat. God, give us rain, don't abandon us."

The Financial Times just ran a story about how a cyclone drenched Crimea with damaging rains that gave a reprieve to the region from the shortage of water brought on by drought and the water blockades from the war.

And the UK has gotten a lot of news coverage about their heat wave but there may be more to this story. The Guardian reports, “The UK is facing the prospect of a drought being declared in August, experts have said, warning of potential crop failures after a period of remarkably dry weather and extreme heat.”

It’s confusing when the sun plays tricks on us. I’ve been in the desert when I’ve seen mirages—water that when you get close to it disappears. I asked Lorraine if she had ever seen a mirage, and her memories of it are in the heat of summer and the blacktops of Detroit—vapors roiling to give the appearance of water where there is none. The sun decides to be a magician. Sleight of hand. Tricked you. No water here after all. It’s just an interesting illusion. I say interesting because I readily have access to water from a tap or a bottle. Otherwise, I might say tormenting or terrifying or life-threatening.

True thirst is a real thing. I’m not sure that I have ever really experienced that.

When the conversation began between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, it began with Jesus asking her to give him some water. In that time and place, there were no cases of bottled water or taps; you had to walk to a well. As they talked, the request for water went from the lips of Jesus requesting thirst-quenching water to the lips of the woman asking Jesus for a different kind of water.

“Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

And then the disciples came, confused. She fled without her jar into the town to say to the others, “Come and see.”

I don’t want to diminish the struggles the world is facing with not enough water for people or crops. They are real. Often when we see suffering like those from drought, we want to do something to help people in need.

At the same time, there’s living water that is only Jesus, and mirages all around us. People fill their jars without the water that is Christ only to find when they do, life, like the desert or blacktop sun, plays a trick on them. No water in that jar after all. That which seems so fulfilling roils and dissolves into nothing at all. And the thirst, the longing that so often goes unrecognized, becomes more intense at the realization that what you thought was real water is really not.

Jesus not only offers living water; that's what he is. Nothing else is living water. Earnest devotion and determined discipline focused on whatever other kind of water leads only to dry, parched thirst. The longing and striving are their own drought. What can we do to help people in this kind of drought?

Perhaps we have only to say, “Come and see” like the Samaritan woman did. This woman wasn’t even sure what was going on, but she knew enough that she couldn’t keep it to herself. She wasn’t about to be fooled by the desert sun or wells. She was so eager to tell the others that she left her jar behind. She had encountered Christ and everything changed for her, for the Samaritans in town.

“Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.’”

The Samaritans accepted the women's Invitation to come and see, but in the end, Jesus's thirst-quenching words met their deepest need—for the Savior. Living water has come—for us and for them.

Keep Calm and Carry On by Lorraine Triggs

The New York Times article podcast promised I could choose my own meditation from its list of seven five-minute meditations. All promised to calm my mind, transport me to a happier place and leave me energized. I thought that was what my first cup of coffee of the day was meant to do. Whatever. I continued to sip that first cup as I read the list of meditations from which to choose.

• Taming Negative Thoughts

• De-stress at Your Desk

• Invite Stillness

• Time Just for You

• Beat the Blahs

• Inner Staycation

• Calm During Crisis

My mind raced as I chose my meditation. Tame those negative thoughts, check. De-stress, check but highly unlikely. Stillness, check. Me time, do not like this phrase at all. Beat the Blahs, check. Inner staycation, clever. But the clear winner was Calm During Crisis.

I touched play, and my five-minute meditation began—with breathing. Well, not just ordinary breathing but deep relaxing breathing to find the space between my breaths and thoughts. The deep breathing did sort of calm me, which was good since what came next totally threw me.

In a soft voice, my meditation guide encouraged me that I can help, heal, serve others with my special talents. Do what fulfills me.

“You are the one you have been waiting for,” the guide continued. I stopped breathing altogether as I choked out, “You have got to be kidding me.”

My five-minute mediation ended in a record two minutes and sixteen seconds, but it did give me a few unintended take-aways.

Waiting for oneself will always disappoint.
Simeon and Anna weren’t waiting for themselves when they went to the temple. Instead, gospel writer Luke shows Simeon holding that eight-day-old baby high, ready to depart in peace, because “my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2:30-32) Simeon had waited for this baby for years, and he wasn’t disappointed.

We see Anna, prophetess, widow, old, giving thanks to God and telling all who were waiting—surprise--not for themselves, but for the redemption of Jerusalem. The Savior, the one they had been waiting for had arrived. I wonder if advanced-in-age Anna had a new spring to her step as she passed along the news of great joy to all the people.

Calming the crisis may take our breath away.
Luke also shows us Jesus, calm in the crisis, breathing deeply because, well, he was fast asleep in the boat as the wind and waves crashed and slammed into it. The disciples woke up Jesus, convinced they were perishing, and what he did next probably took their breath away. Jesus spoke and the wind and raging waves ceased.

My mediation guide had been advising me to be fully present as I breathed. I was pretty sure the guide wasn't thinking about Jesus; nonetheless, Jesus was fully present on the cross struggling to breathe, becoming sin for us. Jesus was fully present when he breathed his last and called out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46)

Jesus was so fully present in his last breath that Mark tells us that when “the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’” (Mark 15:39)

Me space or God space?
My meditation guide also told me in oh-so soothing tones to cultivate the space between my thoughts and breathing and fulfill myself before I can help, heal and serve others. Two thoughts: how unlike Jesus this is and how like me it is. I don’t need too much encouragement to look after my own interests.

Instead, as followers of Christ, we now live in a space that is bigger than our own interests, opinions and political leanings. It isn't really me doing the work, but God in and through me.

We live in that space between Anna and Simeon and Jesus’ second advent. The now and not-yet space when God’s kingdom comes. In this space, we cultivate fruit such as love, joy, peace, meekness. We cultivate wisdom from above that is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:17-18)

Jesus is the one we are living for. Not my will but his. We are truly different when we sacrifice self for others. We should live like Jesus so when we breathe our last or simply take a deep breath and exhale, someone will say, “Truly this person is a child of God."