You Can Always Give

Make sure you don’t take things for granted and go slack in working for the common good; share what you have with others. God takes particular pleasure in acts of worship—a different kind of “sacrifice”—that take place in kitchen and workplace and on the streets.
Hebrews 13:16 MSG

My kids and I just spent this morning wrapping five gifts for the children of Angel Tree Ministries we are delivering tomorrow. Angel Tree is a wonderful program of Prison Fellowship that partners with churches for volunteers to purchase and deliver gifts to children of parents who are imprisoned. To be completely honest, I was tempted to just skip doing Angel Tree this year because 2022 has been so emotionally exhausting. However, I realize how privileged and blessed I still am in so many ways. And you know what? After my kids and I wrapped the gifts for the five children, it made me more excited to deliver the gifts tomorrow. This made me realize that my life can be challenging AND God can still use me in various ways. Life will never be perfect; so if we wait for everything to be “just right,” we may never find a chance to do some good.

We can be lacking in life and still be generous.
We can struggle in relationships and still love others.
We can have doubts in God and still live a life of faith.

What's Your Incubation Period Look Like?

As a mother comforts her child, I shall comfort you.
Isaiah 66:13

Have I mentioned that the hospital I work in currently is the hospital both of my children were born? I don’t get to visit the NICU unit too often, but whenever I do, I get very nostalgic and misty eyed because I remember how my son Drew spent the first ten days of his life in there. Drew was born five weeks early and he had to live in the incubator for the first few days of his life because his lungs were underdeveloped. You can imagine how scary it must have been for me and his mom. Surprisingly, he was a pretty happy quiet baby; he was always bundled up, he was warm under the warm lamp, and he was regularly fed and cleaned. He had no idea there were a team of people working around the clock to ensure his growth and health.

Do you ever feel like you’re in an incubation period? I know I have in 2022, heck even the last three years. Maybe you feel like you’re hiding, under the radar, and feeling “stuck” wherever you are in your life. But just as the incubation period was absolutely critical in the beginning of my son’s life, the incubation period is necessary for you and me as well. And even though we don’t realize it, God is working diligently around the clock to ensure your spiritual growth and health.

What Today's Funeral Taught Me

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
James 4:13-14

This morning I attended one of the most difficult funerals I’ve ever had to attend in my life. She was a 23yo daughter of a former mentor and pastor of mine. She was loving, talented, spirited, intelligent, humble, friendly and godly in many ways. She was taken from us far too soon. It was a painful reminder that our lives here on earth are like mist, here today and gone tomorrow. While so many of us painfully toil away for the strife of profit, fame, and glory, we know we won’t take any of those things with us when we leave this earth. If you are anything like me and believe in eternal life, you know that the only two things we will take with us after we die are our faith in God and relationships with people. This is why Jesus said that the greatest commandment is this: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
–Jim Elliot

Gratitude Challenge

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
Ephesians 1:16

Despite what you may believe, most people are not naturally grateful. It takes a lot of intention and practice to become grateful people. Practicing gratitude means regularly expressing gratitude to God in prayer, to people through words, or written in our journals daily, ESPECIALLY when we do not feel like it. But something interesting happens when we do; we experience the feelings of gratitude after we express the practice of gratitude. And let’s be honest; we may not always want to practice gratitude because our lives are hard or imperfect, but that will always be the case. Which means gratitude often coexists with other emotions, experiences, and realities. But that should never stop us from expressing gratitude because being grateful people makes our lives exponentially better and we become the type of people God desires us to be.

Here’s our post-Thanksgiving challenge for you for the rest of 2022.
Express gratitude everyday verbally to people, written in letters or your journal, or in prayer to God.

See what kind of difference it makes in your life. And if you feel a noticeable difference, keep it going indefinitely. You’re welcome.

Surprising Benefits of Gratitude

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
1 Thessalonians 5:18

Do you know all the ways gratitude can benefit your life? If you were to Google “benefits of gratitude,” you’d find a plethora of articles, studies, and medical journals on the subject. I read one recently on Psychology Today that revealed at least 7 Proven Benefits of Gratitude. The most fascinating one I read about was that grateful people are more mentally resilient. In a 2006 study among Vietnam veterans, it was revealed that vets who regularly practiced and expressed gratitude have far less PTSD than vets who are less grateful. Think about that next time you want to withhold gratitude to a loved one, coworker, or even God. Because ultimately, you’re the one who will pay the consequences for your lack of gratitude.

What Dia de los Muertos Taught Me

[There is] a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot
Ecclesiastes 3:2

Have you ever celebrated Dia de los Muertos? One of the interesting parts about serving as a chaplain at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downtown Los Angeles is that I get to work with a team of chaplains from a variety of backgrounds. One of our Lead Chaplains is a Latina who wanted to setup an altar for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). While I’ve always known what Dia de los Muertos was, I’ve never actually commemorated it myself. Interestingly, it was a lot more fun and festive than I imagined it to be. The way that many people approach Dia de los Muertos is not one of melancholy, sadness, or grief but they approach it with joy, celebration, and gratitude. In many ways it is because they didn’t view death as an “end” but rather as a transition.

The hope that we have as POG (people of God) is that death is not the end for us but rather a transition. Yet, as long as we are here on earth death is an undeniable reality. Why does it even need to exist? Would death even be around if it weren’t for the Fall of Adam and Eve? While some questions may never be fully answered, we do know that sometimes death exists so that new life may begin.

I ask you: What needs to die so that something new can be born? What needs to be uprooted for something new to be planted?

God In Unexpected Places

Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
Luke 12:27

Our community had a fun time together this past Sunday and it reminded me that God can be experienced in such a variety of ways. While I can attempt to articulate this myself, there’s a writer, preacher, and teacher who did it far better than I ever could.

People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture. What is true is what happens, even if what happens is not always right. People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order. They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart.
–Barbara Brown Taylor

Inside the Cocoon

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
2 Corinthians 5:17

Have you ever wondered what happens inside the cocoon? You may remember from elementary school days the life cycle of a butterfly. There are basically four stages: egg, larvae (caterpillar), cocoon (also known as chrysalis), and butterfly. The timeline from egg to adult is about 22-37 days, but for about two weeks of that time, it is in the stage of a cocoon where it is transforming from a caterpillar to a butterfly. I never gave much thought as to what happens inside the cocoon; as a kid, I think I just assumed it was sleeping. But in actuality, there’s a lot of activity going on underneath the surface: wings are being formed, there’s a lot of movement, and the body is changing down to a cellular level. In fact, the same juices that caterpillar used to digest its food is used to change its own body! If you think about it, it must be pretty messy and even painful in there.

This is often what spiritual transformation looks like in our own lives; as much as we would like, we can’t just sleep our way through transformation. Perhaps on the surface, it may not look like much is happening. But beneath the thin veneer of our skin and smiles, it can feel like quite a mess: emotional excavations, self-doubt, anxiety, and visceral pain. Yet, on the other side of the cocoon is transformation, beauty, and freedom.

Hope of Autumn

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.
Ecclesiastes 3:1

Autumn is a season of great beauty, but it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer's abundance decays toward winter's death. Faced with this inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? It scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring and scatters them with amazing abandon. In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. Instead, my mind is on the fact that the green growth of summer is browning and beginning to die. My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty all around. I am drawn down by the prospect of death more than I am lifted by the hope of new life. In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life. They are held together in the paradox of “hidden wholeness.” In a paradox, opposites do not negate each other – they cohere in mysterious unity at the heart of reality. Deeper still, they need each other for health, as my body needs to breathe in as well as breathe out. But in a culture that prefers the ease of either-or thinking to the complexities of paradox, we have a hard time holding opposites together… Autumn constantly reminds me that my daily dyings are necessary precursors to new life. If I try to “make” a life that defies the diminishments in autumn, the life I end up with will be artificial, at best, and utterly colorless as well. But when I yield to the endless interplay of living and dying, dying and living, the life I am given will be real and colorful, fruitful and whole.
–Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

Befriend Your Emotions

Let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord.
Lamentations 3:40

I recently changed the hospital where I serve as chaplain; I used to work at Adventist Health Glendale for nearly two years, but recently moved to Good Samaritan Hospital in Downtown Los Angeles. Within the first week of working there, I already felt the significant difference in two demographic. I find myself utilizing my Spanish and Korean languages a lot more often and I’m also dealing with a lot more underprivileged and homeless patients. To say the past two months have been emotionally challenging is an understatement. But when a patient is expressing a struggle, difficult emotion, or ambivalent experience, it is my responsibility as a chaplain to befriend them and help them process whatever they need. However, there have been times when patients share something so close to home that it’s difficult for me to stay in the room with them; because whatever they’re sharing made me too sad, upset, or anxious. But I found myself asking, “If I can be gracious and patient enough to sit with them in their emotions, why can’t I show myself the same grace and patience to sit with mine?” This is how I’ve been practicing the art of “befriending my emotions.” Instead of ignoring, avoiding, or suppressing heavy emotions, I’ve been sitting with them and welcoming their presence in their lives. To my surprise, the moment I acknowledge and sit with my emotions, the sooner it passes through me. 

“All of our emotions… need to be understood and respected, perhaps even befriended. We need to pull up a chair and sit with them, understand why they’re showing up, and ask ourselves what there is to learn.” 
–Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart