by Judy Bevilacqua

“Free will:” it’s one of the most attractive and liberating doctrines of the Christian faith - but it’s also one of the most maddening and frustrating. It’s can feel like a divine marketing ploy: “free sample,” “free test ride,” “free estimate,” “free carpet cleaning.” How many of us have gone for the free vacation stay, only to have to listen to a 3-hour, high-pressure sales pitch for a time-share condo. We vow: “never again!” We learned that free isn’t “free.”

Decisions have never come easy for me. I was a child who was not allowed many choices. They were made for me, and I learned to be passive (resistant!) and complain and criticize under my breath, rather than risk and take responsibility. It was quite late in life that I came to learn to be “the adult” and choose for myself and bear the required results. I still agonize over the outcome of every bad decision and feel shame and guilt over not getting it “right.” So free-will is a double-edged sword for me. It’s designed to produce grown-ups, but I still find myself with these pesky pockets of adolescence.

The scriptures are abundantly clear about the necessity of making choices:

“Choose this day whom you will serve…” Joshua 24:15

“I would that you were either hot or cold…” Rev. 3:16

“Let your yes be yes, and your no be no...” Matthew 5:23

“Be you doers of the word and not hearers only…” James 1:23

“Put your money where your mouth is…” (oops, I guess that one’s not in there!)

God’s desire is that we choose….He leaves so much up to us. But there’s an overarching grace that accompanies this learning curve of decision-making. I think being parented by God allows me a large space in a less condemning environment. Our proof-text is to see the line-up of bad choices represented in the stories in the Bible. And yes, there’s hell to pay, sometimes! But primarily it’s a classroom atmosphere of “let’s try that again.” King David and Peter made some rather poor and consequential gaffes. Moses and Paul made some stellar blunders! In this journey of faith, it seems we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witless-ness.” Ahhh, what a comfort! It takes some of the pressure off. It turns the heat down and the shelves the shame. I’ve always loved that proverb: “A righteous man falls seven times and rises again.” Proverbs 24:16. It’s that do-over principle. This “free will” thing would be completely scary without the knowledge of God as a loving, forgiving, nurturing and completely realistic father-mother. We get to make this very human choice…and yet, in that finite moment, we brush against the infinity of the One who is with us and in us….and over time we learn we are still “on the way home.” We find our will is slowly getting conformed to His. Whatever unique and hidden road we may be taking, it’s still a pilgrimage of faith ….He is on the road with us!

Recently I read again a favorite poem. This time, I came away with a fresh view - like a glance in the rear-view mirror - perceiving that “way has lead onto way,” in that mysterious and transformative path of free-will…and “that (God) has made all the difference.”

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I Had a Father ~

by Kathy Douglass

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. For what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him? (Matthew 7)

I had a father who lived at my house

He was my hero, he was my friend

Turned on the lights when the dark left me scared

Laughed at my stories, cuddled and cared

And every good gift that a father could give

Was mine for the taking as long as he lived

I had a father who lived at my house

As I grew older, wiser, I knew

This body I’m in is the same that he wore

He suffered, he struggled, he failed and he tore

My father needed a father too

We found the Father we needed in You

When I need my father

You are the one who won’t be gone

When I need a shoulder

Your love is the shoulder that I rest my life upon

If I ask You for bread,

You don’t go throwing stones

You’ve given me a home

And I am not alone

You are my Father, You are my Savior, my Lord

You are the One who loves me so much more

I’ve lived most of my life without my father. He left us when I was a little girl, and died a few years after that. I saw him just a handful of times in-between.

All that means is that I belong to a community too numerous to count, a community of names and faces and stories, a community of children who’ve lost their fathers. Death, abandonment, neglect, abuse, chasms of emotional distance that seem impossible to bridge, never-knowing-his-name… there are so many ways we “lose” our dads in a world hell-bent on loss.

“When I was a child, I talked liked a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became grown, I put childish ways behind me.” (I Corinthians 13:11) What we see, what we perceive, what we interpret as children can’t help but grow into something more as we grow into who we are. From childlike naiveté to weathered understanding, the view of my dad as “my hero, my friend” has taken on layers of meaning and perspective in the years since he went away. As I’ve had to confront and contend with my own brokenness, I’ve had to confront and contend with his.

Brennan Manning writes “blessed are those who know they are broken”. In knowing this truth about ourselves, about one another, a pathway toward wholeness opens up. I don’t think that God’s promise to bind our wounds (Hosea 6) means that healing isn’t going to hurt. Wounds ache, it can hurt to apply balm, to change a dressing, the journey toward rehabilitation is painful and long.

I don’t think God wanted to be my earthly father. I believe it was His heart, His hope, that my dad would do that. And yet, in that failure, in that loss, God has been intimately present, just like He was at the beginning, when I was fearfully and wonderfully made.

I miss my dad, I do. I’ve allowed myself at times to wonder about the impact of his decisions on my life, to consider what might have been had he stayed with us, to feel the starkness of the empty space where he was supposed to be. And yet, with time and God’s grace, I’ve been able to experience the things that a father can provide: a sense of being cherished, an awareness of protection and shepherding. These good things have not been withheld from me in my fatherlessness. I’ve not been left alone.

It’s not okay that I don’t have a dad, and yet… it is… okay.

When I need my father

You are the one who won’t be gone

When I need a shoulder

Your love is the shoulder that I rest my life upon

If I ask You for bread,

You don’t go throwing stones

You’ve given me a home

And I am not alone

You are my Father, You are my Savior, my Lord

You are the One who loves me so much more

Singing to God

by Ian Doescher

Today, the Grant High School Royal Blues Alumni Choir had our second concert ever. Reverend Jennifer sings in the choir (though she doesn't say much about it in church), and we were happy to be singing several sacred pieces. These included...

- A setting of "O Vos Omnes" (Lamentations 1:12, Jeremiah lamenting for Jerusalem)

- Morten Lauridsen's enchanting and ethereal "O Nata Lux" (O birth of light)

- An Italian madrigal filled with joy, called Exsultate Deo.

We can't bring the concert to the blog, but we can at least share one piece with you. Click here to listen to Exsultate Deo online. Here's to singing praise to God with our bodies, hearts and voices.

Pondering the Promise of Pentecost

by Judy Bevilacqua

I love spending time with my grandkids. We have great conversations about life, food, gross insects, dinosaur minutiae, bird identification, career possibilities and - even relationships. It’s fascinating to watch them slowly develop -- like little polaroids! But though they are unaware of this process, I am tracking their development into the future, like an archeologist in reverse!

Sometimes, there are things I would love to share with them. But they are not asking the questions. They are not ready. And frankly….neither am I. There are a lot of things I’m sure God might want to tell me, but He must also wait until I’m ready. My future is now a pretty short span, (I hardly need binoculars!) It’s not the vast frontier of my youth. But still that future is all fog and smoke, only a dim path. In my nearsightedness, I must wait for wise guides to lead me there. Last night before dropping to sleep, I read this quote from an “mid-life” woman, who suddenly became aware of all the elderly women around her in Paris: "It’s as if I’ve only now developed the rods and cones in my retina that allow me to see them” [Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor]. I know this feeling. Maybe it takes old age to see old age, or ill health to see ill health. (You could fill in the blanks to this formula….ad infinitum!) The truth is: there is a reality that has been there all along, but you can’t “see” it until a certain moment in your life…..until you’re ready.

There is something strangely comforting about this whole phenomenon. We can’t just know and understand at will. We can’t just read the best books, get the degree, text our friends for advice or check Wikipedia in our search for “answers.” We just can’t produce wisdom. Wisdom just doesn’t happen in isolation, or “out of context,” or without the road-time, shoe leather and deep investment. We have to need it, to be ready for it.

In nutritional science, research shows that extracting and isolating a vitamin or mineral from the whole food usually prevents it from being well utilized by the body. Often another enzyme or protein is needed to allow that intricate “process of absorption.” If this is true for my physical body, can I grasp that there are a complex of elements that must be present for real learning to take place in the rest of me? This is Wisdom: that “assimilation” is essential for wisdom. Not just for my grandkids! This patient osmosis is vital for my own spiritual growth as well. It gives new meaning to the quote: “when the pupil is ready, the teacher will come.”

Last week, our lectionary reading from John 16:12-15, came as….“a slow wind to work these words of love” around me! Jesus was talking to his disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."

“…but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” When we are ready…. when we need it and are asking and when our experience can support it. (God used the Montessori method long before we did!) Pentecost reminds us that the wise guide of the Spirit will give us the truth - as we are able to absorb and assimilate it.

Like my grandkids, I can’t receive all the information. I can’t bear all the truth. I’m not developmentally ready! But the Spirit knows how to guide me along and help prepare me for all that my future holds…..whether short or long. The Spirit, like that enzyme, is the catalyst that turns on the light…..

I close with a line from a song that’s been in my head this season of Pentecost:

“God only knows, when God makes His plan; the information’s not available to the mortal man” [“Slip sliding’ away.“ Paul Simon]. Ah, but it is available through the Spirit! This is the promise of Pentecost!