His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?” “How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked. “Seven,” they replied.                       Mark 8:4-5

This passage from the book of Mark recalls the time when Jesus fed 4000 people- with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. This miracle illustrates so much to me. First, this miracle could have taken place if Jesus had no bread and no fish. He could have performed the miracle any way he chose. But he chose to use what he had in order to illustrate some things to us. Namely, Use what you have, even if you don’t think it is enough.

I can just imagine that conversation with the disciples when they told him that they could not procure food for these masses of people. They were in the middle of nowhere. Jesus, thinking about the needs of the people, refused to send them off without feeding them.

So, Jesus said, “How many loaves do you have?” They said- “Seven”. I can just see Jesus saying, “Well that should do it. We got this”. He wanted to show them that with him, they could use their puny resources and do great things for other people.

Jesus also wanted them to be part of the miracle. He used the bread and small fish that they had gathered up in order to feed to crowd. They were to distribute the food, then collect the leftovers- yeah, the leftovers!

The intent of the story? Use what you have to serve others. Our job is to trust and serve, it is not to be fixed on the outcome. Jesus can take care of the outcome just fine.

We just bring those few loaves and a couple of small fish.

Prayer: Lord, thanks for the plan to use us in your work, Amen

Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.  You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.                  Acts 10:34-36

Yesterday was June 19^th. It is the new American national holiday, Juneteenth, which celebrates the date in 1865 when thousands of African-American slaves in Texas found that they had finally been set free. Many of my international readers may not be aware of this event, and indeed, until somewhat recently, a fair number of Americans probably were not well aware of it either.

It was not taught in the schools I attended, and I was about 21 years old when I learned about the significance of that event. My work partner was an African-American woman who explained to me this date, this celebration, as a part of Black culture.

American slavery is not a subject that White America wanted to discuss or make efforts to remember. In fact, the less it was discussed, the less guilty we felt. However, I think it is important to remember the past, not to simply feel guilty, but to understand ourselves and our country in context and in fact. We need to remember that African-Americans, and the indigenous peoples of America suffered greatly as the North American continent was slowly absorbed into an American culture that favored certain ethnic and racial groups over the years.

Yes, America was known as the “Great Melting Pot”, but that was a nice concept that often did not really ring true. Certain groups were favored over the years, and certain people groups were systematically excluded. That is the simple truth.

 So, as Christians, we celebrate the value of people in God’s eyes- that he loves everyone, and is no discerner of people. We are human and we fail in this concept, reverting to our tribal mentality which unfortunately can triumph over total acceptance of others, especially if they do not look like us.

Let us celebrate the beauty of diversity, and use holidays like Juneteenth to do that very thing every year.

Prayer: Lord, you have made us different, but equally important to you- you love us without distinction, Amen

 “Who asked your opinion, you sons of Zeruiah!” David exclaimed. “Why have you become my adversary today? This is not a day for execution, for today I am once again the king of Israel!” Then, turning to Shimei, David vowed, “Your life will be spared.”                            II Samuel 19:22-23

Our pastor gave a great message today at church as he discussed “knowing who you are”. He gave the example of King David when he was given the opportunity to give the death penalty to a man in his kingdom who had dishonored him earlier. David, in full possession of knowing his strength and his power, declined to give the death penalty. He spared the wrongdoer by saying  

“Who asked your opinion, you sons of Zeruiah!” David exclaimed. “Why have you become my adversary today? This is not a day for execution, for today I am once again the king of Israel!”  Then, turning to Shimei, David vowed, “Your life will be spared.”     

David did no need to act rashly and harshly to prove that he was in power. He knew it, and that was good enough.

I talk with my clients about knowing themselves, and accepting themselves right where they are. If you know who you are, you don’t need to be who other people expect you to be. You know your strengths and weaknesses, and you accept them. You can feel free knowing who you are. I use the phrase “Wherever you go, there you are”, meaning, you take your full self wherever you go, and others may or may not accept that, but if you are comfortable in your own skin, you’ll be fine. You can live with yourself.

What freedom that is! Some people in the public sphere need to posture with a sense of bravado, even bullying. They do not feel secure in themselves. Bullies are the least self-confident people on earth. Their need to show strength at the expense of others is a sure sign of failed self-acceptance.

So, wherever you go, there you are- enjoy it!       

Prayer: Lord, help us to see our acceptance in you no matter what, Amen                                                                

Happy Father’s Day to those readers who are fathers. What a joy it is to be a father, and a grandfather! I realize that this could be a fine distinction, but I think that it is more important to be a “dad” than a father. One can be a father without much effort and planning. One must sacrifice and love deeply to be a dad.

I am blessed to be the father of two great children, and a grandfather to six amazing grandkids. My kids remind me of the times that we played “sea monster” in our living room, with them jumping on the couch to avoid the dreaded sea monster (me). Or the bedtimes when I told them what to dream. Or coaching them in little league and girls’ softball. Or road trips in cramped cars that did not always include air conditioning (yes, that was a thing).   

What they may not know, is that being their dad was the greatest experience of my life. I had the privilege, as do other dads, to help shape young lives into being great productive people who love and care for others.  

So, on this Father’s Day, celebrate being a dad. If you are not a dad, or a step-dad, find ways to mentor and coach young people into being responsible, loving adults. That is our job, dads of the world.

It is a great job.

Prayer: Lord, thank you for the opportunity to be a dad, Amen.

You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.                                            II Timothy 2:22

I recently had a discussion with a client about the need to reinvent ourself as we go on in our career. I am at the point in my career that I can look back a lot and reflect. Yet, just looking back at the “old days” would not be a very helpful exercise if I did not use it to pass on to others some things I have learned along my journey. Sharing wisdom and experiences gained over our lifetime is not only a privilege, it is a responsibility.

I tell my clients sometimes that we need to spend most of our time looking through the windshield, not the rearview mirror. Looking back through that mirror is helpful, even necessary at times, but if we spend a majority of our time looking backwards, we will be in trouble. We won’t be able to see what is in front of us.

As we age, we need to keep looking forward- to continue reinventing ourselves to remain relevant and viable. We do have much to share with our younger brothers and sisters, but in order to do that, we need to stay current, and engaged with the culture.

Yes, there is a tendency- I have a tendency- to look back wistfully at the past. It is a nice thing to do once in a while, and it is often comforting. But we must remember that we still have a future, no matter what our age, and we owe it to those following us to give as much guidance and direction as we can.

Prayer: Thank you Lord for the plan to pass on to others the things we have learned from our journey, Amen

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven…                                                      Ecclesiastes 3

I guess it’s all in how we look at it. The most famous example is the glass half full/half empty. Both statements are true, but your outlook on it defines your mood. Yes, it is also true that your mood can define how you look at it too. On a bad day, a glass ¾ full can look mostly empty at times.

I got to thinking about this when considering how we look at our busy schedules. For some people, schedules are tyrants that rob them of free time and cause endless worry about too much to do in too little time. Yet I could argue that schedules are a blessing, which can give predictability and order to our lives. If we feel that we do not have control over our schedule, it becomes a harsh taskmaster. If we feel control over our schedule, it becomes a reassurance that we can prioritize our time, and get done what is most important to us.

I once had a mentor who asked me if I had put into my schedule book time to be spent with my wife. “Everything else is scheduled”, he observed, “what about the most important things in your life?”

Sage advice there. It is really the priorities and the right choosing of them that is the key. The schedule isn’t the problem, it is our use of it that can be a problem.

Prayer: Lord, you have given us the precious gift of time. Help us to use it wisely, Amen

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything
    in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see
    and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.
     Colossians 1:15-17
                                                                                                                  

I was recently reading a devotion by Father Richard Rohr. He is a deep and sensitive thinker and I like his work and his thinking. He was talking about how we tend to differentiate between the “sacred and the profane” things in life. His argument is that such differences are arbitrary. Essentially, all of life is sacred.

I had written in the past some similar ideas. What we consider “profane” is just our own aversion to certain places or things, or even people. What God has created is sacred. What we do with that creation marks it as honoring or dishonoring, but all of creation is sacred.

The rationale for that is the idea that God is in all of his creation. Not that we worship things, or worship the creation more than the Creator, but if God created it, doesn’t it contain his life-giving Spirit?

I have expressed my view in the past that creation was the expression of God’s infinite energy – that original “Big Bang” if you will. We cannot fully understand that creation, but we know that the universe is still expanding, and that there are things, such as “dark energy”, which scientists really still don’t grasp.

God’s creation is held together by him in ways we will never understand. But if we believe that it is only through the power of Christ’s Spirit that all things consist, as Paul suggests above, then we cannot really decide what is holy and what is profane. Indeed, we should simply honor all of God’s creation.

Prayer: Lord, we honor your creation and thank you for the gift of life, Amen

“Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other  Isaiah 45:22

I recently had a discussion with my daughter about how COVID-19 has affected our country. All countries in the world had to deal with this global pandemic, of course, and I suspect that each culture was affected a bit differently. I do know that in the United States, the COVID crisis uncovered some deep faults in our structure that were just below the surface, ready to be revealed.

I told my daughter that I think that stress reveals fault lines. Just like a building, when it is under the stress of weather, erosion, earthquakes- whatever- the structural faults of the building will be exposed under stress. Often, those failures are spectacular.

We too have cultural, physical, political, spiritual and mental health fault lines in our system. When our system was put under the stress of COVID, those faults were exposed. We saw a physical crisis unfold to be sure, but we also saw spiritual and political systems fail under the stress.

Our mental health crisis of isolation and depression was exposed by the pandemic. We saw dramatic increases in suicides and other mental health disorders. Our political system too was stressed to the point of breaking. Our spiritual weaknesses became all too apparent when we saw the hopelessness of many. Unfortunately, many people turned to political solutions for a spiritual problem.

I will talk more about this in future blogs. The principle is this- when stress hits a system, the faults will begin to be revealed. Let’s make sure that we know that the remedy for spiritual problems is turning to God and humbly seeking his hand.

Prayer: Lord, help us to use crises in life to reveal our need for you, Amen.

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.            Psalm 139:14

In speaking with a client recently, I indicated to her that, as we spoke about her teenage daughter, our identity is not in our diagnosis. A diagnosis is a tool we use for clients for several reasons, one of which is for reimbursement purposes. Another aspect of diagnosis is because it is a sort of shorthand to give a category for a collection of symptoms that may be helpful in the treatment of that client. It should never be taken as an identity. For example, it should never be used to be a shorthand for understanding our clients.

The client is not the “Major Depression”, or the “Bipolar I” client, or the “Borderline” client. Rather, these are people who exhibit symptoms consistent with the diagnosis as defined in the DSM 5 or the ICD10 clinical manuals.

I had gotten concerned when the client stated that her daughter was on the internet, chasing down how clients with the diagnosis “RADS” (Reactive Attachment Disorder) typically behaved. I wondered if her daughter was trying to chase down her diagnosis in order to explain her behaviors. Was her daughter trying to “live into” the diagnosis?

Whatever the reason, I emphasized that her daughter is not defined by a diagnosis. She is defined by her unique God-given gifts and strengths. She is defined by how she uses those gifts and talents in this world, especially in the service to others. In other words, we are defined by how we respond to the gift of life that God gave us, and the unique imprint he has upon us.

So, diagnosis can be a helpful tool to clinicians, but it is not a definer of who we are.  

Prayer: Lord, give us the understanding to see ourselves as you see us, Amen

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend                                                                                   Proverbs 27:17

I saw a client recently, and I gave her a homework challenge which she said would be difficult. As we discussed the homework, she agreed that it was something that needed to happen at some point. The question was not IF the behavior would need to be tried out, it was a matter of WHEN. She agreed that this was true, and we laughed as she said, “I know you are right, but this is going to be difficult for me!”

I then said to her, “Well, you know my job is not to make you comfortable, my job is to help you heal and grow.”  She agreed, and we further discussed the homework options. She will do them, and she will do them when she is ready. I felt that I needed to challenge her with the reality of the situation. I told her that sometimes counselors deliberately “turn up the heat” to be the reality checks they need. Like anything else, I reminded her, what we put off, we usually have to pay with interest!

This client has grown a lot, and she agreed that she was reluctant to start counseling because it was an unknown process and therefore was a bit intimidating. Yet, just a few months into counseling, she is surprising herself with healthy behaviors, and a “voice” that she did not have before.

So, like I said, my job is often not to make people comfortable where they are, but to challenge them to do things they did not think possible.

I have a pretty cool job.

Prayer: Lord, help us to challenge one another for good, Amen