Field Notes On The Jesus Way

When I became the pastor of the church I currently serve, there was not much to do. Not a lot of demands on my time. I would go to the office, return the calls, make some plans, meet with anyone who wanted to meet with me, write my sermons, and still have quite a bit of daylight left in the day. Our mountain home sits at 8,700 feet above sea level about seven miles from town. Our property borders 1,200 acres of public land. A rancher leases the grazing rights of the land for a month out of the summer and hunters trek across it in the fall, but other than that no one ever walks the woods, creek bottom, and open mountain meadows.

One day, when I first moved here, I was sitting in my study at church reading a book on a Monday. My administrative assistant was part-time, so no one was there. The phone wasn’t ringing. All the tasks for the day had been done and it was 1:00 in the afternoon. I was fidgeting in my chair as I read my book on prayer. I glanced out my office window and glimpsed Mt. Princeton silhouetted against a deep blue Colorado sky. I turned the page of my book but kept looking out the window towards my house sitting at the base of that mountain.

A thought crept into my mind that I might go home and sit on my deck with my book. So, I went home. As I got out of my Jeep and began to walk up the steps to my home, I felt a twinge of guilt sweep over me. I felt like I was doing something wrong. I felt as if I should be at the church doing church stuff. Or at least be there if a lost pagan dropped by needing to know how to become a Christian. (Like that never ever happens) The guilt was strong. It was the same feeling I had when I ditched class when I was in High School. I knew that feeling well. I almost got in my Jeep and went back to town; but then an inner feeling or thought came to me as I walked up the steps, “Joe, who you are becoming is more important than what you do. Let’s go for a walk together.”

I went into the house, put my boots on, grabbed a hat, leashed my dog, and we went for a long walk with the Lord. As I wandered the woods and creek bottom, I talked with the Lord about problems I was wrestling with, people I was concerned about, theology I wasn’t sure about, and marveled at the beauty of the Colorado mountains. I stopped and pulled the stem from an Indian Paintbrush and sucked the sweet nectar from its bloom. I ran my hand along the rough crumbling lichen on a boulder, I breathed deep the vanilla aroma from the bark of a ponderosa pine.

As I took in the glory of what the ancient church fathers called the second book of God, I remembered a verse from the prophet Isaiah,

“For you shall go out with joy,
And be led out with peace;
The mountains and the hills
Shall break forth into singing before you,
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (55:12)

The presence of the Lord was palpable for me that afternoon. I was surrounded by his smile with every wildflower, prickly pear, poignant sage, and tawny antelope speeding away from my approach. I realized I had been walking and praying for two hours.

One of the main postures of a pastor is prayer. I found a way to waste time with God. I found a way to not be productive with God. I found a way to experience God.

My friend David Hansen wrote a book called Long Wandering Prayer about this practice that I experienced hundreds of Mondays ago.

Long wandering prayer happens on the inside like it happens on the outside. It is mental wandering in the presence of God, corresponding to physical wandering in the presence of God. Long wandering prayer involves leaving our normal environment for the express purpose of spending many hours alone with God. It involves walking, or at least moving, and stopping whenever we want, to consider a lily for as long as we desire. Long wandering prayer uses the fact that our minds wander as an advantage to prayer rather than a disadvantage. In long wandering prayer we recognize that what we want to pray about may not be what God wants us to pray about. Our obsessive drive to control our minds in the presence of God, that is, to pray about one thing or stick to one list, maybe a form of hiding from God. In this kind of prayer, we recognize the wandering mind as a precious resource for complex and startling dialogue with God.

Sometimes we might question if we are doing prayer correctly. There is no wrong way to pray. Find your way to be in the presence of God and let him sort it. Pray, as Eugene Peterson has said, the way we can instead of trying to pray the way we can’t.

I love the story of the Sunday School teacher trying to explain to a little girl how Enoch of the Old Testament went to heaven. The teacher reminded the little girl what Genesis 5:24 said:

“And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”

The little girl asked, “How could Enoch go to heaven if he did not die?” The teacher explained it this way: Well maybe one day, while on one of their long walks, God put His arm around Enoch and said, ‘Enoch, we’ve walked a long way together. It’s closer to my house than it is to yours so why don’t you just come on home with Me.’”

If I don’t come home one day, perhaps now you know why.

But if we are willing, the experience of grief can deepen and widen our ability to participate in life. We can become more grateful for the gifts we have been given, more open-handed in our handling of the events of life, more sensitive to the whole mysterious process of life, and more trusting in our adventure with God. —”Tracks of a Fellow Struggler” by John R. Claypool

The use of Vicodin, the most popular pain relief drug in the country, has grown dramatically from 112 million doses prescribed in 2006, to 131 million in the U.S. today.

Pain and sorrow, however, are the friends that no one wants. They are companions for our journey toward God and others. For it is only in embracing the sorrow that comes to us in this life that we can expand our capacity to experience joy and sit authentically with others who are suffering.

When we have done the hard work of lingering in our pain, the lines of sorrow are etched on our souls in such a way that others who are suffering will recognize where we have been and will allow us to come close.

Or as C.S. Lewis said,

Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”

For some weeks now I have been carrying in my soul a low-grade fever of sorrow. I have reflected on it and have tried to trace its source. I’ve had some health issues that have been concerning. I have heard countless stories of pain and suffering from the ministry leaders I do soul care with. I have church members who are suffering from cancer. I have friends who are struggling to keep their families together. The grief of my mother dying last fall is following me like a shadow.

All of this, and more that I won’t share here, are piling on and driving me down into the basement of my soul of sorrow.

A report documenting the systematic stonewalling and coverup of sexual abuse within my denomination just came out and turned my stomach. I felt shame on top of sorrow. That is a toxic brew.

Then an entire fourth-grade class in Uvalde, Texas, and their teacher were murdered with an AR-15 by an eighteen-year-old kid. The toxic brew is boiling now. I feel revulsion, despair, and rage. I want to overturn some money tables. I want to make a whip and drive out some animals. I want to let my hair grow and put my hands on two columns and push a building down. I want to cut off Malchus’ ear. I want to scream into the universe.

This morning I arose before the sun and opened my bible to my reading plan that took me to the Psalms. There in the longest chapter of the Bible, I found an old familiar verse that shimmered and shined to me:

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

As I reflected on that verse I didn’t think of “word” as the Bible. I imagined “word” as Jesus, as described in the first verses of John’s Gospel.

Jesus is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

Something about that slight adjustment in my thinking caused me to see an ember of smoldering wick far in the distance. I sat still and meditated on that small, pulsing glow. It was as if I was sitting in a dark cave and, if I squinted my eyes, I could make out a faint glow of hope.

That’s when it felt like I was no longer alone in my sorrow. I had a companion. I had a paraclete, and I felt some consolation.

Robert Browning Hamilton reminds us,

What I learn from this sorrow is that I am not alone. There is one with me that is acquainted with my condition and darkness cannot overwhelm him. So, I sit with him in my sorrow and weep with those who weep.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. – Jesus

Won’t you come sit with us?

And he said to her, “Daughter… “      Mark 5:34

Forrest Gump is the life story of a mentally challenged man (Tom Hanks), who accomplishes the incredible with his simple reasoning and persistence.

In one scene, Forrest and his childhood friend Jenny are walking down an old gravel road shaded by hardwood trees. Jenny carries her sandals, and the walk seems pleasant until they happen upon an abandoned, weather-worn house. The sight is horrifying to Jenny. It is her childhood home, a place where Jenny had been abused by her alcoholic father.

Forrest sees the pain etched on Jenny’s face as she walks ahead of him toward the old, abandoned house. Suddenly, Jenny throws her shoes at the house and then begins picking up rocks and furiously throwing them against the house. Years of pent-up anger are unleashed. When nothing is left to throw at the house, Jenny falls to the ground crying. Forrest sits down in the muddy driveway beside her, and says, “Sometimes, I guess, there just aren’t enough rocks.”

I know people who would like to throw a few rocks. Maybe at the house that they grew up in, maybe at cancer. Maybe a rock at dissolving relationships that no one knows about. Maybe a rock at depression. Maybe a rock at the pain that can’t even be named. 

I imagine the woman in this story would like to have thrown a rock or two.

In Jesus’ day, there was no condition more debilitating and humiliating than this hemorrhage from which she suffered. It was some sort of chronic menstrual disorder. It affected her in many ways. It affected her marriage. She couldn’t sleep with her own husband. She couldn’t bear children. Also, ceremonially everything she touched was unclean. She couldn’t prepare meals, wash a dish, and she couldn’t wash clothes.

She must have experienced chronic fatigue. Always weak and tired. She couldn’t go into the Temple and worship. She went to many doctors and found no relief—finances dwindling to nothing. And instead of getting better, she was getting worse.

In the end, all she had was hope and a prayer.

And then, at the ripe old age of 30, Jesus calls her “daughter.”

I wonder how long it had been since any term of endearment had been spoken to her. How long had it been since she had someone speak low to her? We know she had not shared her bed with her husband for 12 years. And yet here the God of the Universe calls her “daughter.”

There is a promise in the last book of the Bible that Jesus gave to his followers. He says, “I will…give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”

What name would you long to be called? If you could pick your own term of endearment, what would it be?

You might be surprised what the name is and you might be shocked at whose voice Jesus uses to tell you your new name.

Recently, a pastor from another state sent me an email containing what he said he would say about me at my funeral.

I know it is weird, but I’d like to share with you what he sent me.

I had never given much thought to caring for my soul…. Until my soul was already in trouble. That is when, in the Lord’s merciful providence, I met Joe. We met at a denominational meeting several years back. Going into that meeting, I was hurting. Our family was grieving the tragic loss of my son’s best friend…. My wife had been diagnosed with a life-threatening health condition (in fact, as Joe and I were meeting, she was in the hotel room, so sick from her latest round of chemo that she could barely move). Going into that meeting, I had no idea what Soul Care was…. I just knew I was hurting, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

In our first meeting…My pain and my problems were met with a listening ear and genuine concern. At times, I tried to talk, and the words wouldn’t come out. I cried some. He listened. He shared a poem with me (typical Joe, right?) But the thing that really stuck with me….

As we were finishing up, Joe wanted to pray for me…. But it wasn’t the prayer that stuck with me…. As he began to pray, he paused for just a moment….. a brief silence with a deep exhale…. And in the pause before the prayer…. I felt rest.  I felt comfort. I felt renewed hope. I don’t remember the prayer…. But I remember the pause. In the pause, my soul rested, was refilled, and the joy of the Lord was restored.

Joe was the pastor of the pause.

I’ve been a preacher since 1978 and I’ve taken great pride in having the right words for the right moment. I’ve written a book—words matter to me. Words are the medium that I use to paint pictures and convey faith, hope, and love—or so I thought. But to be called “The Pastor of the Pause” really touched my soul. In other words, God spoke to this brother through what I didn’t say. One of the best things ever said to me: The Pastor of the Pause.

What name would you love to hear from your Lord?

The healing in this woman’s body paled in comparison to the wholeness that came to her soul as Jesus in a soft, low, and tender voice called her daughter. 

If you are very quiet—paused—you might just hear Him, call your name.

Then maybe you can drop your rocks.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.   Matthew 28:16

 “The number ‘eleven’ limps; it is not perfect like twelve. […] The church that Jesus sends into the world is ‘elevenish,’ imperfect, fallible.” – Dale Bruner

In the Bible when God calls somebody to do something, as far as I know, nobody ever responds by saying, “I’m ready! Good timing! You came to me at just the right moment when my tank is all filled up, and I’m adequately prepared.” The truth about you is you’ll always have a reason to say, “Not ready,” because for us, ready is to be so completely self-sufficient that success is guaranteed.

But in God’s kingdom, the issue of feeling ready is not the primary indicator of being ready.

I became a pastor at the age of 26. The little country church that asked me to be their pastor was very longsuffering and kind.

As a young man, I had concentrated all my energies on being a good preacher. I wrote sermon after sermon; even when I did not have a church. When I went to that little Baptist church in Oklahoma, I had six months’ worth of sermons. Back in those days, we preached Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. But I had all those sermons. I was ready. Or so I thought.

I desperately wanted to be a good pastor and yet I knew I was not ready to care for anyone’s soul. Not really. I was out of my depth. But I always had my dad, who was a pastor.

I had asked him how to do business meetings. (Robert’s Rules of Order)

I asked him where to stand after you preach a funeral. (At the open end of the casket)

What do I say at the baptism? I remember he said, “Put your right hand in the middle of their back, raise your left hand and say, ‘Upon your profession of faith and in obedience to the commands of our Lord and Savior, I baptize you my brother or sister in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ Then bend your knees, lower them down, and help them out.”

There’s no possible way I would remember that, so I wrote it down on a yellow post-it pad and stuck it to the glass in the baptistry. That way I could cheat if I needed to. The steam from the warm water caused the adhesion to release and the post-it was floating in the water.

I kept glancing at the bobbing post-it pad but couldn’t get a read on the words.

“Upon this rock…”no that’s not right.

“I feel it is important to be obedient….no, well, yes, it is important, but…”

“I’m going to baptize you now with our knees bent in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spicket.”

It was horrible and harmless at the same time.

But there was one thing that scared the living daylights out of me: what do I do if someone comes to me for pastoral counseling? I can read commentaries, listen to other sermons, and preach louder if I am unsure about my preaching. But what do I do when someone comes to my study with a spiritual problem? What do I say without the props of my sermon notes? I hadn’t finished college and had never gone to seminary.

Other than Baptist business meetings, nothing scared me more than pastoral counseling. I knew I could pretend to sound like I knew what I was talking about in a sermon, but they would find out early on what I did not know when they came to ask for counsel in my study. I felt so inadequate for that responsibility. I dreaded that day.

I was elevenish. I doubted.

I was a towering bowl of Jell-O.

One day someone called me to see if I would counsel them. I waited until after ten o’clock to make a long-distance call to my dad. (It was cheaper after ten o’clock, remember?)

“Dad, I have my first pastoral counseling appointment tomorrow. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. What if they ask me a question I can’t answer?”

Long pause on the phone.

Then my dad said, “Lean forward, pay attention, and rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. You will never get in trouble for what you don’t say.”

The next day Chuck Smith came to see me and that’s what I did; palms sweating, knees knocking, I leaned forward and listened. The whole time he spoke, I just listened and prayed silently:

“Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.”

After about 45 minutes, Chuck had run out of things to say and stopped. I took a deep breath and asked him if I could pray for him. He said, “Yes.” I didn’t even know what to pray, so I let about two minutes of silence pass between us and then prayed.

When I said, “Amen” I looked up and he had the most serene look on his face.

He said, “Thank you, pastor. You really helped me.”

God had spoken in my silence (weakness) in ways he had never spoken in my sermons (strength).

And so, my friend, may you put your “yes” on the table and move into the task put before you no matter how incomplete and inadequate you might feel, and remember the issue of feeling ready is not the primary indicator of being ready.

So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—
the King of Israel!”

Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written:

“Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.
Look, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey’s colt!” John 12:13-15

The word “blessedness” and “shalom” are the same basic words. Shalom means complete thriving and flourishing. That is what the people were aching for on the first Palm Sunday. They were longing for everything to be made right. When they waved the palm branches, they were looking forward to the day in which the palm trees wave their own branches.

When I go for my walks in the woods beside my house at the base of Mt. Princeton and the breeze moves the pine boughs in sighs of wonder and contentment, I am reminded of that verse in Isaiah that says, And all the trees of the field shall chap their hands.

And that is a constant promise to me of the coming King of Kings.

When the true king comes back and puts everything right, everything in nature will work again. There will be complete harmony and complete peace. It’s the end of death, disintegration, and decay; it’s the end of sickness—the end of the war in Ukraine. It’s the end of everything that’s wrong with the material world. Someday the trees themselves will literally dance and sing.

What’s the significance of the donkey colt?

One of the things that everybody who knows anything about beasts of burden is that you can’t just jump on one of them and expect to ride it. They have to be broken. The colt was too young to be broke. That means it submitted to the Lordship of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t have to break the animal. He’s Lord of nature; he’s the Lord of all and under his hand, nothing but harmony and peace comes about. The donkey knows and loves its true master for who he is.

This is a foreshadowing then of the complete healing of all nature under the future kingship of Christ.

Can I remind you that Jesus is your King? He’s the one you seek. He’s invincible. He’s a lion heart, and he will give you a lion heart. You don’t have to try to be strong on your own. In fact, you don’t have to be strong at all. That’s not your job. Our job is to walk so close to Jesus that his courage becomes our courage. We don’t have to do anything except love this good earth and cooperate with him to make His prayer come true…

Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

The renowned author, journalist, and Christian apologist GK Chesterton was the inspired mind behind a short poem that puts a new spin on Palm Sunday. Titled simply The Donkey, it narrates, in the voice of the colt.

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born;

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

I imagine this little donkey got up on the Monday following the Triumphant Entry on Palm Sunday and said, “Boy, this is going to be a great day.” He walked into the marketplace and said to everybody, “Here I am,” and nobody looked at him.

So, then he walked on down a little bit further and came right into the local religious gathering place, and he said, “Here I am.”

Everybody said, “What are you doing here? Get that donkey out of here!”

And they threw things at him and they pushed him away. He came on back to his mother and he said, “I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Just yesterday everybody …”

And she said, “Silly child, without him you can do nothing.”

You see, it depends on who’s riding you. It depends on who your king is. It depends on what’s driving your life. It depends on what you’re living for. Great kingliness will come into your life if you make him the King.

On the first Palm Sunday, he came meek and lowly, riding on the foal of a donkey. The next time he comes back he’ll be riding on a cloud. The first time he came to be torn; the next time he will come to tear apart all evil.

And that gives me hope on this Palm Monday 2022.

“What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”  A.W. Tozer

I grew up in a faith tradition that emphasized original sin. Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature in need of regeneration and a proclivity to sinful conduct. One of the most famous sermons in the history of our faith in America came from Jonathan Edwards called, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It’s not a happy sermon.

One of the most popular hymns for centuries was written by Isaac Watts entitled, Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed. The very first verse describes how Isaac saw humanity.

Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sov’reign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

I am a worm because I do wormy things. For many years—many—I up of myself as a recovering sinner. I have committed sins both large and small and that made me a sinner. My first thought when I considered the truth of who I am was a variation of the recovery saying found in Alcoholics Anonymous that said, “I am a recovering alcoholic.” I would think of myself as a “recovering sinner.” The recovery group encourages that self-identifier to remind the addict that they are one drink away from a relapse that can destroy their lives.

Is the most important truth about me the fact that I am a worm? Is being a sinner the first and most important truth about me? I have grown to believe that it is not.

I love what poet and writer the late Macrina Wiederkeher prayed in her book Season of Your Heart,

O God

help me to believe

the truth about myself–

no matter how beautiful it is!  

The truth is that I am a beloved son of the Most High God. When I entered a covenant relationship with Jesus at the age of seven years old, I was placed in Christ. The Apostle Paul uses that phrase some one hundred and fifty times to describe my position before God now that I have this faith-based covenant relationship with Jesus. I am in Christ. That is good news for a wormy guy like me.

Sometimes I hear celebrities asked if they have any regrets in their lives. Most, if not all, say, “I have no regrets in my life. If given an opportunity to live life again, I’d live it the exact same way.” What a stupid and banal thing to say. As a wormy guy, I have to tell you I have many regrets. Many.

But here is what I have come to believe to the core of my being. I now believe that my years of living in repentance have eclipsed my regrets. I’ve come to accept the reality of my life with joy because there is something truer about me than my worminess—I am the beloved of God.

My brother is the poet—not me—but I wrote this little piece a few days ago and it speaks to what I am trying to say…

Don’t you hope that is the truth about you, too? I posted the little poem on social media the other day and a man I have never met replied as follows:

I can’t describe to you how this blesses me. I am struggling so hard in this season. I’m almost 65 and I’ve never felt more unlike a son of God. I’m going to meditate on this some more and hopefully it sinks in deep!

Maybe that is you as well.

The Psalmist did not lie when he said,

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. (Psalm 139:14)

Perhaps the Lord is saying this to you as much as to me today,

The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders. (Deut. 33:12)

We are not worms, you and me. We are the beloved of God.

I’ll tell you what comes into my mind when I think about God. He says, “Joe before you were a sinner, you were a son.”

They pushed the herd in the rising angles of the morning light, talked about their horses and about their favorite television shows. They yipped and called at the straggling steers and from time to time an older cowboy would ride back to see how they were doing.

As the morning brightened and warmed into the afternoon the sun slid down the sky and turned to block their vision, they saw they had pushed the herd through a gate in a fence. The herd fanned out into the pasture. On the near side of the gate, the flanking cowboys waved and called to the herd. On the far side, the old man sat his horse. He sat there as stone with only gray-blue smoke leaking from lips that were pinched tightly around his pipe.

“How many you lose?” the old man barked.

“What?” the boy yelled, but he knew what was asked.

“I said, ‘How many did you leave behind?’”

“I don’t think we left any” the boy said glancing at the kid.

“Doubt that. Looks to me you boys been talkin’ like a couple of school girls. Been watching you for the last three miles. You sure as hell had better not left one. I guess you better ride back down that road and see. I’ll come down and get you in the morning. I don’t want you pulling that trailer up this road in the dark.”

The old man reined his horse towards the cabin and said over his shoulder to the other cowboys, “Come on, men.  Let’s put the horses up and get us some supper.”

The men moved in rank behind the old man and followed him to the cabin the way the steers had followed him up the road. The two boys watched them leave.

“Did he really mean we have to ride back down the road?” the kid asked.

“Yup.”

“What are we supposed to do for supper?”

“Don’t’ know. Maybe we can find something in one of the trucks down the road.”

“That’s fifteen miles away!” the kid said. “I already got sores on my ass. That old man’s a bastard.”

“I know.”

They turned their horses around and went back down the road in silence. The boy could see the shadow of the kid’s hat, shaking back and forth as if still puzzling at the injustice of the old man.

“What if we find a couple of steers?”

“That’ll be bad. He’ll blow a head gasket.”

“Wull, let’s don’t find any.”

“But they’re your cattle.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. Is he always so mean?”

They made their way down the road listening for the bawling of a stray steer.  They talked little. Whether from fatigue or from lack of common experiences or the weight of the day and the rejection of community that would have been enjoyed with the others in the warmth of the cabin, they didn’t know.

“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” ~~Vince Lombardi

The entrance to the Marble Caves stands at 12,000 feet above sea level. Local legend has it that Spanish Conquistadors used the passages to secrete gold from one valley to the next.  Having been in the caves I highly doubt that. It is more than a little difficult just to get yourself through the tight passages much less with a payload.

The caves were discovered in the 1880s and the man who found them described them in 1888 as follows:

…entrance to the cave is by a crevice in the rock, extending some 400 feet; upon entering one must crawl a distance of 25 feet; then, the investigator can walk in a stooping posture for 25 feet; next, a narrow passage is encountered through which only a person of small stature can pass; and finally a low passage is reached through which one gains entry to the King’s Chamber.

Please note the phrase that says only a person of small stature can pass. That has never described me. I stand six foot four and well over two hundred and fifty pounds. I knew it would be a challenge to take my sons into these caves at my age. I have been in the caves half a dozen times, but the last time was about twenty years before. I was not the same man physically. I was fifty-four and less active than I once was.

The approach was difficult due to living at sea level all year, sitting at a desk most of the time. The temperatures even at altitude were in the eighty’s and I was struggling to stay hydrated. My two sons made it with ease.

At the mouth of the cave, we pulled on our wool gloves, hats, headlamps, and nylon wind pants to enter.  I went first. Why?  Because I knew the way and being the largest by far…but mostly because I am the Dad. I am strong that way. I am dominant that way.

We army-crawled through marmot scat and bat guano for several yards with grunts and huffs. My breathing was heavy. I could hear the guys behind me making guttural noises as they squeezed through tight places like human toothpaste.  At one point Caleb said to me breathlessly, “Dad, I am pretty impressed that you are making it through these tight places that are squeezing the life out of me.”  That made me feel good; then Clint muttered something about the malleability of fat.

At several points in the crawl and contortions, muscles began to cramp at the most inopportune time.  I rued the lack of water I had deprived myself of on our approach. Muscle cramps are not a good problem to have in caves.

We pushed and pulled and stretched and stooped and inched our way onward towards the White Marble Hall or as the 1888 article called it The King’s Chamber. I began to notice my arms getting weaker and back muscles cramping. At one point as we stopped so that I could catch my breath, we decided that we had done the equivalent of over a hundred pushups. My arms were quivering. I had not done any upper body work in years.  I am as soft as biscuit dough.

We crawled on in the cold when about three hundred feet in I sat to rest, I felt my heart racing faster than normal. I looked ahead and saw tighter and tighter passages. I felt my legs and back cramping and my arms quivering. I couldn’t catch my breath. I can only describe it as panic. In a nano-second, I flashed on all my possible rescue scenarios and quickly concluded that no one could rescue me if I couldn’t get out. No matter the injury, illness, or hyperthermia the only person who could get me out was me. Could I wait for the guys to finish and crawl out with them?  The heaving in my chest said no.  Fear was creeping up on me. It started in my toes and rose up through my body and settled like a bully on my chest.

I said aloud, “I need to pray.”

The guys got quiet.

Instinctively I began to pray “The Lord is my shepherd…”

I breathed deep and slow and prayed some more.  The bully was pounding on my chest.

It is hard to look weak in front of your sons.  I was grateful for the darkness so they couldn’t see my flushed and embarrassed face.  Finally fear eclipsed shame and I said, “I have to get out.  You guys can come with me or go on to the White Halls.”  They both agreed to go on.  I started snaking my way out.

“I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”

In five short minutes of crawling, I stopped to listen for their grunts and moans. Silence. They were gone.  I was alone.  The bully started on me again and I crawled on. Then I began to imagine all that could go wrong for them. That I would be out and safe and they would die in the cave. They had never done anything like this before.

The bully was kicking my big butt all the way out of the cave.  Finally, I said to myself (or God said to me…I couldn’t tell which was due to the bully,) but these words came to my mind, “Trust your sons. They are men.”

Surprisingly I got out a lot faster than it took to get in.  Adrenalin is my favorite drug.  The light blinded me and I blinked my eyes several times to adjust to the brightness.  I was chilled so I sat in the warm sun and I fell asleep waiting for my sons to come out.

An hour later they came crawling and squinting out of the mouth of the cave.  They have some cool stories to tell about their adventures in the White Halls.

Clinton described shimmying up slick, narrow walls like you would climb up the inside of a chimney.  At one point he got scared and he kept saying over and over to himself, “I can do this.  I can do this.”

When he told me that story I said, “We both got a little scared in the caves, didn’t we?”  He said, “Yeah.”

Then I said, “And we both prayed when we were scared.”

He just stared at me.

As I have reflected on the experience in the cave with the bully of fear and my plea for Jesus to help me and began to think maybe I didn’t have enough faith to overcome the bully, I started to crash and question the sincerity of my faith. And then on the trail a couple of days later I was pouting over the cave incident and it was as if Jesus said to me, “Hey Joe, did it ever occur to you that I did speak to you in the cave?”

How so, Lord?

Who do you think said to you, “Get out!”?

Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,

But the night shines as the day;

The darkness and the light are both alike to You. Psalm 139:12

There are some caves in Colorado called Marble Caves that I have explored several times. If you turn off your headlamps it is blacker than the darkest midnight. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. You can’t tell directions. You can’t see forward, so you don’t know where you are going. You have no direction. You can’t even see yourself; you don’t know what you look like. You may as well have no identity. And you can’t tell whether there is anyone around you, friend or foe.

There is a place in the life of everyone who follows the Man from Galilee that is dark and desolate. A place of confusion. A place of unanswered prayers. A place of sorrow and despair. It goes by many names: a crisis of belief, spiritual depression, desolation, wilderness wanderings, the wall, and dark night of the soul.

It can be a place of catastrophic destruction due to a self-inflicted wound like a moral failure. Or you are the victim of someone else’s selfish and sinful choice. It can be a health scare. It can be a hidden addiction that has wormed its way to the surface of your life and no longer stays hidden. It can be a professional or relational failure. It can be a growing disillusionment that the life you have built is not fulfilling the deepest longings of your soul.

Sometimes, however, through no fault of your own, life just kicks you in the teeth and darkness becomes your boon companion.

There was a time in my life when I was so bereft of hope that I lived in constant despair. It was during that midnight at high noon that I found a couple of rays of hope that I want to tell you about.

In my late thirties and early forties, I ran marathons. That meant that I spent a lot of time on long runs— double-digit runs. This was before smartphones, iPods, and other audio devices so I ran with a Sony Walkman. It played cassette tapes. (remember those?)

When my heart was burdened with sorrow, which was a lot in those days, I would put a ninety-minute mixed tape in my Walkman, clip it to my waist and run for miles. You would think that I would have on that tape songs like, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” or other positive and upbeat pop songs. Something that would pull my spirits up to a more joyful place. But that is not what I put on my mixed tape. I filled the tape up with sad songs. Songs of lament. Songs of woe. Songs written in a minor key.

There was one song that was on the tape twice—once on each side. It was a song by a Christian band that was popular in the nineties named Delirious. The song was called “Find Me In the River.” Here is the portion that wrecked me:

Find me in the river
Find me there
Find me on my knees with my soul laid bare
Even though You’re gone and I’m cracked and dry
Find me in the river, I’m waiting here for you

Come find me

When that song came through my earbuds, every footfall was like a hammer driving a nail deeper in my heart. I was lost. I couldn’t see. I felt abandoned. And yet that song, and the others on that tape, made me feel seen and heard. It felt like the person who wrote that song, knew how I felt. There was someone in the darkness with me.

Another time music played a part in the lifting of the dark shadow was when Lynette and I were in counseling and our therapist took me by surprise one day by saying, “Joe, when I was a church yesterday, I was praying for you and in our worship, while we were singing a George Herbert hymn, there was a couple of lines in that old song that I believe was meant for you.”

I gulped.

My therapist was highly intellectual, so this was a rare sighting from the Holy Spirit. I couldn’t believe he was thinking and praying for me in church. Dare I believe God spoke to him about me?

I swallowed and asked, “What did you hear?”

He read from notes he had taken on his church bulletin:

Teach me, my God and King,
in all things Thee to see,
and what I do in anything,
to do it as for Thee.

I must have had a blank look on my face because the words didn’t seem to say anything about my condition and my heartache. Then he said something that gave a shaft of hope, ever so thin, that kept me moving forward in my walk with Jesus.

He said, “God is not finished with you in ministry, Joe. He has much for you to do. I am not certain what that ministry will look like, but God isn’t finished using you.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I looked at Lynette and she didn’t know what to make of what he was saying either. We talked about them on the drive home. And the more talked the more we began to dream of a day that God would use our sorrow for his glory. That maybe, just maybe, God would allow us to be guides for others who have found themselves in the dark night of the soul.

That is the power of song. Even those written in the minor key, can keep you moving towards the light. And while I felt alone in my sorrow and darkness, and it was years before we had any meaningful impact on the lives of others, God was whispering to me at every turn, “I see you, son. I see you.”

When I got home, I went for a long run and wept some more.

Weeping may endure for a night,
But joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5

Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life. – Jesus

I saw a bumper sticker one time that said, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

When I saw that I wondered, “Would that actually make me worry less?” I don’t think it would. The Christian story makes the best sense of our deepest concerns. We refused to accept that our lives are a meaningless blip on and meaningless blue planet in the universe that is destined to blow up or go cold at the end of time. The Christian story makes deep sense for the anxieties that we carry, and Jesus said, “They point you to your need for the living God. He is a kind and compassionate father and He knows how to take care of His kids.”

When I was five years old my 4-year-old brother and I would rise early to plan our day of adventures.  We had a vast field in the heart of Texas where we lived while my Dad finished his schooling.

A typical morning, I followed my brother into the bathroom and assumed my normal position of sitting on the edge of the tall claw-footed cast iron bathtub and hung my right leg down to the cold linoleum floor.

That leg dangled in front of a little open-flame gas heater.

My brother was busy doing his business.  Cute actually— red-headed, both hands on each side of the toilet holding himself up so that he didn’t disappear into the bowl.  We talked, laughed, and planned.  My mother was still asleep in bed in the room next to the bathroom.

I don’t remember pain—but something caused me to get up off the bathtub and then I smelled smoke; then stabbing pain on the back of my leg. I went to the doorway to my mom’s room, looked back at my right leg, and saw blue and yellow flames curling up my very flammable flannel pajamas.  I also saw my brother, still clinging to the edges of the toilet, eyes as wide as a baseball glove, a look of horror I had never seen on any human face in my five years. Only his little feet and redhead were sticking out of the white porcelain bowl now—screaming.

Then the pain came, and angry flames chased me around in circles in my Mom’s room.  She jumped out of bed, grabbed a housecoat, and wrapped my leg to suffocate the fire.  Then she went to see what was killing my little brother…nothing…he was just horrified at what he had seen.

We were a one-car family in 1963 and my father was at work.  Mom called a neighbor to take me to the hospital.  I loved my mom.  She was so brave and strong.  She was 24 years old at that time.  She comforted me and carefully put me into the neighbor’s car, took me to the hospital. The nurses were awesome. The Doctor was gentle, but as they started peeling the very flammable flannel pajamas away from my leg, the pain became intense, I started screaming for the one person who was not there.

“I want my Daddy!  Where is my Daddy!” I cried.

“He’s coming, honey,” Mom assured me.

I was laying on my stomach and the way the table was positioned; I could see down the hospital hallway. And I saw a man running. He was swerving and dodging people and gurneys like a running back through an NFL defensive line. The louder I screamed the faster he ran.

It was my Dad.

When he got there, the pain was just as intense as they pulled charred skin away from raw meat and dressed my 3^rd degree burned leg. But it was somehow better now. My father was with me.

Your Heavenly Father loves you. Jesus never grew tired of teaching about this love. So He would say, ‘Why do you worry about your life, what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to drink…why do you worry? Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin. They never restructure. They don’t attend motivational seminars to release the redwood within them. Yet, look at them,’ He says. ‘Next to them, Solomon looks like he bought his clothes at a thrift shop. Now, if God showers such beauty on the grass, which is here today and gone tomorrow, won’t He clothe you?’

Jesus says, ‘Just think about the birds in the air. They have no fear. They don’t live in worry. They don’t have high blood pressure or colitis. They don’t hoard food or buy a gun. How does it happen they have enough to eat? It’s not by an accident. Every time they eat, they’re being fed by the Father.”

Jesus teaches us what it looks like to trust the Father.

If your life is on fire and burning down before you just pause and imagine what it would be like for you to live, moment by moment, day by day, in the constant awareness of the love of the Father. That God knows about you, knows about your sin, about your junk, and He still delights in you.

You don’t have to worry; you don’t have to live in fear. You can live from moment to moment in the warmth and tenderness of the love of God – and stop the buzzing distractions that we call the world, the crazy race to prove how important or significant or attractive you are.

You are held in the hand of God—if you belong to Him.

You live in the Father-love of God—if you belong to Him.

If you don’t belong to Him—you have something to worry about.