The Race to the Heat Registers by Lorraine Triggs

Cold Michigan winter mornings, two living room wall heat registers and three girls. You probably can guess this isn’t going to end well.

On these cold mornings, my two sisters and I would race to claim one of the registers, but as the youngest, I found the odds were stacked against me, and I would be left out in the cold. This would lead to accusations: That’s unfair. I got here first. You shoved me. You had it yesterday. Mo-m-m.

Ironically, we were racing to the heat registers so we could have a cozy spot in which to have our quiet times, our daily devotions.

The great race to the heat registers reminds me that I wake up selfish most mornings. My first thought now, as it was then, is of me—my comforts, my priorities, my way. I certainly don’t need any blogs or Wirecutter tips on self-care, which I manage to do quite well on my own, thank you very much.

Selfishness and its close cousin, pride, ought to be daily reminders that we’re “frail children of dust and feeble as frail;” instead, they remind us of our achievements, our greatness, ourselves. Each of us has something in which to take pride. The out-of-fashion word “vainglory” came to mind, so I looked up Philippians 2:3 in the King James Version: “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves.”

Merriam-Webster defines vainglory as “excessive or ostentatious pride especially in one’s achievements.” No wonder the word has fallen out of linguistic favor. Though not an attractive word, it is an accurate description of the human condition—much like what the psalmist David wrote, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5) And in sin, we wake up vaingloriously. We don’t wake up planning to sin, we just do as the day goes on.

Seriously? Vainglorious? We’re involved at church, we give our resources—time and money—to God’s work, we follow the right people and podcasts. Sure, there’s the occasional sin, but we’re good people compared to the truly evil people out there.

I pray that I never become such a good person that I forget my frail, dusty origins, that I forget the Lord’s benefits of forgiveness, healing and redemption. May I never become confident in my own righteousness that I no longer see a need for his mercy, his grace, his abounding steadfast love and compassion. May I never outgrow a humble dependency on Jesus who redeems, renews and one day, will restore all things to himself, including frail humanity.

The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.  Psalm 103:8-14

Reverie 121 by Wil Triggs

I first heard about you when I was five. My sister told me of you in such a natural way. You made such sense that I couldn’t believe I had not already figured out the wonder and truth of your love. It seemed so right but I could not have found you without someone else telling me.
 
At the same time, the playgrounds of childhood were calling. There were four square, football games on the blacktop, imaginary games based on television. Fistfights with good friends—on the grass, never in the street. You were with me, but I can’t say that I was always with you. Life marched on. There were board games that I rarely won. I sold stuff, real or imagined, to people, real or imagined, to benefit myself or my Cub Scout pack or school or the Red Cross or UNICEF or some imaginary world-changing charity.
 
I didn’t exactly forget about you. But there were other things.
 
There was my seventh-grade best friend’s mother, who always had a rice cooker on when I would go over after school to shoot hoops. She never failed to offer us a sample of the evening meal. I remember lumpia, a food I had never tasted before, but tasted like food from home, a home that was mine, but one I had never lived in. Sometimes I stayed for the whole meal. This was the beginning of my interest in other people and cultures and foods that seemed unusual for a picky eater like me.
 
The rice from the cooker and the lumpia and me and the family I didn’t know well—and you were there, the other guest at that table.
 
Sometimes I played records on the stereo, a box version with a lid on which to play the 45s. Everything that poured out of those speakers seemed real and magical at the same time. I never wanted just the single 45. It seemed like a waste of money to get only one track when you could buy an LP and get so much more.
 
You were listening to the music with me back then..
 
And then I learned to play music myself, and it was the same thing—real and magical. Scales and drills, over and over, big bands and pit orchestras. To play the music I had once only listened to was revelation. Often, I thought that this music going into me and coming out of me was somehow truth flowing from you in a way that made me feel closer to heaven than hell.
 
Were you enjoying the music back then?
 
I was growing up. Things were getting hard. There were demonstrations. Teargas and gas lines. Teachers in my public school offered condolences when my grandfather died. Adults outside my family showed me they cared—which was a shock sometimes. When pretense was dropped in favor of care, a teacher became a multi-dimensional human, more than an authority, another human being. It was better to learn from them afterwards.
 
You watched me filing the music after school, looked after me when I ran sprints after class with Motown going through my mind. Band teacher. Track coach. You were there.
 
It wasn’t only people who helped me. Words became friends. In writing I found a path where I could know what I was thinking and feeling. Words helped me to try and make sense of what was going on in me and my friends, in the world, underneath me, all around me, words to sort things out. I rose to the top and sank to the bottom at the same time. Words became what people could not—ever present and able to tell me where I was. Friends along the way.
 
Those notebooks I selectively showed only a few pages to a friend here or there—you read them all.
 
I became aware of my own imprisonment, the sins and limitations that increasingly seemed to define me in ways that I didn’t understand. The world seemed slanted to make me want things that you would not want. Voices were saying that if I did a certain thing, you would bless me, belittling the truth that when I was not blessing you, you came.
 
Sometimes I ran to solitude with my beloved words, and I wrote. You saw all of them, surely. But they weren’t enough. These friends did not leave me, but they could not atone or transcend or forgive.
 
I lifted my eyes, realizing the insurmountable, inescapable place with little gods and distractions everywhere. Hell stood before me on that path I didn’t know.
 
No people or words could provide what I needed.
 
From where does help come when I am in this prison of fallen failure and falsehood?
 
There is only one answer.
 
When you came to me in prison, it was confusing at first. How could you be there alongside me. In this isolated place, a prison for the lost, where you for sure did not belong, you came.
 
The prison door opened. You told me to walk out. You had to tell me to walk out the door you had just opened otherwise I never would have walked out.
 
But you could—the Word could, the one Word, before and above all others. The spoken word-maker of heaven and earth came to my lone cell. There was blood and pain that I could not comprehend. You spared me that and yet it was there. Nothing is more immediate than the pain of broken flesh and blood. There we were. Creator and created being. You the Word and the person, lifting me, guiding me.  At your table I never deserved a space, yet you pulled out the chair and bid me to sit. So, sit I did and do still.
 
How can you be so close, so now, so much more the teacher and friend, the balm I need right now.
 
When my foot was stuck in a crag, you freed me to walk. You set things right.
 
Living in the darkness of the sun and the lightness of the moon, I found rescue. You put things right.
 
When I had breakfast week after week with my friend after his mother died and before my father did, you were there with us.
 
You are the lifeguard that never sleeps, ever watching, day and night, the waters and tides we swim.
 
Always coming, going, these characters, words, tunes, going in and out so much of day and night. But in it you are always constant, the unwavering word that never flees, never forces, ever loves.
 
I am a fish you caught. You keep me. I’m a keeper. You never cast off.  You are the keeper of everything. Artist. Singer. Chef. Lawyer. Savior. Companion. Doctor. Neighbor. Nurse. Patient. The one who builds the fire on the beach and invites me to come, eat.
 
From this time forth and forevermore.

Everyday Experiences by Lorraine Triggs

Though I considered it, I did not bring my dog to church last Sunday. If I had, he may—more likely not—have helped me define the word “gentleness” as we taught the children about the fruit of the Spirit. The Spiritwasat church with me and helped me define that fruit, especially when no theologian seemed up to the task of explaining the fruit of the Spirit to Kindergartners.

“Pretend you got a new puppy or kitten. How would you hold it?” I asked the children. I held my imaginary puppy in my hands and stroked it gently. “I’d be gentle and calm.” I looked out to see the 20 or so Kindergarteners one by one joining in to pet their own puppies and kittens in their arms as we talked about gentleness—restful, quiet because we know Jesus and trust his promises.

Puppies, kittens, fruit—everyday human experiences that help explain the Spirit’s (comforter, helper, counselor) transformative work in us.

I was in a small-group Bible study recently, when a friend commented that her brother thinks the whole Bible is a metaphor. I think there was an audible gasp. Unless her brother was misusing the term to imply that everything in the Bible is untrue, his comment was accurate in a way he did not intend.

The psalms pile on metaphor after metaphor for God: rock, fortress, deliverer, shield, stronghold, refugee, shepherd, light, a very present help, strong tower, and so do the gospels, especially John’s. In the first chapter alone, Jesus is word, light and lamb. In other chapters, Jesus is bread, light, door, shepherd, vine, the way, the truth and the light.

In his book A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible, Leland Ryken defines metaphor as “a comparison between two things that asserts that one is the other rather than simply like or as the other. The assertion ‘the Lord is my shepherd’ (Ps. 23:1) is a metaphor. At a literal, grammatical level, a metaphor aways states an untruth: God is not literally a shepherd.” Lee goes on to say that metaphors are an “invitation for us to discover how A is like B.”

In some respects, we are so comfortable with these metaphors that we simply accept them at face value, and they can lose their profound beauty.

I think it’s time we accept Lee’s invitation and rediscover who Jesus is.

​He is the bread of life, who held up a piece of bread and told his disciples to “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26). Jesus, the lamb, who held up a cup, and said, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood . . .” (Matthew 26:27)

Declarations 2024

On this other side of New Year’s, I have shifted from “best-ofs” to reading of the hopes and predictions for the new year. No one knows what’s going to happen in 2024, so these kinds of lists are much less reliable than the year-end ones that look back on what actually took place.

Last year I spent more time than ever in the land of podcasts. On one I listened to last week the regulars on the show reviewed what they predicted about 2023 a year ago. They had gotten most everything wrong. They laughed about it, and it did seem funny. We humans seems so uniquely gifted at getting these things wrong, and then being impressed with ourselves for trying. So, what did they do next? The exact same thing for 2024. Why did I listen when they were so off about the last? 

Another podcast debated making resolutions at the beginning of the year. For the most part the participants didn’t own up to making them. But then they confessed to doing their own versions of resolutions, just not tied to January 1. I noticed, too, that many of them looked to liturgical calendars or selected monastic practices to help give shape and discipline to their days and nights. Though some Christians I respect draw inspiration for daily discipline from places as unlikely as the Islamic calls to prayer at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and after dark or monastic hours of prayers, which seem to follow similar patterns. I rebel against much of that formalism and repetition.

That kind of thing seems pretty self-absorbed, though I realize in saying this that I’ve likely lost a good number of my friendly readers who love the rich aesthetics and rhythms the liturgical calendar provides, or just like making resolutions anyway. Maybe my saying these things makes me just as self-absorbed as everyone else. Oh well. It’s January.

But as I look ahead to 2024, I’m not interested in predictions or resolutions. If I lose weight, start swimming, write more, become socially engaged in an issue or election, good for me. But not best for me.

And I do want to spend more time praying and in communion with God. While on earth, Jesus withdrew to the quiet place to be alone with God.

Jonathan Edwards wrote resolutions for himself as a young man that he reviewed once a week to see how he was doing. It’s a comprehensive list. Maybe I could try for three of my own but what might they be?

Best for me in 2024 is a declaration or a proclamation or two, not about me, not about the world. I want this year to be a year to more clearly and fully declare God. 

After all, if the heavens declare the glory of God, can’t I, too? Or will I just go on thinking about who is going to win the football game or the election or the newest competition show on my favorite streaming service. The declarations are revealed in the things I do, the words I say, the way I act to the people who are not like me, who may not like me. 

My declarations will have to be simple enough for a Kindergartener, not graduate school theological phrases that impress the enlightened few. These declarations are for everyone.
God is trustworthy.
God is good.
God is near. 
God is here.
Father, Son, Spirit.
Jesus came. He died. He rose.
He reigns.

And this from our Bible study in the Book of Acts:
Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. 

This is a new year’s declaration I can get behind. It doesn’t matter if I’m in shape or out of shape, keeping my resolutions or already broken them. My life in 2024 can declare this truth, this freedom found only in Jesus. 

Let these simple but eternal declarations control me in new ways this year.

A Sticky Stash by Lorraine Triggs

Before Wil and I married, I lived in a second story flat of an old house in West Chicago. The door to the flat was at the top of the stairs, and as soon as you turned, there was the living room with a simple bookshelf right by the door. Perfect for my book collection I dubbed “books to grab first in case of fire.”

Books in my collection included titles by Mildred B. Taylor and Katherine Paterson, which shared space with Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and, I couldn’t forget, The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri. When we married and moved into a studio apartment on Indiana Street, my book collection grew and became more eclectic as Wil added his in case of fire books that included The Metaphysical Poets and Dorothy Sayer’s Translation and Notes on the Divine Comedy—all bookended with our shared love for Flannery O’Connor and William Shakespeare.
 
Never mind the practicality of carrying the books out of the burning house, nor did it occur to us that in case of an actual fire the best exit might not be the most obvious one, but those beloved books were coming with us, even if their weight slowed us down.
 
If it were only books weighing me down in life.
 
Jesus knows his followers’ tendencies to lug around needless stuff such as worries, wealth, sin. He knows our tendencies to look down or sideways—not up to the birds of the air—in the desire to add that hour to the span of our lives, and he knows our hearts that focus on what we have in the here and now.
 
It’s that focus on the here and now that adds to my stash of worries, ranging from the war in Ukraine to my sister remaining cancer-free to the odd noise the car decides to make. As far as money goes, that’s simple—add away to the stash. And, surprise, surprise, my favorite sins stick to the stash like sturdy packing tape, holding everything together.
 
Though increasingly cumbersome, I’d rather walk through flames to the obvious exit, still in control of my sticky bundled burden But what about the narrow way that's right here? You know the one where I am forced to put down my burden, relinquishing control.
 
Then I remember Jesus’ graced words: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Matthew 6:26-29).
 
I think of the big and little fears of war and disease and money and car noises. It could be a never-ending list over which I mostly have no control. I look up and consider that narrow exit, and putting that sticky, overweight stash down, I walk through it and am at home in a kingdom full of light and glorious flower fields.

Beyond Lists by Wil Triggs

Beyond Lists

By Wil Triggs

New Year’s is the time of lists—maybe it’s the best things that happened in the year just ending—the best tv shows, movies, books, restaurants. I’m kind of a sucker for those lists. I’m interested to find out the best of what people experienced this last year. Making lists helps me keep track of my own discoveries.
 
What were my best books read this past year? What about movies watched? Best new restaurants of 2023. I’ve been scouring media to find out what other people name as their bests of 2023—books, movies, podcasts, restaurants, theater, television.
 
A friend of mine recently told me that he made a list of things he loves about his wife. This is not a list limited to 2023, but over the course of their life together.
 
That’s a great idea, I said to myself, as we were talking about it. So, I decided to make one of my own for Lorraine.
 
I won’t share it with you now, but if you are reading this and know her, it’s not hard to come up with great things about her. There’s her laugh, her sense of humor, her love of children, her commitment to God and his Word. Her astute mind. Oh wait, I said I wasn’t going to share my list with you.
 
Think of someone in your life and make a list of things you love about that person. Then share it with him/her. We all have someone like that in our lives, even if it’s just one person.  It’s fun and a great way to start 2024.
 
If you read my list about Lorraine, first you would find out things about me. After all, I’m choosing what I put on the list, and it ismylist about Lorraine. Then you would also find out about her, through my eyes at least. But that doesn’t mean you would really know either of us. No matter how extensively I might catalog her many delights, I cannot really capture the three-dimensional living, breathing, laughing, thinking, writing, caring, carefree sacrificially loving person that she is, not to mention the triple ginger soft cookies she bakes.
 
There I go again, sharing what I said I would not share.
 
Here's the thing. Reading my lists or anyone’s at year end is not the same as going to the places, reading the books, eating in the restaurants, watching the movies or knowing a person like I know Lorraine. Knowing all those great things about Lorraine isn’t the same as truly knowing her.
 
Sometimes I think people imagine that learning things about God is the same as really knowing him. Yes, there is such a thing as an agnostic theologian, but we must not fall for that.

Of course, we do teach virtues, graces, fruits of the Spirit, and the sins and vices we see in God’s Word. I don’t mean that the things we learn about God cannot help us. But learning the lists and living by them is not the same as knowing the Three Persons.
 
There were many people around Jesus who thought they were on the right track. And yet Jesus said: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’  And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’" (Matthew 7: 21-23)
 
This is a little scary for a fan of lists like me.  I read books, listen to podcasts, lead discussions and studies, all of it focused in one way or another on God. I list his attributes, but to be honest, sometimes I concentrate more on knowing things about God than on knowing him.
 
We fail, but God never does. Not once. The good news is that God wants us to know him. So much so that he came and died and rose. He makes himself known. It’s not hard to know him, yet it is the most demanding thing of all. To yield our souls, to give ourselves, and trust him beyond ourselves. It’s impossible for me to do.
 
But I know someone for whom it is possible. And honestly, he has already done the heavy lifting. The wonders of Christ and his Word are open to us. Not as a list or a set of things to do, but as a person to know. A close friend or a spouse, these are but images to help us understand what it means to know him.
 
May 2024 be a year where we know God in new, deeper, richer ways than ever before and let our lives make a prayer of Paul’s words: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
 
Paul doesn’t say knowing about God. It’s knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. What a never-ending gift. At the end of his gospel, John wrote, “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).
 
This is staggering. All the books of the world could not contain the works of Jesus, yet we get to know him. This beloved apostle also penned an even more staggering truth when, he wrote “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)

As God’s children now, we have Scripture—always new and fresh, open to us, by the Spirit of God, alive today in this moment and worth more than everything else we know and love.

And one day we will see him as he is.

No Silent Night Here by Lorraine Triggs

No Silent Night Here

By Lorraine Triggs

The New York Times recently ran an article titled “The Quiet Thrill of Keeping a Secret.” The article reported on new research that suggests keeping good news to yourself can be energizing. What? Not announcing good news to the world—good news such as a marriage proposal or a call back from a coveted job offer—helps people to feel in control of life.

Too bad no one told the shepherds.

Instead of keeping the best news ever to themselves, they “went with haste” to Bethlehem in the middle of the night to find the baby.

And that angelic host was none too discreet—not only filling the night sky with their being, but also lighting it up and singing “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace good will toward men.” Imagine this group of now-energized shepherds descending on Mary, Joseph and their newborn, and then talking about it to anyone and everyone within earshot. No positive secret-keeping here.

The only pause in the clamor was Mary, who treasured and pondered these things in her heart. I don’t think it was because Mary was into positive secret keeping. Her pondering and treasuring weren’t about leveraging or feeling in control of positive experiences as the New York Times article concludes. She had already given all that up. No, her pondering and treasuring was of the One who had looked on her humble estate and did great things for her.

Even Mary had her own moment of going with haste (see Luke 1:39) to her relative Elizabeth to announce her shocking news, and then relative Elizabeth spilled her own positive secret that she had kept for going on six months.

Elizabeth’s husband, Zechariah, had secret-keeping enforced on him until their baby was born, and when he wrote the child’s name on a table, “John,” there was no stopping Zechariah as his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he blessed God. (Luke 1:63–64)

So, on Christmas Eve I sing “Silent night! Holy night! All is calm, all is bright,” and thank Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah, who didn't need to feel in control of their positive experiences, choosing instead to proclaim good news.

As I sing “heav’nly hosts sing, “Alleluia! Christ the Savior is born,” I will imagine the thousands of angels disrupting the silent night with their good news for all people. And though the shepherds probably did quake at the sight, they weren’t paralyzed, but went with haste to Bethlehem, leaving their sheep to fend for themselves.

When I sing about the dawn of redeeming grace, I will remember Zechariah, now the talk of the hill country of Judea, and his prophecy of a sunrise visit from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness.

And I remain indebted to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son—the voice crying in the wilderness—who knew that sheep couldn’t fend for themselves, and declared when he saw Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)

No, there was nothing silent about that night, but everything holy.

Merry Christmas.

by Dan Haase