Bolder Dash

(For Curt's pray-ers and all who face desperate circumstances)

Fear assaults halls of prayer,
intimidates with balderdash,
“What good is petition
if it doesn’t come true?”

Reason peeks from behind Anxiety,
calculates known sequencing,
concurs with Fear’s assessment,
“Not very likely to happen.”

Faith blows in from four corners,
laughs at the absurdity,
“Prayer isn’t an exercise in probability;
but rather one of possibility.

Hope musters up from the deeps,
rolls away the stone of doubt,
“It’s not really prayer until
it approaches the preposterous!”

Courage starches the sails,
squeezes adrenal glands,
“Now is not the time for timidity;
it’s time to make a bolder dash.”

Dove descends in fire and cloud,
voice of gentle thunder,
“Unleash your wildest prayers of healing
for those whose faith & hope are fading!”

Ours is not the task
to determine what will or won’t,
but to fiercely ask for what we need
and wholly trust the holy Giver.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

The Innocents

Ever notice how God
never dwells on blame?
Yet it’s a powerful tool of self destruction
and the beginning of the end
for many fragile relationships.

When guilt is allowed to overshadow grace,
everything that God intends is subverted;
as if knowing whom to blame, self or others,
will change the way we think and feel
or turn back the clock somehow.

It cannot be the will of God
for the innocents to suffer
or those who love them
to accept the burden
of what’s beyond their control.

When evil falls like acid rain
and scorches tender skin,
I curse the pain, wail in grief,
and shout before the hill,
“Come down from that cross,

hold this child in tender arms
and breathe your spirit deep
into this family’s broken heart!
Stop the clock – yea, turn it back,
and Lazarus us once more!

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Go Gently

(For Wilbur Howie Sr. and all whose passing is grace.)

Much of culture demands we fight,
tooth and nail against going,
denying that we’re even moving in that direction,
color for the fading hair,
tucks and injections for the sags and wrinkles.

Fight whatever comes our way
with whatever we can arm ourselves:
radical surgery, medicine; harsh treatment, equipment;
all ways to deny journey’s inevitability,
pretending we can park indefinitely.

There is another way to travel,
not so much upstream always,
not eternally against traffic’s flow,
but putting up our sail and
letting breath blow us where it will.

A toast to all who find the grace
to tread gingerly upon the earth,
softly upon other lives so that
breathing comes as if from Spirit,
flowers bloom at every turn.

Going gently toward the place
where earth gives way to garden,
where hope is planted, not buried,
where time stretches into eternity
and living yields willingly to life.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Lent

So, what can I do for Lent, why should I do anything for Lent, and just what IS Lent? Forty days, not counting the Sundays, counted backward from the day before Easter to a Wednesday. Why forty? Because forty is a “Biblically epic” number (Ever notice that “forty” is the only number with a “four” in the English language that removes the “u”?). Think Moses on the mountain with God (40 days), Israel in its exodus wilderness (40 years), and Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry (40 days). The English word “Lent” comes from the Germanic root for “Spring” which originally meant “Long”, signaling the lengthening of days as Spring approaches.

That Easterly backward-determined Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, so named because the early church marked itself (as many still do today) with the ashes from the previous year’s Palm Sunday palm branches which have been saved and dried for this purpose (recalling the palm-waving crowd in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ “Triumphal” entry into Jerusalem the Sunday before he was crucified) with the sign of the cross. The ashes remind us of our finitude, recalling Genesis 3:19 “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” The cross reminds of God’s love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

In faith practice, unlike in folklore and popular culture, Lent has always been about doing and not doing things in order to more fully allow us and more readily place us in circumstances conducive to a better understanding of what God intends for the world and expects from us. If and when we choose to give up or take on something (or both), the purpose is not deprivation or denial. It is self-imposed discipline (a dying art in our culture), chosen because we believe that a particular addition and/or subtraction from our daily routine will clear away the clutter or confusion and allow us freedom from the grind of daily routine and expectation.

Our hope and purpose is for God to meet us within the space of this freedom. This discipline is the metaphorical empty chair we set for the table of our lives, in hope and expectation that the Holy Guest will arrive. When the Guest arrives, we find that, beyond the meal of our own preparedness, the Guest becomes the Host and feeds us with food and drink we didn’t know existed (manna, Eucharist) that satisfies hunger and thirst we didn’t know could be sated.

Come to the table.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Excuses

Excuses: the peripheral events
we push to the forefront in an attempt
to lessen the impact of our choices
and avoid some of the responsibility
for our words and actions
used and taken, withheld and neglected.

Everyone has extenuating circumstances
in their life that, when carefully
stacked with reason and mortared with intent,
build a one-sided wall that looks
impenetrable from the inside,
yet altogether like
the emperor’s new clothes
from the out.

Integrity in relationship comes
when periphery remains at the margins,
penitence comes from the heart,
hope flows from the promise
to learn, love, and live
toward a tomorrow where
second chances are genuine and
relationships are valued above scores.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

I was 8 years old in 1967, living in Decatur, Georgia. That Christmas, my biggest concern was whether or not Santa would bring me the Man from U.N.C.L.E. briefcase I so desperately wanted. He did, though I have no idea what happened to it since then. In another part of metropolitan Atlanta, larger concerns loomed.

December 24, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., climbed into the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, for what few people imagined would be his final Christmas Eve sermon. In a courageously prophetic voice, he named the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism” as interconnected forces that stood between the world as it was and the world as God intended.

In many ways we have journeyed far since then, but all three of them are still standing. I’m not sure the direction we’ve moved has brought us any closer to divine intentions—more likely farther away. With regard to racism, many laws have changed, as well as quite a few hearts, though we’ve miles to go before we can sleep in the shalom of God’s true peace.

Our appetite for possessions and our penchant for war seem to have escalated. I’ve outgrown the childish desire for a secret agent briefcase, and even consider larger concerns most days. I often recognize racism when it tries to convince me to act selfishly and fearfully.

Materialism is a more elusive and seductive threat. I know I’m not made more secure by the things I own—often even less secure, as I am consumed by the need to protect them—a protection that tries to convince me that other people who might want to take my things are somehow less than human and have little in common with me. Isn’t that how war begins?

Dr. King was right.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Songs of Freedom

(For all those whose flowers are picked before they bloom.)

“Surrounded by Your Glory,
what will my heart feel?”
How many times do you think
they wondered and pondered this?
And how many times
did you wonder it for them?

“Your rivers full of mercy
are flooding every thirsty soul
and making all things new.”
Make all our souls, O Lord,
thirst for you; you alone.
Let our broken hearts also be made whole.

“We’ve been blessed to be a blessing
with enough to give enough.”
Let not these few years
have been in vain.
Give us the hearts to see and share
the more-than-enough we received.

“My chains are gone,
I’ve been set free.”
Unfetter us, O God,
that we might proclaim
the liberty of your grace, the hope of faith.

“Will I dance for you, Jesus?
Or in awe of you, be still?”
How many times has the dance been mentally practiced?
How awesome it must be
moving beyond rehearsal to worship!

(“I Can Only Imagine” Mercy Me; “See Them Come” Ken Bible; “Blessed to Be a Blessing” Brown, Borop, Liles, Cloninger; “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio)

© 2010 Todd Jenkins