Plunging and Praying

My left hand found the plunger without looking and in no time the task was complete.  The stuff in the toilet had been there a while and, having had no success at plunging it herself, a teenage girl became desperate enough to call on the dorm parent.  “Mrs. M-P the toilet is clogged again.”  I reply, “of course it is, I’ll be right there.”  I have been a dorm parent for three years and have plunged more than a few times a week.  Nowadays, I am also serving as pastor along with being a dorm dean. The request for my expert plunging always serves as a call to prayer. My husband, Will, calls this routine plunging and praying.  My prayer comes out in the form of singing.  10,000 Reasons, by Matt Redman, is my most frequent praying and plunging song.  It is loosely based on Psalm 103 which states:

“Bless the Lord, O my soul,

   and all that is within me,

   bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

  and do not forget all his benefits –

who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the Pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good as long as you live

So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

It is as though the Psalmist is coaching or singing to himself.  How often our own souls need coaching! Remembering God and all of God’s good actions toward us, with us, and in us, we reconnect with what is supremely true.  This re-rooting the soul is the best kind of coaching that we can do for ourselves.    

The sight and smell of a clogged toilet is a reminder that life can stink.  Pain, frustration, and chaos cannot be avoided.  However, in each mess that I encounter, I hear the invitation of One who entered the mess of humanity to bring hope and healing.  The stuff in the toilet is going to pass. The mess is not ultimate. So, I've decided to face this particular mess with prayer because on my own, “blessing” seems far from clogged toilets. When I re-root and claim the truth in the midst of the mess through my praying and plunging, I am partnering with God. I remember and claim once more the most real and unchanging truth about my life.  It is God.  It is God’s abundant goodness and kindness to me and to all of us that sustains us.  At the end of the day, regardless of the stinky mess, I can sing praise to a God who is intimately present in all of life.

Life in the Kingdom of God is like ordering and eating a hoagie

While my classmates were musing about how there seems to be a disconnection between what people who claim to be Christians say that they believe and what they actually practice in reality, I decided to raise my hand and weigh in with my two cents.

Instead of two cents, a comparison came out that, in the end, turned out to be a fairly accurate evaluation (in my opinion!) of the malaise, the non-active, life that some live.

It is like a hoagie.  Say you go to a restaurant and you are with your friend.  The friend asks what you will order and you say a hoagie.  The menu depicts a scrumptious heap of meat, onion, peppers, cheese, and tomatoes atop a thick roll.  It looks good.  The friend assumes that you had the hoagie before since your recommended it to him or her.  Both you and your friends get these scrumptious looking hoagies delivered right to you in moments.  Your friend waits for you to begin, but you are stunned.  You just recommended and ordered something you have no intention of eating. 

If a scrumptious hoagie is set in front of you, you eat it, right?  It could be said that those who claim to believe and yet have never really practiced walking with Jesus is the person who orders and perhaps recommends something (the belief without serious intention to follow) without having any real experiential knowledge of it.  A lot of people “order” or say that they “believe” in Jesus, but the truth of the matter is that a lot of those same people have not seriously intended to ingest His way so that it becomes their way.  Imagine the hoagie sitting there and after a while it no longer looks scrumptious.  Because hoagies are made and ordered so that they can be incorporated into your body…making the substance of the meat, veggies, and bread real to you.

What would it take to convince us that it is worth it?  Why isn't God’s reality and God’s goodness the most real reality of our lives? 

Do you and I see in Jesus (and God, the Father), One who is worth going after like a pearl merchant who had searched all of his life for that one pearl and finally, finding it, thought it nothing to sell all that he had in order to go and buy that one?

(read Jesus’ parable of the kingdom in Matthew 13)  

The Kingdom of God is like kudzu

Jesus always spoke of stuff that was right at his fingertips and along my journey through the kudzu on the trail this last fall, I had the notion that if Jesus was taking the trail with me he might have been using the kudzu to teach me a lesson about living in the kingdom of God.

Those of you who do not live in the south may not realize that this thing called kudzu was introduced here about 50 years in order take care of some environmental problem.  Since then, it has covered every possible vacant spot and it continues to grow.  It grows by runners which means that it is all connected.  Think about it this way:  this deciduous monstrous plant has spread to cover multiple states (Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky, ect...you get the idea) and now is thought by some experts to be the largest organism on our planet.

Here is my mock parable and thanks to Shiny Samuel there are a couple of pictures for you to enjoy.

The Kingdom and Kudzu

The kingdom of God is like kudzu

          strong

                   sturdy

                             steady

          beautiful

                   bold  

                             bursting with flowers

          treasured by some

                   total annoyance to others

                             taste and see, is it good?

          hides at times

                   huddling from view

                             how do we perceive it in winter time?

          inviting

                   inhaling

                             ingesting

          dancing

                   delighting

                             daily