Jesus walked almost everywhere.  It is kind of hard to miss this when you read the words of the Gospels.

Walking is a form of exercise that nearly anyone can do and the average speed at which we walk is roughly, three miles per hour. One writer took this idea and theorized that since God walks (see Genesis 3 and the Gospels) then God must speak at three miles per hour. That's a comforting thought. We need to start walking; start moving.  Rather than wait, we need some action!  Author and speaker, Mark Manson suggests that rather than look for inspiration and motivation we ought to start with action because action leads to inspiration then it leads to motivation. 

When life sucks (which it does many days) I need to start moving. I don’t think we give movement the credit it deserves as a spiritual practice. Think about it. Consider the stories and tales of the trails that people have been hiking and walking throughout the centuries, That's an important thing for us to remember: hope can be found on the journey. 

For me, in the midst of my grief, it was tough to get moving many days. I reflected and thought about what things brought me joy.  After Heather’s death, for a time, I got moving and redecorated the front deck.  I made it into a space, outside, where I felt joy. I also knew I needed to do more. I needed to start moving. The easiest thing I have found through the years is to start walking. However, I really had not considered walking as a spiritual practice. But I got up and started walking. Over time, things began to shift. As I began to move, my body started to change, as did my mind and with the movement came inspiration and motivation.

Prior to the death of Heather, I walked a lot as part of my exercise routine. It was part of my health and wellness plan too.  When my doctor said I needed to lose some weight, walking, bike riding, and swimming were part of my plan. My daughter and I hiked the Georgia section of the Appalachian Trail. It was a journey I took with prayer beads and prayed the Jesus prayer but I had not considered it among my spiritual practices.

There is a book entitled, “The Way of the Pilgrim” and it is based in Russia and part of the Orthodox tradition of the Christian faith. In that book, it talks about how walking and praying the Jesus prayer, the pilgrim draws closer to God. There's a simplicity to walking. It doesn't require equipment.  If walking isn’t possible, other movements can take the place. It is about movement. We take the ability we've been given and you just move! I think we've lost that simplicity.

Have you tried being NEAT?  No, not cleaning up your room or garage (though that can be exercise too).  NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This is a big scientific phrase for all the calories you burn but that don’t count as exercise.  It is the small things all day - pointing with your finger or grasping a drill, doing needle-point or tapping your toe.  Kids - get the wiggles out!  But grown-ups can do it too!  Add to those.  Right now, tilt your head from side to side.  If you can, stretch your hands to the sky and wiggle your fingers…wiggle your toes.  MOVE!!! And do it every day.  That is what NEAT is about - movement.

For me, it began with a step. I found that having a coach through my health plan was a help too but so was finding a trainer on YouTube who gave input on exercises that were “outside of the box” and fun.  I also found apps for my phone like CashWalk, WinWalk, and even Walgreens Pharmacy, that offer incentives for taking steps and other health practices like sleeping enough and checking blood pressure.

The valley of suck bogs a person down. When I talk with people dealing with grief and suffering, I see the effects on their bodies without hearing a word. There is no escaping the “stuckness” in our words and life when life sucks. I know the frustration in my own life and the impact on my health and wholeness.  

Taking a “step” is not going to make the grief go away. Yet, there is something about moving and maybe there is something more to Jesus walking everywhere than we will really ever know. Could it be that God does “move” and speak at three miles per hour? In the beginning, God walked the garden in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8). In my experience, God still does.

I have found it all the more vital to walk when life sucks the worst. Sometimes, it is the only thing I can do. God has always been willing to join me on the walk too.

I do get inspiration as I walk. I think things through more clearly as the adrenaline and the endorphins begin to kick in I realize how much more I want to eat better and I want to be more active and how I want to enjoy life because life is meant to be lived.  God intends us to find hope in living and we are meant to live until our very last breath! Each step we take we move closer to wholeness and hopefully, toward holiness.

Ok, ready for another step? I have got one more thing to touch on that you do not want to miss.  You’ve made it to the last chapter and after that? Well, I’ve thrown in a special gift! Turn the page, and take your next step.

Two presidents.  One a Republican and one a Democrat.  One a United Methodist Christian and one a Roman Catholic Christian.  No president is perfect and there are many decisions that must be made as the leader of a nation that may challenge the faith someone might have.  But here, in these two presidents, we see the convictions of their faith lived out.

There is so much that we can look and see what divides us as individuals, in our marriages and families, within our nation and within our church.  Our United Methodist Church has been in conflict for some time now and is heading for a parting of ways between the Global Methodist Church and the UMC.  For me, it truly puts friends and colleagues of mine of many years on “the other side.” 

But this does not make us enemies. We are a people of second chances…and third and fourth and fifth chances.

Our presidents must have thought of Good Friday and the criminals on the cross:

39 One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!” 40 But the other responded, and rebuking him, said, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving [c]what we deserve for our crimes; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” 43 And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:39-42

Jesus was never inconsistent or contradictory with his words.  Before the cross, one of his disciples asked Jesus point-blank, how many times to forgive:

21 Then Peter came up and said to Him, “Lord, how many times shall my brother sin against me and I still forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy-seven times.  Matthew 18:21-22

We are a people of second chances and our faith is a faith of second chances and our Savior, this Easter, is a God of second chances, and third, and even seventy-seven chances (and even more)!  There is no limit to God’s forgiveness and let us live the same way!  If Bush and Biden could find common ground from their faith, then we can too. How will you give second chances? Who will you give second chances?

Do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God...this is The Way…the way of the Christ, the way of Jesus.

Like most pastors…I think…I have read many books.  Some good, some not so good. I have attended conferences and seminars to learn more, to be better at what I do. And along the way, I have learned that the quality of the work I do is far more subjective than I think anyone ever gives consideration.  Oh, sure, there are objective numbers like church attendance and financial statements that are measured but does that REALLY what this is about?

There is one phrase, in one book, that I go back to again and again. When I read it years ago it stuck and kept working its way deeper and deeper into my psyche and my soul.  It is this:

“People speak in various ways of wanting their pastor to be spiritually deep. The ordained person is expected to be a person of prayer that the person in the street cannot be.” 

Urban T Holmes. “The Spiritualiy for Ministry.” 34.

When I wrote, “Life Sucks Seek God,” I didn’t realize I was drilling down to the core of this very idea I had read years ago but that is the reality of things - and it is past time for us to name and work from reality and NOT superficiality.

We need…I NEED…clergy willing and able to name the truth of this too. We clergy are not the Messiah after all - we are just like everyone else in truth - human beings who are trying to be that person of prayer - devoted wholly to God but who are insufferably flawed and weak and selfish…the Bible has one word to describe us but we don’t like it - WE ARE SINNERS!  

There I said it.  Life Sucks and we are sinners. And we can’t deal with that and we clergy don’t want to offend anyone so we just put aside that word but that word works and it gets to heart and soul of it.  

Life sucks and we are sinners so…Seek God.

And I feel better saying it too.  I need to get it out.  Just like so much that I have kept bottled up for too long.  We need a good dose of this reality.  I don’t know why we keep hiding what the Good News is with some kind lame, generic label packaging.  It isn’t just some “sweet, by and by, God of the New Testament thing,” either.  We get the promise right in the prophets - those old, dead guys spouting doom and gloom:

Seek the Lord while he may be found,

    call upon him while he is near;

let the wicked forsake their way,

    and the unrighteous their thoughts;

let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,

    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.  (Isaiah 55:6-7 (NRSV))

We don’t like them most of the time BUT again, lets be real - THEY GOT IT!!! They understood the times they were living in and they called it like they saw it!

Life Sucks.

We’re sinners.

Seek God.

Maybe Lent has already dug into me. Maybe it is that we live in times these prophets would surely recognize. Maybe it is that this pandemic has worn away my veneer…again.  Maybe I’m getting old.

Maybe.

I know clergy are retiring as soon as they can.

I know clergy are leaving ministry as fast or faster than ever.
I know, God keeps calling me to stay…to be that person in prayer.

Life still sucks.

We’re still sinners.

I will still seek God.

Time, in my opinion, has become a tyrant. And those who have control of other people’s time, have found it a willing tool to manipulate others' emotions, behaviors, and even their souls.

Author, Joe Zadeha observed back in 2021, “During an era in which social constructs like race, gender and sexuality are being challenged and dismantled, the true nature of clock time has somehow escaped the attention of wider society. Much like has happened with money, the clock has come to be seen as the thing it was only supposed to represent: The clock has become time itself.” (The Tyranny of Time, https://www.noemamag.com/the-tyranny-of-time/ June 3. 2021)

The old saying goes that “time marches on.” Days come to pass and then years and before we know it, we look back on our lives and feel the weight of how we have spent our time. Of course, no one looks back on their deathbed and says, “I wish I spent more time at the office,” and yet, we are prone to do just that or we find we have wasted it on fleeting things that leave us wondering what happened to our time?

I don’t apologize for using my Franklin Planner to schedule my day, or allowing Google Calendar to remind me of things coming up in my schedule…but how did we get to a point that we have made, allowed this thing called time to be a thing of shame? Why do people who have personal assistants and virtual assistants get to tell everyone else how to live? That is “rich” indeed! I can’t tell you how many courses I have been through that have told me how often I should post on my blog and how often I need to produce YouTube videos to be “effective” and grow my audience in this virtual world.

During the pandemic, there have been voices trying to get our attention - to use these days to reset how we approach life - to rethink. But many more voices have been speaking even louder, demanding we get our world “back to normal” or “back on track.”

But was any of what we were doing normal? Was our world ever on track? Back on track has us on the brink of war in Europe and in Asia. Back on track has created even greater polarization within our society and back on track and back to normal has us right back into comparing the haves and have-nots and the powerful grabbing even more power and free nations giving rise to new tyrannies.

Into all of this, we adopted a new kitten. Luna has no interest or cares for time other than the time spent playing with strings and with her big sister cat, Zoe.  She is fascinated by our bird and loves her big brother, our great Pyrenees, Dibs. She doesn’t have any thought of being afraid. She is learning to live life to fullness.  Time? Pffffftt! 

And she is reminding me that our souls do not operate on a clock and returning to normal or getting on track - is NOT the goal of the spiritual life and journey. I hear the voices calling for “deconstruction” of religions and especially, Christianity. This is wagging the dog though.  We were hearing a call before Covid to deconstruct “Christendom” - this “Christianity” has been at play since Constantine decriminalized Christianity in 313 CE with the Edict of Milan.  This isn’t the faith at all but an imitation, a “copycat” that is a poor representation IF it can even be called a representation of the Christian faith.

Love - Joy - Peace - Patience - Goodness - Kindness - Gentleness - Self-control

There is no law written that out laws these character traits wrote Paul to the Galatian church, and to us today. It matters not who sits on thrones of power and who claims influence online or in society.  

In “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” there is a story of Abba Anthony, living, likely in the deserts of Egypt in north Africa, who was praying in his cell when he heard a voice which said to him, ‘Anthony, you have not yet arrived as the state of excellence of a certain man who is a tailor and who dwells in Alexandria.’Then Anthony rose up in the morning, and took a palm stick and departed to him, and when the man saw him, he was disturbed; and Anthony said to him, ‘Tell me what you do, and how you live,’ and the tailor said to him, ‘I do not know that I do any good. I know only that when I rise up in the morning, before I sit down to the work of my hands, I give thanks to God and praise God, and that I set my evil deeds before my eyes saying, “AH the people who are in this city will go into the kingdom of God, because of their financial giving and good deeds, except myself, and I will inherit punishment for my sin’’ and again in the evening, before I sleep, I do the same things.’ Now when Abba Anthony heard these things, he said, ‘Verily, as the man who works in gold, and who does beautiful work, cleanly, and in peace, even so are you; through your beautiful thoughts you will inherit the kingdom of God, while I, who have passed the whole of my life in the desert, separated from people, have never overtaken you.’ (Kindle. Location 2570 of 5823).

Take what you will from the story, but do not miss there is no tyranny of time dictating the tailor's spiritual worth. His heart and his heart's work is only to be humble in heart and mind that his life might be pleasing to God.

When we miss this, we miss it all. Stop looking at the clock or listening to others who miss seeing the way for being in such a hurry.

Love - Joy - Peace - Patience - Goodness - Kindness - Gentleness - Self-control