I’ve been sleeping on that floor for several nights now. We are staying with our daughter and son- in- law trying to give them some help with their new baby and of course playing with big sister Lydia.

And I began think about that question.

How should a birthday feel?

I could conjure up some expectations that for today, this April 18th, 2012 birthday, wouldn’t work. Those expectations would just set me up for disappointment.

As I muse a bit more about this particular day, I know that in the middle of this fine day I will find God. He is truly my keeper and he has kept me here so far.

And as I look around me today, I realize that I have received a most precious gift, the birth of a new grandchild.

So I ask myself, is this what a birthday should feel like?

Knowing and feeling that I am quite blessed?

After all, I am with family.

After all, I have had the privilege of getting to know this new little guy named Gavin.

After all, my husband of almost 37 years is right here, well not quite by my side as he is sleeping on the couch by the blow up bed! Ha! Quite the scene here, with two 60 somethings trying to get out of their make shift beds…

Does it feel like my birthday? I must answer with a resounding ‘yes’! I will remember this day as very special.

After all it isn’t everyday that I get to celebrate the birth of a new grandchild just days before my own birthday.

I couldn’t ask for a better gift.

Sure feels like a birthday to me!

Pardon me. May I interrupt you for a second?

Or when as a mom you finally get a chance to converse with someone other than a kid and your child tugs on you with an “but I need to tell you something right now!” kind of interruption?

Does consternation or impatience rise up in you?

After raising 4 kids, I did get used to their little interruptions to the point where now as a grandma, I love my grandkids’ interruptions. I look forward to their “grandma, I need to tell or show you something right now” kind of interruptions.

But what about those huge life- changing interruptions? How well do we handle them? The ‘pardon me, may I interrupt you for a second’ kind of interruption that erupts your day, your life, your heart forever?

The kind of God interruption that Simon of Cyrene experienced.

The one where he was pressed into service to carry Jesus’ cross to Calvary.

I believe it was a divine interruption into this devout Jew’s life.

Last night, ‘Good Friday’ Friday night, I watched the movie, The Passion of the Christ.

And even though I have watched this movie at least once a year since its release, I never can get past certain scenes in the story.

One of those scenes is when a Roman soldier presses Simon of Cyrene into service by ordering him to leave his children and carry Jesus’ cross.

Simon, a lesser character in this Crucifixion story, must be reckoned with.

Henry Blackaby, preacher and author, said this about Simon.

Simon, who just happened to be passing by, when the Lord of the Universe laid a cross on him…A divine interruption…

Hmmm. The Gospel accounts tell of how the Roman soldiers ordered Simon of Cyrene to pick up the cross and carry it. They yanked him from the crowd, pulling him away from his two little boys.

He was definitely interrupted but ultimately by whom?

It is said of Simon that he was a Jew from the countryside of Cyrene, who just happened to be in Jerusalem with his two boys Alexander and Rufus for the celebration of Passover. A good Jew. One who followed the law. One who knew the importance of remembering God’s deliverance of his own people centuries ago.

Just happened to be in town for the annual celebration of Passover.

Just passing by on the streets when suddenly, a divine interruption set him on a new course.

An interruption that may have caused his heart to faint for a moment but his life to change forever.

In the movie, you can see this transformation take place by watching his face. His demeanor changes as he carries Jesus’ cross. He goes from reluctant servant to passionate follower, realizing that his duty as a Jew is to attend to the one who calls himself King of the Jews.

I believe this transformation was eternal, not just for the momentary interruption.  The “pardon me, may I interrupt you for a second?” type of interruption.

I believe that Simon’s eyes were opened as he recognized God’s Messiah, King of the Jews.

And what about you and I?

Are we willing to be pressed into service, interrupted by the God of the Universe at a moment’s notice?

Much like Simon of Cyrene who just happened to be passing by, when the Lord of the Universe laid a cross on him…?

Hmmmmm…

Pardon me? May I Interrupt you for a second? A lifetime?

This verse was handed to me a couple of months ago on a rock. A painted rock to be exact. Granddaughters Anna and Ellie gave one to Marty and to me.

How appropriate that this verse is transcribed by little hands on a solid piece of rock.

For when we are truly afraid, there is only one way to get help – from the Rock of Ages, Jesus Christ.

When things seem to not make sense in this life, reversals, upside down happenings, the ‘I don’t understand but I trust You’ stuff, then I can hold in my hand this rock with the verse written on it, an icon that points me to the truth, Jesus.

Anna and Ellie told me that they read the story of David and Goliath, then followed up this story by painting these rocks.

How appropriate for King David to write down this remembrance of His God, Psalm 56:3. For there were many times when he was caught between a rock and a hard place and he held onto the Rock.

And it was literally a rock, a smooth stone that killed the giant Goliath.

That handpicked smooth stone/rock was David’s choice of redemption at that moment when faced with almost certain death.

As I begin to walk through this year 2012, there are swirling about a number of uncertainties, places in my life where things seem to  be turning out quite differently from the way I had anticipated.

While I spend my days walking between the Rock and those hard places, sometimes feeling like I park too long at the hard places, I know in my heart that there is a solid, never moving Rock that I must hold onto.

So today, I choose to embrace the Rock, Jesus Christ, as I hold in my hand an iconic hand painted orange rock with the written words When I am afraid I will trust in you!

Do you believe it?  Do we believe this?

God? Gives us gifts?

Presents?

Presence?

He has arrived!

Bearing gifts.

This Son of God, Jesus, is here to gather up the fragments of our little lives, the fragments of our collected and hoarded disappointments and give to us Himself and all the trimmings that come with Him.

Like eternal life.

Like  His peace to us now as we live out our daily lives.

Like His Presence to dwell with us.

He is here as Emanuel! God with us!

His gift of eternal life starts today, now. It isn’t something that we need to wait for. We get to live today knowing that it is already a done deal.

His word to the shepherds when the angel of the Lord appeared to them in a field so many years ago is also for us, for our kids, for our grandkids and beyond.

So take this word and run with it. It is yours, ours for the taking and believing and living out.

And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be for all the people for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2: 10-11)

There has been born for you a Savior…

Can’t top that one.

May God or an angel speak to you today that there has been born for you a Savior.

And with that, I add a crispy -clear Merry Christmas!

There! Take that and run with this gift in hand as you go about your day today, as you celebrate this wonderful event – Jesus’ birthday!

Merry Christmas!

One fine day she was betrothed to Joseph, engaging in a culturally arranged lifestyle of marriage with the promise of children to raise.

The next day or so it seemed, her life path took a sudden turn. Yesterday’s path was no longer an option. The sudden fork in the road had a signpost that read – YOUR LIFE/THIS WAY… NO LONGER AN OPTION/THAT WAY.

And because Mary was well-versed, because she knew her history – where she came from, because she knew God and His merciful ways, she was able to be a joyful participant in God’s plan for her life.

There was an innocence about her due to her youth. Perhaps not enough earth time had passed for her to grow cynical towards God- stuff like angels and prophecies of old now being fulfilled in her lifetime, on her watch, in her face.

An innocence that God preserved for such a time as this.

Gabriel bursting in on her planned future to announce God’s planned future for her brought a response that could only come from a God- worshipping heart. A heart devoid of years of built up cynicism.

Her response dripped with that innocence. “…but how? I’ve never slept with a man” (Luke 1:34 Message Bible).

She appeared to be ready to accept Gabriel’s answer to her question.

And not only accept it, her prayer response reveals her heart, reveals what she believed about God.

Mary’s prayer takes us into an expansive world of God’s promises that are in the process of being fulfilled. (Eugene Peterson – Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places p.273-74)

Hannah’s prayer from 1000 years earlier became Mary’s prayer of response to God.

And Mary said,

I’m bursting with God-news; 
I’m dancing the song of my Savior God. 
God took one good look at me, and look what happened-I’m the most fortunate woman on earth! 
   What God has done for me will never be forgotten, the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others. His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before him. He bared his arm and showed his strength, scattered the bluffing braggarts. He knocked tyrants off their high horses, pulled victims out of the mud. The starving poor sat down to a banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold. He embraced his chosen child, Israel; he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high. It’s exactly what he promised, beginning with Abraham and right up to now. (Lk.1:46-55 Message Bible)

Mary was able to tap into that ‘expansive world of God’s promises that are in the process of being fulfilled’ and say yes to God, to the role He was giving her.

It is obvious from her choice of response that her life was built on the rock solid foundation of God.

When you come to a fork in the road of life that says YOUR LIFE/ THIS WAY…NO LONGER AN OPTION/ THAT WAY, how will you respond?

Might we learn from Mary, the Mother of Jesus?

How about Henry Gauntlett?

Ring a bell?

No?

These are names of two people that were perhaps quite obscure in their day but they left lasting legacies.

In their obscurity, they wrote, they created.

Passionate in their giftings and purpose, they left reams of papers full of hymns and musical compositions.

Although they lived in the same generation, they never knew each other.

For they were separated by country with Alexander hailing from Ireland and Gauntlett residing in Olney, England.

At some point God lifted the veil of obscurity in bits and pieces so that His handiwork could be completed on their watch of life and beyond.

As only God can do, these two people never met but their giftings collided, merging into a wonderful Christmas Hymn entitled Once In Royal David’s City.

She wrote the words, he wrote the music.

He merged the two. She never knew.

So who are these two rather obscure people?

Cecil Frances Alexander loved to write poems and hymns for children. Her passion was to make the Bible stories more meaningful to children. Her poem/hymn Once in Royal David’s City, appeared for the first time in a collection called Hymns for Little Children in 1848.

Henry Gauntlett was said to have composed over ten thousand hymn tunes in his lifetime. His passion for music began when he was a little boy. His determination to become a serious musician landed him the job of church organist at his church by age nine! A position that he held for the rest of his life.

Perhaps one fine day, Gauntlett discovered Alexander’s hymn/poem Once in Royal David’s City in that collection of Hymns for Little Children and knew that among his catalogue of many tunes he had one that fit like a glove to the words that she penned some years before.

I guess we will never know how it all happened.

But we do know this. They seized life with gusto. Gave their lives over to their calling. They probably never knew how far reaching their passions would go. And just like this story, we may never know the height, the depth, the range, the longevity that our influence, our lives, our giftings will have.

Perhaps we should take note and determine to live out the rest of our lives giving away our passions and our giftings, thereby leaving God -created legacies for those who come after our time here on earth.

Psalm 62: 5-8 says:

5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; 
my hope comes from him.


6 He alone is my rock and my salvation; 
he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. 


7 My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge.


8 Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. 
                         

Selah

Selah. Interlude. Time out. Take a breath.

I don’t know about you but when I read a Psalm I tend to gloss over that word  Selah. Yet today as I read over these verses I realized that the word Selah is well placed.

The song at this point in David’s Psalm is about finding rest in God alone. I believe that this word Selah is metaphorically placed as a sign of rest. Musically, it was a break, or perhaps a breakout of interludal singing to God from the depths of  souls with no organized chorus at this juncture.

I am imagining a scene where the crowd is worshiping together, singing the words together in choir form. And when they come upon the word Selah, they pause, perhaps a harpist continues, or a few begin to sing from their heart in their own words back to God or some may silently wait, taking a cleansing breath or two until the musical director gives the downbeat to continue on as a choir.

Traditionally, the word Selah was strategically placed in order to stress the importance of the preceding passage, to pause and reflect, to weigh or determine the value of that passage.

So too, finding rest in God alone, requires us to pause and reflect, to create an interlude in our day, a time out from activity, from our active minds, to take a breath and orient ourselves back to God.

An interlude. Time out. Take a breath. Rest.

Ahhh…Selahhh.

While I have had this conversation many times before, this time was different – for me. I was slowly coming out of a season, a long one, where I was struggling to like my church. I was no longer apologetic, hemming and hawing over the fact that yes, we do have great worship here at VCCR and we have some of the most awesome homegrown worship songs around. Hidden in this rather small church (200 or so) in Cedar Rapids Iowa.

So I confidently told this person that typically 3 out of 4 songs done each week are homegrown, written by David, John, Kate or Rodney. This person was awestruck at the beauty and the giftings we had within this place called Vineyard Church Cedar Rapids.

And their passionate response fueled a fire in me that lasted the rest of the day. And spilled into my week.

A fire of yes.

Worshipping with homegrown worship songs is an incredible weekly experience. Our worship here is catalytic. It serves to bring people into the Presence of God which causes change in their lives. Our songwriters are gifted with a heart of worship, with talent to create. We have treasure that so far is rather hidden. But it is still treasure!

A fire of thankfulness.

Appreciating the gifts that God has given us here in this place. Redemptively remembering stories where people came into this place and the Lord physically and/ or emotionally healed them in the midst of worship.

A fire of confidence.

Knowing that we don’t have everything functioning according to what a church should have. Knowing that we are lacking in certain areas of serving our community. We choose to look for and find the good instead of wallow in our losses and lacks. Looking for and finding the good breathes confidence in who we are, not so much what we have or have not yet accomplished.

A fire of satisfaction.

Settling for God’s enough. Realizing that satisfaction is not resignation to our disappointments but a peace that settles in our hearts burning away regrets. A determination in looking and finding God’s enough. His enough is thriving, is alive. His enough is full of treasure and surprise. After all, His enough fed thousands of people with five loaves and two fishes.

And with all of these wonderful things, the ultimate in looking for and  finding the good is fixing our hearts and our lives on the One who embodies all good. For the Lord is Good with a capital “G”.

So what about you? Tell me your story where you paused long enough to look for and find the good.

Over the past 3-5 years there have been too many disappointments, hope deferred, too much giving power to those who have left – to their likes and dislikes, etc. My thoughts some days were consumed with their parting words, their parting shots at us, the pastors of this church. Some were my friends, some not as well known.

The cumulative effect of trying hard to help, trying hard to please, trying hard to minister to some of these people took it’s toll.

I found myself in a place where I realized that I didn’t like my church.

The one I have given most of my time, energy, and resources to.

The one Marty and I planted with such hope and zeal some 13 years ago.

The one where I had fun in the beginning getting to know and train up people to lead.

Yep. That one.

So here I am in May of 2011, getting ready for our first ever Sabbatical. Ten weeks of a much needed rest. A break from this church that I was supposed to ‘like’ and didn’t like anymore.

When suddenly God…

Used an autistic child named Dylan to interrupt our service, our church as usual. The one I no longer liked.

Dylan was a guest that day. So was his mom. She chose to sit right up front. Dylan decided to ‘preach’. Out loud, up front, moving and mimicking Marty as he attempted to teach.

Marty, after quite some time at this attempt, realizing that the people were riveted on Dylan’s ‘preaching’, decided to draw attention to what was happening.

He realized that God was in this interruption. This ‘elephant in the room’, (not Dylan) the God -timed interruption, had to be addressed. Hearts were on the line. There was an opportunity here to allow God to touch our hearts as we were being interrupted and stretched.

So as Marty brought autism front and center, to the platform, the tension in the room seemed to melt. Hearts seemed to be softened.

Let’s listen. What is God saying to us right now?

I began to look around the room and realized that all of our regular attending families that had children with autism were present. This doesn’t happen very often as it is very hard to pull the family together and physically get to church when you have an autistic child.

God gave me direction as I listened to Him. He said to bring all the families with autistic children up front. Then call all the men that were fathers or grandfathers up and ask them to bless these children, their families.

I then asked others, women, mothers, children to come forward and surround these families as pillars of prayer, holding them up in their tiredness and hopelessness.

And the people came forward. Men, women and children surrounded these heartbroken, weary families.

One man who never had the opportunity to be a father, gave a testimony in tears, confessing that he was one of those getting really irritated that a mother would let her child interrupt the sermon but when Marty began to explain the situation, that autism was involved, he began to weep, God began to change his heart. So he came up front to publicly apologize to Dylan and to his mom for his attitude.

This ‘elephant in the room, God-  timed interruption’ seemed to be the ticket to my road to recovery. My road to beginning to like my church again.

As a swell of satisfaction permeated my heart, something bigger than my ability to recover this liking and loving thing again was taking place.

There was a feeling of satisfaction. That’s the word I was hearing. Satisfied. Ahhh…I could feel some release from the angst that seemed to be with me every time I entered our church.

And then over the next couple of Sundays, God broke in with moments of satisfaction. It was a deep feeling, a sudden in-breaking. Homegrown worship songs that touched and began to heal our hearts, a new sense of community rising from the ashes of God’s dismantle. Ahhhh…

And then it was time to start this 10 week journey of sabbatical rest.

And I started the journey with a grateful heart…

Like: I’m a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me.

Or: You can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right, but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.

Oh bother…

Perhaps too much thinking can get in the way of creativity when it comes to writing and spelling?.

And the way Pooh Bear spells, why it’s so unlike the way I was raised to spell.

Every word, precise, used in the ‘right way’…Oh the thinks I ponder and the spellings I spell when I try this hand at writing, at being creative.

After all, what does it matter to me or my readers if I spell honey, ‘hunny’. To my rather rigid mind, it does bother me, but to my creative imagination, it looks and feels quite nice to write ‘hunny’ for I feel a bit more giddy and less thinking about the thinks I am pondering.

Yep, a bit more Pooh Bear in me should help unleash that creative imagination which I know is deep down there somewhere.

Through my years of aging, becoming wise and protective in my thoughts and my speech, choosing my words with more restraint sometimes than with wisdom, I have inadvertently placed boundaries around this thing called imagination.

Imagine that?

The very thing I have been asking God to expand in me, I have been protectively building walls up around it.

My imagination that is. The ability to creatively think outside the box.

Oh it sounds soooo fun to be able to write and think that way. Yes, that’s what I desire. But and there is a big but in the sentence, I am afraid to let God have the boundaries, the parameters that I’ve set around my imagination.

Oh bother!

Pooh was cool about who he was.

Pooh Bear wasn’t befuddled by too much jargon. He was simple.

And creative in his approach to life in the woods.

He would scratch his head a lot and think aloud. Yes, aloud! Whether there was an audience of one, two or none. Didn’t matter.

He hemmed and hawed and hummed and hmmmed his way through the hundred acre wood. Pondering and imagining all sorts of adventures.

His imagination oft times led him into trumped up troubles and worries that were quickly dispelled by the appearance of Christopher Robin on the scene. With his ‘silly old bear’ Christopher Robin would try to remedy the situation.

Now I am not really comparing my brain to a bear, especially an imagined bear but I do love the character that AA Milne let us in on, which was a big part of his own imagination.

Perhaps a sprinkle of carefree and somewhat crazy but loveable thoughts that are ‘thinked’ out loud, can set this old imagination free.

Pooh says: Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.

Oh bother!

For more info on CPRR Blog Talks and to join us on our BLOG TALK journeys, visit www.callandpurpose.org or visit my blog @ www.sandyboller.wordpress.com