Blog
People-Pleasing
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. … And without faith it is impossible to please God. – Hebrews 11:1-2 & 6b (NRSV)
All my life, I’ve believed I’m not a people-pleaser.
Then I started paying attention to my emotional relationship with email: The guilt over every message collecting dust for lack of a reply. The assumption of anger in an email’s tone. The avoidance of a message if I cannot immediately meet its need. The projection of disappointment, the perceived obligation to acquiesce, the default of an apologetic tone.
I walk on eggshells around email like it’s my ex-husband: unpredictably volatile, a landmine of overwhelming and unrealistic demands that will explode if not pacified.
Meanwhile, I manage 4 personal inboxes and 5 professional inboxes, which is a lot of ex-husbands to placate.
And here comes Hebrews 11, harboring a dilemma that is intimately familiar to us people-pleasers and fawners: “How can we secure approval from Someone who is impossible to please? How can I be certain Someone is content with me?”
“Faith” is not the answer to our search for certainty that God is pleased. Faith is the mechanism by which we dare to ask, “Does God require pleasing?”
Is not God already pleased? Pleased to set healing before us? Pleased to plant hope within us?
Is not God already abundant in pleasure—in the delights of heaven and earth, in the invisible that waits to unfold?
Eggshells and insecurity are but for a moment. God’s love is for a lifetime. Disappointment may linger for the night, but unrestrained-by-external-expectations joy comes in the morning.
Prayer: Lead us not into anxiety, and deliver us from email.
cross-posted on ucc.org’s Daily Devotional
Testimony
It’s amazing that we survive death.
So much of life should kill us –
heartache, grief, vulnerability, fatigue;
even birth should destroy us with pain
yet it doesn’t, and here we are.
Our hearts break, but no matter: we wake
every morning. Loss takes our breath away;
even so, our lungs inflate, deflate, inflate.
Storms knock us flat, tsunamis wash away
all that we’ve known, and yet: here we are.
It’s amazing that any of us survive
the daily death of disappointment, of dread,
of betrayal every time the world sells you out
for the cheap price of fear. But still:
you’ve loved today, haven’t you? So have I.
And if we know love – within ourselves and
throughout this fragile life; if by some miracle
we even hold the same love for more than a day;
are we not thriving richly against life’s odds?
Is not love a conjugation of life?
Love is the past progressive tense of death.
It is a testimony to life in the present perfect
and the assurance of the simple future.
And when we no longer survive death, as is certain,
the memory of love will remain life’s miracle.
From One Grasshopper to Another
It is God who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. - Isaiah...
Tremors
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved. - Psalm 46:2-5 excerpts (NRSV) My daughter...
Patience
Paul stood up and began to speak: “The God of this people Israel made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm God led them out of it. For about forty years God put up with them in the wilderness.” - Acts 13:16-18, excerpts (NRSV)...
Love, Rise
Sun, rise and welcome the new day I have dreaded Love, rise and stand in the gap of my silent fears I watch the sunrise because I long for your warmth River, rise and carry away this ache of sorrow Love, rise and wash over me with wonder I come to the water because I...
Wild Things
Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps; wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! - Psalm 148:7, 10 (NRSV) Listening to a 45 RPM vinyl as a child, I learned from the Irish Rovers why there are no unicorns in the world: they...
Christmas Praise
"Let there be rest for the weary, O God Most High, rest and peace to the brokenhearted, peace and pleasure for the despondent, and let freedom come like an angel to the earth." So sing the stars and constellations, the leviathan from its depths and the dragon from its...
Love
What we have confined, O Love, you have exploded. What we have defined, O Love, you have confounded. What we have constrained, O Love, you have released. What we have diminished, O Love, you have overflowed. What we have cast in stone, O Love, you have made to dance....
Song of the Prophet Mary
Let this breath be an insight into your glory and this flesh be alive with your joy -- for who else is so powerful yet so merciful as to be revealed through me for the sake of blessing? It is the same One whose name is told through generations and whispered in...
Cry Out!
How long, O Peace, will we hold one another hostage?How long will we demand endless penalty for every debt? "Make straight and wide a path in the wilderness so that all might travel safely in God's presence,"said the prophet -- but no, we insist, it can't be so easy....
