Jesus is Coming to Dinner

An unsuspecting Christian gets a phone call from Jesus who declares He is coming to dinner. That person rushes around the house preparing - the house must be spotless, and dinner must be a culinary masterpiece. This is Jesus, after all. Meanwhile, people keep showing up at the door with their pesky problems: a lost dog, a broken arm, a car accident, a house on fire. Don't these people realize that Jesus is coming to dinner? It's getting late, and Jesus has yet to show. The phone rings once more, and Jesus asks why he wasn't let in when came to the door - multiple times.

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'" ~ Matthew 25:37-39 (NIV)

Well, I've never gotten a phone call from Jesus. In my life, Jesus usually can't find his phone - or, that is, my neighbor Marilyn can't find her phone. Frequently for the second or third time that week. Marilyn usually shows up looking rather disheveled, and from the numbers of times I've been over at her house helping her find her phone, her house looks like her appearance times about 10. It's not entirely surprising that she continues to lose her phone - which is always on vibrate. So she stops by and asks my roommates and me to call her phone so that she can attempt to hear it ringing while she looks for it, and we pleasantly say that we're happy to help - it's the right thing to do.
But sometimes it's hard. When she stops by at 5am or 11pm, we don't always want to answer the door. When it's the 5th time in a day or 3rd time that week, we wonder why she doesn't just find a way to keep track of her phone for once. When we've been calling for 15 minutes straight or have reached 6 dozen phone calls in a day, all with no answer, we decide to give up. But gosh darn it, I remember that Jesus is coming to dinner, so I keep agreeing to help with a smile on my face and guilt on my brain - but no love in my heart.
I just started attending a new church after a year and a half without one. I knew I was longing for a community to worship with but wasn't sure about jumping in to a community to grow in faith with. The church is starting a congregation-wide Bible Study called "40 Days of Love," and the goal of church leadership is to get as many adults as possible to sign up for a small group. I've only gone there three weeks - jumping into a small group Bible Study felt like making a large commitment much too early. But after my summer choir wrapped its regular singing season, I began to realize how much I missed the support of a faith community, and I accepted that I needed to find myself a more consistent community of people with whom to grow in faith. But did I really want to join a Bible Study? Couldn't I just show up at a one-time event as I worked to discover if this was to be my long-term church home? And was this really the right Bible Study for me? I feel like I've got a decent grasp on what God's love looks like, what loving other people looks like, and I longed to learn something new and different for once.
"When we recognize God's unconditional love for us, we start cutting other people some slack." Ouch. The associate pastor's words fell on my ears with a sting on Sunday. I've generally considered myself a loving person - but I'm really bad at cutting people slack. I mean, if they're particularly important to me, I'm better. Or with my students, especially in the primary grades, I can generally handle it by reminding myself that they're little and still learning. But, more often than not, I could use a lesson in cutting people some slack.
"We want to be the church that's known for loving people. And, even more so, we want to be the church known for teaching people how to love." That's the whole point of these small groups - to get better at loving people the way Jesus does. To learn to live a life where we love not when it's deserved, not when it's convenient, but when it means sacrificing of ourselves to love the other person. And, it turns out, I still have some lessons to learn and practice to do in really loving like Jesus loves. So now I'm signed up for a 6-week small group study - 6 weeks is important because supposedly that's how long it takes to build a habit. So maybe after 6 weeks loving others will be less of a guilt-ridden decision and more of a habit where, through the Holy Spirit living in me, I see a bit more of the Jesus living in people around me. Because if Jesus is coming to dinner, I want to welcome Him in not because I should but because I'm thankful for a Savior who taught me how to love by first loving me.

God Works for Good

The summer after 7th grade I stood in the Green Lake Bible Camp chapel with dozens of other youth rapping (to the beat of "Ice, Ice Baby")

Stop - on your knees and listen
God calls us for a hip-hop mission
Jesus - grabs ahold of us tightly
His love flows daily and nightly
Will it ever stop, yo? Oh no.
God is good - and it shows
To the extreme we work his plan for a purpose
All for his love 'cuz it's totally worth it
God is good. Romans 8:28 (chick-a-pow-pow)
God is good. Romans 8:28 (chick-a-pow)

Because, you know, theme verses at camp are much more memorable when put to a Vanilla Ice rap... At the time, like most camp theme verses, I remembered it but didn't find much meaning in it. But in the last few years it's been my "when times get tough" verse (though I admittedly haven't always wanted to listen to it).

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose. ~ Romans 8:28 (NIV)

God works for good. I know that a common church phrase (especially for millenials like me who have regularly attended Sunday School or youth group) is "God is good - all the time. And all the time - God is good." Those phrases are certainly true and valuable - but God works for good - that's something different to think about.
I've said more than once in recent years that I believe that God has a plan but that humans - being their sinful, imperfect selves - have a habit of royally screwing up those plans. I mean, God created the world and put humans in paradise (the Garden of Eden), but then Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and now look at the world we live in... So I trust God - I just don't always trust other people. And in those times knowing that God Himself is good helps me feel hopeful for eternity but not for the rest of my human life on earth. But God works for the good of the people who love Him - people like me - means that God must be doing something to take my tangled mess of a life and make it better - it just didn't occur to me until recently how much better that could be.
It was late in the summer after my first year of teaching. My hopes that the long-term sub position I'd believed would mean a foot in the door at a school and in a district and community that I love had been demolished in ways that destroyed my self-confidence as a teacher and my ability to trust the people I worked with. Many interviews through the summer had come up fruitless. Then all of a sudden I had a job offer for a school my gut told me was a bad fit (no matter how much I loved the two teachers who were part of my interview). Panicked about finding a job in the few remaining weeks before the beginning of the school year, I ignored my gut and accepted the offer.
It wasn't long before I regretted my choice. The stress of that job aggravated my long-present but not-so-long-ago diagnosed anxiety disorder. At a time when I was trying to cling to Frozen telling me to "Let it Go," my boss and a number of my colleagues were putting me under a microscope and pointing out every detail that I had gotten wrong or that I had missed or that was wrong with me as a teacher or even as a person. It was like putting an ant under a magnifying glass in the sun - the longer I was scrutinized, the more I deteriorated. Three months into my second year at that school, I wound up taking a medical leave. I got some extra help and was feeling good about returning but realized through conversations with my employer about returning to work that the people who had torn me down once would do the same thing again in a matter of days. On the day that I was set to return to work, I woke up thinking how easy it would be to walk into my bathroom and down a bottle of pills, or to go jump off a higher floor of my building, just so that I wouldn't have to show up to work that day. I called in sick, my doctor rescinded her release for me to return to work, and I never did go back to teach at that school.
There's a lot of shame that goes with having to take a medical leave for 7 months to deal with your mental health. There's still a lot of stigma around mental health disorders. You're incompetent. You're crazy. You're weak. Your faith isn't strong enough or disciplined enough. It's not the kind of thing you share with people easily, even after knowing them for a while, even trusting them enough to share other deeply personal information with them. It's a dark, dirty secret you carry around - a burden difficult to carry but one that you risk making heavier by revealing it to others.
For all these reasons, I've often wished that the medical leave and its surrounding stressors hadn't happened. I've wished that I'd listened to my gut and never taken that job. Because without the toxic environment that aggravated my anxiety, I don't think it would have gotten so bad that it required a 7-month medical leave. Accepting that job offer was my life's greatest regret. But in recent months it dawned on me: all the experiences - and people - I wouldn't have in my life if I had walked away from that offer. Because God works for good.
You see, over the last couple of years I've developed this really awesome new faith family. I had a great one growing up, but as time went by, it drifted apart and I lost many of the faith supports I'd once had. I drifted through my early years of young adulthood with no real church home and few strong faith supports. Unsure of jumping into a faith community after the drama that had gone down at my childhood church home, I looked to at least find a place to worship by attending a nearby mega-church - only to be scared away when people managed to recognize me as a new visitor in the large crowd. It would take my extended medical leave and second treatment program to bring me back there. At my second treatment program, I set going to church as one of my weekend goals. As it turns out, sometimes social anxiety does useful things like force me to follow through on my goals because I fear the embarrassment of having to admit that I failed to meet them. So I got back to that church - a church I never would have considered had I not moved to that part of the Twin Cities Metro for the job that nearly destroyed me - and it was there that I found a home. It was there where my faith grew at a rate it hadn't in over a decade, where I learned to take God out of a safe little box and let Him be a God that is amazing and powerful in ways that I'll never fully understand. And it was there that He gifted me with a new faith family - some I even dubbed as my "church parents" and another as my "church grandma" (though I don't recall if I ever actually told them that...) I gained friends, mentors. What I didn't expect is that when God sent me (and others) out of that church home and into the rest of the world was that He would continue to grow my faith family. Because God works for good.
At the time that God called me to leave that church home, He called their young adult choir to do ministry beyond that church as well. I had seen them from afar, some even singing in the church's other adult choirs with me, but I'd always seen them as the "cool music kids" - and, let's be serious, attempting to fit into the "cool music kids" groups in high school and college didn't work out very well for me... I occasionally found myself in conversations with some of the members of this group, but I figured myself forgettable. Then as my time at that church home was coming to an end, I learned that multiple people thought that I should be given the opportunity to become part of that choir. I was pleasantly surprised. God works for good.
A few weeks later I had an audition, and I've never been more nervous for an audition in my life. I kid you not, auditions (and audience-filled call-backs) with Dr. Rene Clausen for the Concordia Concert Choir were significantly less scary to me than this one was (and, mind you, my Concordia auditions did always leave me a bundle of nerves). It was the hardest audition I've ever done - it was also the most fun and most satisfyingly challenging audition I've ever done. And all of a sudden I was, at least on paper, part of the "cool music kids" group. God works for good.
To be entirely honest, I spent most of my first summer in the group convinced that I wasn't good enough. Most rehearsals were preceded by panic attacks that sometimes kept me home for the evening instead. I struggled to find my fit in a group of people who had known each other for years, and the only way I figured I'd find my place was to prove myself musically - a task at which I continually felt I failed. After a frustrating personal performance during our last rehearsal before that summer's concert, I expressed my embarrassment via Facebook status. In the days that followed I received a voicemail making sure I wasn't too stressed out and wanting to encourage me that I was actually doing really well. I keep it on my phone now over a year later as a reminder that 1) I'm probably doing things better than I think I am, and 2) I have people in my life who do things like leave me a voicemail to encourage me and make sure I'm doing okay - and I super need those types of people in my life. God works for good.
After my second year in the group, I finally feel like I fit in. I feel more confident and valuable musically. I've mostly been able to let go of the feeling that I need to prove myself (though having a solo and directing a small group have seriously challenged my ability to let go of that feeling). I've missed zero rehearsals due to panic attacks. When paired/grouped with some of the choir's strongest singers I'm no longer intimidated but excited. I often find myself chatting after rehearsal rather than awkwardly standing around then ducking out - even some school nights I'd rather hang out and chat than head for home so that I can go to bed (even with my 30+ minute drive to get home). I've discovered which people I shouldn't be allowed to sing with or sit by because we do things like chat too much or have nonstop giggle fits. On  a weekly basis (and sometimes more often because Facebook) I'm challenged in the way that I live my faith - these people hold me accountable in ways I don't even know if they realize they are. When I hit a pretty dark mental health stretch early this summer (that I never really fully expressed to anyone), it was rehearsals with this group that pulled me out. To top it all off, I recently discovered that at least one of them, a person that I hold in particularly high respect, is more like me than I ever imagined. God works for good.
And in these reflections I find the biggest paradox of my life: Without the toxic job that nearly destroyed me, I would not have this amazing faith family. I've somehow found myself surrounded by these people who I can trust to challenge me and hold me accountable while still offering unconditional love and support. A group where it's safe to let go of that persistent feeling that I have to prove my worth (I promise, I'm working on it!). A group of "cool music kids" who actually wants me to be a fully-included member. And without that awful job, I wouldn't have this family. Out of the worst experience of my life comes one of the best. Because God works for good.
I find myself in awe at this paradigm shift - that I can no longer allow myself to regret what I've long considered my life's greatest regret. Not because my career has gotten to a better place - I'm on my fourth job since that medical leave and my new position this year is less than half time. It's not that I've gotten my mental health completely under control - because the first half of this calendar year was pretty dark on the mental health front. It was not the challenges that changed me and my life for the better. It was being in that location at that time, in spite of the challenges brought on by that place and that time, to meet a particular group of people that have changed my life - changed me - for the better. God works for good.
And as I stand in awe at how God took the ugliest part of my life and through it gave me a gift more beautiful than I'd ever imagined, I realize that I shouldn't be so surprised. This, of course, is the same God who took His son's ugly death on a cross and turned it into eternal salvation for a sinful world - and what is more beautiful than that? Because in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.