Liminality

Christmas is the moment when Jesus breaks through the barriers of sin, doubt, hurt, and guilt to declare with his presence – that God is and forever will be among us. I John says that everyone who loves experiences this Jesus, for Jesus is God and God is love. Every child, murderer, school teacher, convict, secretary, homeless person, drug addict, homosexual, left-handed, left-minded, liberal democrat as well as every right-handed, right-leaning, republican experiences Jesus Christ. Every choir member, single mother with three kids, divorced father who looses parental custody, and widower experiences the birth child. Every Muslim, politician, social worker, farmer, businessman, Israeli, stock broker, hair dresser, and Palestinian experiences God’s surrendered love. Christmas is all about the incarnation of Jesus. It’s about heaven breaking in to earth and never leaving, the inauguration of the kingdom, and our lives being redeemed. It’s about love. Each of...

When I was in Ecuador there was limited electricity where we were. It gets so dark there that you literally can’t see your hand in front of your face. There aren’t houses that cast lights from windows, or street lamps on the corners of the road. There is just blackness. So I carried a head lamp to go walk about after dark. That light was a light that outshined the darkness. It laid a path for me to tread. I loved that headlamp. But it only shined about fifteen feet. So I had no clue what lied beyond me at sixteen feet. I learned quite quickly, even with a light, the darkness is a scary place. When we find ours elves in dark nights – nights of the soul and nights in life – the light of God helps, but our minds still hold the capacity to convince us that we still are not safe. Think about it, when a person loses a loved one to cancer, a car wreck, gang related violence – holding on to the light is good but it doesn't speak to the situation at hand. Darknes...

Human perception embraces ideas about reality. The key word here is idea. People see a water bottle and then construct a reality about the essence of what the water bottle should be. The problem, however, is that people’s perception is not always correct. To illustrate this point, Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story of a man who crashes and almost sinks his boat by being run into by another boat. The man becomes furious at the other driver until he realizes there is no one in the other boat. The man then stops being angry and laughs at his misfortune. This story illustrates humanity’s inevitability to misperceive reality. Misperception garners hatred and severs peaceful relationships. It is what leads humans to hating one another instead of being peace to one another. Misperception is a serious reason for violence. It qualifies misunderstanding which creates room for anger – and anger is the doorpost that leads to violence. The answer f...

In John 20 Thomas is blinded by his search for communion. He needs wholeness. He needs care. He needs to know what he is supposed to live for now – since Jesus abandoned him. And in the midst of this ontological anxiety, Thomas meets the resurrected Jesus who breathes the breath of the Holy Spirit on him and says, “Peace be with you.” I believe it is in the midst of our crises God meets us in this same way. God’s presence in our lives is a holy moment, a thin space of divinity, where we feel God reconnecting, reuniting, and re-communing with us. It’s where the Holy Spirit is saying to us, “Peace – be still.” So if you feel alone, please know that God is trying to re-commune with you. But I know our fear of abandonment and rejection is so intense that our search for communion is often replaced by a longing for concrete expressions of friendship or affection. We want deep communion, but we end up looking for invitations, letters, phone calls, gifts, and worldly gest...