Immanuel: “God with us”

On Sunday we heard just briefly about a man named Brother Lawrence, a lay brother who served in a monastery in the early 1600s. I happened to write his name down because I didn’t realize that “lay people” would choose to live in a monastery (the silence! the lack of technology!) and I wanted to learn more about him. A quick Google search didn’t reveal much about Brother Lawrence, but it did lead me to a group of people known as the Discalced Carmelites. The Discalced Carmelites stem from the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and these are men and women who have dedicated their lives to prayer and contemplation (I say again, the silence! the lack of technology!). Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite. It should come as no surprise then, that Brother Lawrence felt himself to be keenly attuned to the presence of God. His writings in Practicing the Presence of God have been used for hundreds of years by those who desire to recognize and acknowledge God in the mundane moments of life.

Brother Lawrence’s work in the monastery was neither glamorous nor profound. He spent most of his days mopping floors and working in the kitchen; however, in all of his work, Brother Lawrence focused upon living in the presence of God. This discipline—the ability to commune with God in any circumstance—is one that most modern Christians have failed to cultivate.

Modern Christians are taught to spend time daily with God, but Brother Lawrence taught himself to spend every moment of the day with God. I will admit that I am not very practiced when it comes to experiencing the presence of God. I tend to move quickly and impulsively. It is entirely counter to my nature to sit quietly and to reflect on God. The monastic way of life bears little appeal for me—I don’t want to get up early, to pray continuously, to live cut off from the rest of the world, to live a life of regimented devotion.

Like almost every other modern Christian, however, I could surely benefit from some quiet and reflective time. I could benefit from more time in the Bible, from a structure that would in time come as habitually and naturally to me as the morning cup(s) of coffee or the evening television show(s) before bed. Brother Lawrence suggests that becoming aware of “God with us” requires such intense focus, that not even work, family, or friends should interfere with our continual audience with God. Although this is likely unrealistic for most of us, we can of course cultivate the habits of practicing Immanuel, and what better time than during advent to do so?

Practicing Immanuel can be as simple as thanking God for 5 blessings each day, and ending each one with “God is here.” And it can be as simple as making 5 requests, on your behalf or others’, and ending each one with “Jesus, Immanuel.”

Here are some of mine:

Thank you, God, for my husband and my children. God is here.

Thank you, God, for safety on slippery roads. God is here.

Thank you, God, for education. God is here.

Thank you, God, for Christmas. God is here.

Thank you, God, for salvation. God is here.

God, I pray for students in the midst of exams and final papers. Jesus, Immanuel.

God, I pray for those who will be missing loved ones at Christmas this year. Jesus, Immanuel.

God, I pray for healing for Eric Westra. Jesus, Immanuel.

God, I pray for those who do not have enough during this Christmastime. Jesus, Immanuel.

God, I pray for those who do not yet call you Savior. Jesus, Immanuel. 



[Kristin vanEyk lives and writes in Kentwood, MI, where she waits impatiently for Christmas while learning the meaning of advent.]

Toddler Jesus

This past Sunday I was hanging out with some of the youngest Encounter-goers in Tots, so I don’t have reflections on Pastor Dirk’s message to offer you. As Christmas approaches though, I’ve been thinking about Jesus. Sometimes I forget he was human, that he walked around and talked to people and ate food and all the physical, tangible activities that come with being human. Nativities and storybooks portray Jesus as a serene infant held in his mother’s arms, or the more accurate ones might show him as a toddler when the wise men paid their visit.

While these pictures present a snippet of truth, as I imagine Jesus did snuggle with his mom sometimes, I think they only portray a portion of it. 

Because Jesus was human. 100%, sippy-cup-toting, clapping, shrieking, tantrum-throwing, nose-wiping-on-Mary toddler human. 

On Sunday we sang a few Christmas songs in Tots. As we sang, the kids shook simple handmade bells attached to pipe cleaners--humble instruments, but when you’re a toddler, you hardly notice such things, much less mind them. Some kids shook and stamped their feet, others simply observed and listened, and I wondered what toddler Jesus was like. It feels almost irreverent to ponder it. The Bible tells us of his birth, one story as a twelve-year-old boy, and the next we hear of him he’s a grown man--but what was Jesus like in all the in-between time? He became a grown up, so he had to be a toddler.

Maybe he would’ve been an enthusiastic bell-shaker, eyes gleaming with delight as he realized he had the ability to create that satisfying jingle. Or maybe he would have observed from a few feet away, wary to fully enter the circle but content to see what others were doing. Maybe he would have sat and smiled, singing the few words that he knew and toddler-babbling the rest.

Exactly what Jesus was like isn’t the point as much as the fact that he was a toddler. We’re used to picturing Jesus as a sleeping baby or a fully grown man, but sometimes forget all those years in between, those years of dependence on Mary and Joseph, of discovering what the world is like, of learning how to count and read and how to make friends. These are the things that make up our human experience, and Jesus had them too. 

This is what we remember at Christmas--we don't have an abstract God, we have a God who took on flesh to live among us, to walk like us and talk like us and shake jingle bells like us. He was a baby, a toddler, a kid, a teenager, a twenty-something. The same Jesus who died on the cross to become our Savior was as human as you and me.


[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and loves Christmas. She also writes on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and tweets @bwitt722.]

Midwest Nice

Encounter Church is located in Kentwood, MI, right in the heart of what many refer to as the land of  “Midwest Nice.” Perhaps people in the good state of Minnesota are nicer, but because they’re so darn nice over there, they’ll let us claim a piece of Midwest Nice along with them. I sometimes wonder, though, if in the midst of all of our niceties, if our little song and dance and lies sometimes do more damage than we would care to admit.

There are a few hard-and-fast rules when it comes to playing the Midwest Nice game. For example, when you meet someone for a coffee, your Midwest Nice gene compels you to offer to pay. Even if you don’t want to pay, you just can’t help it. And the coffee transaction itself has a particular form that goes something like this:

                 

“Hey, it’s so good to see you! I’m so glad we can get together. I can’t believe it’s still snowing in July. Michigan is so crazy.”

“Oh, yeah, the weather here is always nuts.”

[The friends order coffee]

“Here, let my buy the coffee today.”

“Oh, no, that’s so nice of you to offer, but I can get it.”

“No, really, I want to treat today.”

“No, you don’t need to do that.”

“No, really, I insist. You paid for our lunch at IKEA last month.”

“Well, ok. Thanks so much.”

You see what I mean about the song and dance and lies? You have to offer to pay three times before the other will relent and accept the gift, and now the other will feel compelled to pay the next time. There’s a delicate system in place. 

I’ve heard that drivers operating in Midwest Nice Mode often stop behind a driveway at a red light to allow a car sitting in that driveway to turn into traffic since you’re just going to sit at that red light anyway. Apparently that doesn’t happen in other parts of the country. And in Michigan, people actually tend to drive the speed limit. Another example: In my last car, a VW Jetta, the speedometer didn’t work. It read the correct speed until about 40 mph, but after that it didn’t keep up with the actual speed. I had figured out that when my car was traveling on the highway at 74 mph, the speedometer would read 85 mph. Recently, my mother-in-law was kind enough to accompany me to Muskegon for a visit to Binder Park Zoo (which happened to be closed when we arrived, much to the emotional distress of my preschooler). I set the cruise for my standard 85 mph, which I knew to really be 74 mph. We traveled at that speed for over an hour. I had not told my mother-in-law about the broken speedometer, and only after returning home did it occur to me that she must have thought that I was a maniac, hurtling my infant and toddler through space in a metal box at ridiculous speeds when we were in no hurry at all. She didn’t say anything while we were in the car, but I wonder if she noticed, and if she chose not to say anything, was it because of the Midwest Nice phenomena. I mean, who packs her two kids in the car along with a PB&J and a Juicy Juice and then drives at breakneck speeds to a closed zoo?

Dirk didn’t mention Midwest Nice at church this past Sunday, but he did bring up an important cultural distinction between our current American Culture, and the ancient Eastern culture of the Israelites. The Israelites believed in corporate sin, that is, they believed that the sins of an individual became the responsibility of the community. So if an individual committed adultery or petty thievery or slander, everyone in that community had to atone for that sin. Imagine if this were the case for us—that every sin of your friends, family members, roommates, and neighbors settled upon your scorecard as well.  It would be much harder to ignore your cousin’s extramarital affair or your neighbor’s gossiping tongue if you knew that you had to bear their sins along with your own. And imagine how you would act differently if you would be forced to confess your sins publically and everyone else would listen to your confession and then be responsible for it. No more Midwest Nice, I’m afraid.

The problem with Midwest Nice, is that it avoids confrontation and acts rather passive aggressively. Two neighbors in conflict don’t address the problem and arrive at healing for the relationship; instead, the neighbors do their best to avoid one another and passive aggressively extend each other a non-invite to their annual Christmas parties. Or perhaps you have a lot of opinions about how your sister ought to discipline her kids, but because you believe them to be beyond your responsibility, you allow them to be disobedient and disrespectful.  The ancient Israelites may have experience less grace in their lifetimes than we would like to claim, and perhaps they didn’t hide their admonishment behind passive aggression, but they probably had a better understanding of sin, atonement, repentance, and community responsibility.


[Kristin vanEyk lives in Kentwood, MI where she loves to talk about Jesus in ways that are most assuredly not passive agressive.]