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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

New Testament

How to Remember As If

August 11, 2015 By Michelle 16 Comments

Lake Superior at Dusk3

A friend of mine is going through a hard time. Suffice to say, without getting into the details, she’s hit rock-bottom, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And I have let her down. I haven’t been the kind of friend she has so desperately needed.

I can list a whole bunch of excuses to explain my lack of presence; reasons that make sense and are, in many ways, the truth: I’m busy; my kids have me running in circles; I have deadlines to meet; we’ve been traveling; I meant to call her.

But the truth is uglier than that. The truth is, a big part of me wanted to avoid my friend because her situation is messy. I wanted to protect myself from the pain I knew would go hand-in-hand with compassion.

“Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters,” writes Paul to the Hebrews. “…Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.” (Hebrews 13:1, 3)

As if.

You might breeze over them, but these two simple words are the key to these verses. These two words force us to bridge the gap, that comfortable space, between ourselves and those who are suffering.

Paul doesn’t intend for us to “love” and “remember” at arm’s length, at a distance. Instead, he expects us to love and remember as if those suffering are our own brothers and sisters, our own flesh and blood; as if, in fact, this suffering is our very own pain.

Honestly, there’s only one way to remember and love as if, and it’s not easy or comfortable:

As if requires that we get close to the ugly, the uncomfortable, the messy, the awkward, the unfixable.

As if requires that we move toward someone else’s pain, and even to carry some of that pain ourselves.

As human beings, our instincts compel us toward self-preservation. We are naturally inclined to distance ourselves from anything that might be physically or even psychologically harmful. We are conditioned, both by society and by our own genetic make-up, to protect ourselves.

But Jesus calls us to do the opposite. He calls us to move toward pain and discomfort, to immerse ourselves in it for the good of others. Some people, the rare few, do this naturally. They are the ones with the God-given gift of empathy. But as Paul implies in these verses, just because we don’t naturally have the gift of empathy doesn’t mean we are off the hook.

Recently my friend and I talked for a long time on the phone. She cried — a lot – and told me some things that were difficult to hear, things I couldn’t solve, problems for which I had no answers, no ready-made solutions.

It was uncomfortable. I fought the urge to come up with an excuse to end the conversation the whole time we were on the phone, not because I don’t care about my friend, but because I was in way over my head and way out of my comfort zone. I felt overwhelmed by my obvious inadequacies. I couldn’t fix her problems; I couldn’t put a positive spin on her situation or even offer much affirmation. I was mostly silent while she talked. “I’m so sorry,” I said, again and again between her sobs. My words felt small and pathetic.

Those kinds of phone calls, that kind of walking alongside in the awkward and the painful, that’s what Paul means when he urges us to Remember as if.

As if demands that we step out of our comfortable place. As if means we enter into someone else’s suffering, offer our inadequate words and our compassionate quiet, and carry, if only for a moment, a bit of their pain.

Questions for You: 
Can you think of someone in your life right now who might need you to walk alongside them through a difficult time? What’s one small way you might do that?

Filed Under: Compassion, New Testament Tagged With: how to walk alongside in suffering, New Testament

For When You’re Feeling Abandoned

July 2, 2015 By Michelle 33 Comments

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A couple of months ago I posted a Facebook status update about an especially controversial issue. Within minutes, and throughout the rest of that day, I was lambasted with comments and criticism from people – mainly Christians — who did not agree with my stance. By the end of the day, there were close to 100 comments, most of them negative, many of them caustic, some downright vitriolic.

A few people messaged, emailed, or called me privately to offer encouragement (not necessarily to agree with my opinion on the issue, but simply to let me know they were thinking about me as I stood in the line of fire), and I deeply appreciated that. But for the most part, few chimed in publicly to stand with me in what came to feel, by the end of the day, like a deeply personal attack.

That day was a lonely one for me. Most of my closest friends in my online community, the people I know and love and who I know love me, were largely silent. I know they were there, listening and watching that ugly “conversation” unfold on Facebook, but most of them said nothing. They had their reasons; and those reasons were good, sensible, respectable, rational reasons. I certainly don’t blame my peers for not leaping into such a divisive public exchange. Had I been in their shoes, I suspect I would have made the exact same choice.

Yet at the same time, I felt abandoned and even a little bit betrayed. While I certainly hadn’t expected everyone to agree with me, I had expected they would defend not my stance on the issue necessarily, but me, as their friend and fellow human being. I hadn’t expected to feel so alienated and alone and for that to hurt so much.

I suspect that’s what Paul was feeling when he wrote this at the end of his second letter to Timothy: “The first time I was brought before the judge, no one came with me. Everyone abandoned me.” (2 Timothy 4:16).

In those two simple sentences I hear Paul’s sorrow, loneliness, disappointment and defeat. I hear what I felt that day on Facebook.

Yet in Paul’s next words to Timothy, he says something important: He acknowledges that although he was abandoned by his earthly friends, God stood with him, strengthening him, rescuing him and delivering him “from every evil attack.” (2 Timothy 4:17-18)

Clearly my situation on Facebook was markedly different from Paul’s. At the same time, though, Paul’s words helped me understand that God does not abandon us, even when it looks as though we’ve been abandoned by everyone else.

What’s more, God does not leave us, even when we are wrong. God stands with us, even when we go wildly astray.

God loves us unabashedly, no matter what.

When I feel utterly and completely alone, it helps to remember God’s promise: he is with us, always, even until the end of time. God stands with us, strengthening us in our weakness, rescuing us from defeat, pulling us from the abyss of loneliness.

God is with us always. We are never as alone as we might feel in the moment.

 

Filed Under: New Testament Tagged With: New Testament, Paul's Letters to Timothy

How to Open Your Eyes and Really See

September 10, 2014 By Michelle 18 Comments

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As a kid my sister thought the priest was God. It was his ornate robes that misled her – his “uniform” gave him such an aura of authority and power, she assumed he was the Big Man himself.

I wasn’t much better off. While I knew enough to realize the priest wasn’t God, I still acted like he was. I was so focused on following the rules to perfection, I missed the point of faith entirely. I worshipped the law and the man in the fancy robes, and missed God.

Early on in the Book of Mark, the Pharisees — who were the ultra-religious rule-followers of the day — criticized Jesus for forgiving the sins of a paralyzed man who had come to hear him preach.

“‘Only God can forgive sins!’” the Pharisees claimed, appalled by Jesus’ bold proclamation and his gall. (Mark 2:7)

They missed the irony in their own statement, of course. They couldn’t see that it was God himself standing right before their very eyes.

The Pharisees had a very clear expectation of what God should look like and how he should act. The fact that Jesus was born in a barn in Nazareth, dressed like a wandering shepherd and kept company with the lowlifes of society simply did not jibe with their definition of God. They expected a mighty ruler, someone who established authority instead of subverting it.

The Pharisees didn’t recognize God because they expected him to look like someone else. They expected him to look more like them.

I get that. Sometimes I mock the Pharisees for their obvious flaws, but the truth is, I am a Pharisee. I miss God when he’s standing right before my very eyes. I miss God because he doesn’t look like I think he should.

I don’t see God in the man on the corner, holding a tattered cardboard sign in the sweltering heat.  But I see him easily in the people I admire and the people I want to emulate. I see God in the people I want to like me.

I don’t always see God in the person who practices faith differently than I do. But I recognize him easily in the people who sit next to me in the pew each week.

I don’t see God in the people who live by standards I consider less-than or flawed. But I recognize him in the people who seem to live exactly like I do.

Turns out, I see God in the pretty places, where everything and everyone look good and wholesome and right; where the rules are followed and standards are upheld.

I see God where I am comfortable and in the people who put me at ease.

I see God where you might expect to find him — in stained glass, in blossoms and birds and spectacular sunsets, in people who look and think just like me.

Like a Pharisee, I see God where I want to see him, not where he really is.

The beautiful truth is that God is in every place and in every person. And what the crowd exclaimed the day the paralyzed man stood up and walked home with his mat in hand is true for me and many others, too:

“We’ve never seen anything like this before!” (Mark 2:12) we exclaim in awe. Because we’ve never really opened our eyes to see.

{This post originally ran in the Lincoln Journal Star.}

Sharing with Jennifer’s Tell His Story community:

Filed Under: assumptions, Gospels, New Testament Tagged With: Gospel of Mark, how to recognize God, Jennifer Dukes Lee TellHisStory, New Testament

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: I’m Not a Murderer … but I Still Need Grace

June 30, 2013 By Michelle 27 Comments

We covered the fifth commandment this week: you shall not murder. I practically cheered from the pew when I read that, because hey, I figure, at least I’ve got that going for me, right? At least I haven’t murdered anyone.

Most of the Old Testament commandments are straight-forward. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his goods. With the exception of the first commandment (which, I admit, is tricky for those of us who have a tiny problem with idolatry), the remaining nine seem fairly manageable.

But then Jesus comes along, takes these perfectly clear rules and muddies up each one of them. Jesus digs into the commandments and ratchets up the expectations, and suddenly they aren’t so simple or straight-forward anymore. He really messes with us, doesn’t he? Suddenly the fifth commandment isn’t just about murder anymore. It’s about anger, too:

“I say, ‘if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment. If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought to court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.’” (Matthew 5:21-22)

Man. I do not love that. Do not murder I can do. I’ve got that one covered. But anger? Bringing anger into the picture changes everything.

I’ve also been reading First John on my own this week, and interestingly, he has quite a bit to say about the commandments, too, like this:

“The proof that we love God comes when we keep his commandments and they are not at all troublesome.” (1 John 4:20-21)

On the one hand, I hear what John is saying. When you have a relationship with God, you want to keep his commandments – obeying him becomes not an obligation but an act of love. The act of keeping the commandments becomes not a “have to” but a “want to.”

On the other hand, I wouldn’t go so far as to call the commandments “not at all troublesome.” Frankly, I’m troubled by what Jesus says when he digs into the commandments. I’m troubled because I know, according to his definition, that I fall far short. And just to be sure I didn’t miss the point, I got two jabs in the ribs, one from Noah and one from Rowan, when Pastor Greg preached about anger on Sunday. Apparently they think I’m sidling up close to the fires of Hell.

I think when Jesus ramps up expectations for the fifth commandment by bringing the sin of anger into the picture, he intends it to trouble us. He intends to give us pause, and for good reason. Jesus’ definition of the fifth commandment  moves us from our Pharisaic self-righteous assumption that we have the fifth commandment covered, to the realization that we are, in fact, guilty of anger – the sin that lurks beneath that commandment.

I don’t need a jab in the ribs from my kids when I read Jesus’ words about anger. I’m troubled when I read Jesus’ explanation of the Ten Commandments because I realize I haven’t come close to mastering them. But in falling so far short, I also realize how much I depend on his grace.

What do you think about John’s statement? Do you find the commandments troublesome? Do you think easy-breezy commandment-keeping is proof that you love God?

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Filed Under: 10 Commandments, Gospels, Use It on Monday Tagged With: Hear It on Sunday Use It on Monday, living the 10 Commandments, New Testament

4 Steps to Living a Spacious Life

May 17, 2013 By Michelle 44 Comments

When Holley Gerth asked us to put our dream down on paper a few weeks ago at the Jumping Tandem Retreat, I didn’t do it. After all, I figured I already have a dream, this writing/publishing dream. I’m still working on that one, right? I don’t need another dream, do I? So I sat quietly in my seat with my pen in my lap and watched as everyone else in the room wrote out their dream on paper.

Later that weekend I listened in the third row as Jennifer Dukes Lee spoke about the feeling of not being “enough.” She asked us to write a word on a rock – a word that signified what was holding us back, what was gripping us with fear like a gloved hand around our throats in the dark of night. I wrote “comparison” on my rock.

Comparison.

Comparing my words with others’.

Comparing my number of readers, my number of Facebook likes.

Comparing how many speaking engagements I have lined up on my schedule compared to her or her or her. 

Jennifer told us she and her daughters were going to hurl each of those rocks to the bottom of an Iowa lake. She would drown my comparison beneath ten feet of water, bury it under a mound of pond sludge. I was good with that.

Home from the conference, I cracked open my Bible. It had been a while. I’d left off in Second Corinthians.

“I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life,” I read. “…The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way … Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively.”(2 Corinthians 6:11-13)

And there it was: my dream. The one I didn’t even know I had, laid out in black and white where I never expected to find it.

I wanted what was written right there on the pages of my Bible. I didn’t want to live in a small way anymore. I wanted to live openly and expansively. I wanted to enter the wide-open, spacious life. THAT was my dream.

I’ve been living small, friends. Cramped and crumpled into myself, turned inward, caught up in comparison, crowded by expectations, lured by the enticements of this world: sales, success, being known, being valued.

This inward-focus? It’s not a spacious place. It’s not a wide-open, expansive place. It’s a small, cold, lonely, bitter place.

After I read those verses from Second Corinthians and I stared my dream in the face, my dream of living not small and crumpled inward, but openly and expansively, I wondered what that might look like and feel like, in real, everyday life.

Here’s what I came up with. Here the list I made in my journal that day:

Wide-open, spacious living feels: Free. Secure. Joyful. Light. Unburdened. Enough. Content. Not heavy with guilt or “not enough.” Hopeful. God-focused. Like an open prairie, rather than a crushing crowd.

And then, beneath that, I made second list: steps to take when I find myself turning inward again, when I revert, as Paul says, to living life in a small way:

1. Turn off: from Facebook, Twitter, blogs and all social media. Physically shut down the mechanisms that are fueling comparison and smallness and “not enough.”

2. Turn outward: Shine the spotlight via praise or kind words on someone else, either online or in real life.

3. Turn to now: Focus on the right now — your family, your husband, your friends, the small moments. Enjoy the beauty of your place right now. Enjoy what’s happening in your writing and publishing journey right now. Focus on what you can do today and know that it is enough.

4. Turn to God: In gratitude, prayer and thanksgiving. Thankfulness is the seed of satisfaction.

That’s it. My four steps to living a wide-open, spacious life:

Turn off.

Turn outward.

Turn to now.

Turn to God. 

I’m trying it. I’m committed to it. This wide-open, spacious life sounds too good to miss.

So what about you? What’s keeping you from living the wide-open, spacious life God wants for you? Can you make your own list of steps to take when you find yourself living small and cramped? Do you want to be brave and maybe say out loud, right here, what’s holding you back from living wide-open? I’m with you. You know that, right?

Filed Under: comparison, New Testament Tagged With: 2 Corinthians, how to live a spacious life, New Testament

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Living out faith in the everyday is no joke. If you’re anything like me, some days you feel full of confidence and hope, eager to proclaim God’s goodness and love to the world. Other days…not so much.

Let me say straight up: I wrestle with my faith. Most days I feel a little bit like Jacob, wrangling his blessing out of God. And most days I’m okay with that. I believe God made me a questioner and a wrestler for a reason, and I believe one of those reasons is so that I can connect more authentically with others.

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