Good Friday Prayers

On Good Friday I set up “Journey to the Cross” at our church.  Cindy Baird helped me with the set up, and I am so thankful for all that she did.  During the evening about 30 people came through the stations that depicted different aspects of the passion week of Christ.  Each one asked the participants to use their physical senses to try to put themselves there in the action.  For example, one of the stations had the scripture about Mary putting the box of expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet.  At that station you were to take a cotton ball and put a drop of scented oil on it, which you were to carry with you throughout the rest of the journey.  It was to remind you of the extravagance of Mary’s act and how we should love Christ extravagantly too.

Many of the stations had places to write responses and prayers.  I thought I would share some of those responses here.

Thank you, God, for doing all of this for me.  I could have been the one to betray you, and yet you love me.

Dear Lord, I know what it feels like to be betrayed.  I am so thankful that you know exactly how this feels…You know.  Thank you also for Your example of restoring Peter.  It gives me hope.

Dear Jesus, thank You for saving me.  Help me to be passionate for you as Mary was.  Thank you for your unconditional love for me.

Help my worship of God to spread like perfume.

Dear Jesus, thank you for saving me.  Help me to know how to express that love like Mary did.

Dear Jesus, it is my desire to give to you extravagantly, passionately.  May my life be poured out like Mary’s perfume.  May its aroma be a blessing rising to you…for you are WORTHY.

Father, it was your love for me that bound you, not this rope.  Forgive me for the pain I caused you.  Help me to never take your love for granted.

Lord, I am so sorry.  I trade a wonderful relationship with you for far too many things that really mean nothing.

Lord, material things cloud my vision every day.  They are here, right now—right in my face.  I struggle all the time with releasing these things.  I want less and less of them and more and more of You.

Father, desire for material wealth is nothing but a distraction.  But I fight this distraction every day.  Help me find riches in You.

Jesus, You went through so much pain so that our lives could be saved.   I thank you so much, Lord.  No words could ever be said to thank you enough.

Jesus, I want to be more and more like you…grow in your love, peace and faith.  Thank you for forgiving me.  And let your joy overflow my heart this Easter!

Father, change me.  Give me your desires.  Make my will yours.  Give this dead body life.  Give me a powerful, bold, strong, yet kind and gentle spirit.  Make me more like you!

I am yours.  Show me what to do.

Please help me to let go and allow you to forgive and change me.  Thank you for loving me.  Help me to feel that love in times of trial.  Help me to surrender myself so that your will be done not mine.

Lord, change me.  Forgive me for doubting, for blocking you out with the world.  Help me to leave everything to follow you just as the disciples did.  Let your will be done in my life.   THANK YOU!

My Favorite Son

We celebrated Will's 21st birthday this week.  I couldn't be prouder of the man he is becoming.  He has a tender heart and a desire to serve God.  I am thankful for the way he still allows me to minister in his life.  At Thanksgiving last year I made a list of the top ten reasons I'm thankful for him.  Here they are:

Top Ten Reasons I’m Thankful for Will Kiper

10. Harry Potter movie nights

9.  Making me laugh

8. Sparring with Dad (verbally)

7.  Your kindness to me and to others

6.  Your willingness to listen to advice

5.  Great conversations

4.  Your imitations

3.  Loyalty to your friends

2.  Your heart for the Lord

1. Free Hugs

Revelation

God uses so many things to teach me, to reveal to me, more and more about who He is and what He has done for me.

Many of you are aware of the troubles I have endured the past week in dealing with my elderly aunt and uncle.  So much suffering, both on my part and theirs.  The last thing my aunt said to me was that if I didn't come and get her and bring her home, she would have me arrested.  It was so ugly.

Before I left Indianapolis I made one last stop at Rosegate to drop off some things I thought they needed.  They were having a very difficult time with my aunt and asked me to go back and see if I could calm her down.  I told them that I could not calm her down because I was the object of her anger.  I would only make it worse.  I could only imagine the venomous things she would say to me if I went back there, and I saw not reason to expose myself to that.  So I left.

Driving down the road my mind was still full of all that was going on.  My heart was heavy.  A picture came to my mind.  What if I had gone into her room and just bowed down at her feet?  What if I had just let her unleash all her rage upon me?  What if I had just let her hit, bite, kick, scream, until she could do no more?  What if I could get up from that and look at her and say, "I love you, Aunt Betty."?  What would have happened next?  What would it have done to those watching?

I trembled at the thought.  The horror of it was too much.  I didn't do it.  I couldn't do it.

And then I thought of Jesus.

In the garden, He faced the fact that there were people who had even greater rage against Him.  He knew the horror that lay ahead.  He trembled at the thought.  His sweat was as drops of blood.

But He faced it all for me.  He let them torture Him until they were satisfied.  And then He said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." He did not turn away as I did, though He wanted to every bit as much as I did.  A new perspective in this Easter season.

I'm so glad for those things that God can only reveal to us in our suffering.

On Suffering

I have been blessed to see many small miracles happening here as I attend to my elderly aunt and uncle.   They have made me see the tangible presence of God in all that is happening here.  One of these small miracles was receiving an email with the following message:

(Lourdes is a town in France that has a spring said to have healing power.
Many go there to try to find an answer to their suffering.)

Something is happening at  Lourdes.  And God wants to give us the eyes to see it and the ground to receive  it. What are all these crippled and handicapped people telling us? What is the  witness of all these nurses and life-bearers? It seems God wants us to live a  vulnerable life, a life dependent on other people, a life that is unafraid to  cry.

The little ones here are  unable to numb themselves. The numb do not notice. The sophisticated will not  suffer. The comfortable need not complain. But Jesus teaches us, in effect, how  to suffer graciously. He actually increases, it seems, our capacity for  holding sadness and pain. This might be the central message of the eight  Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12).

What kind of God is this?  Could it be a God who actually allows deformities, sickness, and handicaps so  we can all be bound together in a sisterhood of need and a brotherhood of  compassion? I do not know how else to understand it all and we surely see it  acted out right here. That is the primary miracle of Lourdes.

As I am walking this road with my aunt and uncle I am surrounded by the weakest, the most vulnerable.  I am glad for the compassion it is growing in my heart and mind.  I am glad for the bond it is growing in my relationships with others in need.

This is such a hard road...but it is not without blessing.

Bead for Life: Lesson 2

This week’s lesson for Bead for Life was another good one with lots of students joining us for lunch.  We were able to talk about what it is like to live in extreme poverty on about $1 a day, which about one out of four people on the planet live on.  Each of the students was given different amounts of money to spend at booths we had set up for purchases they could make.  Booths represented choices like food, water, health care, heating, education, and luxury items (one of the luxury items was a mattress). 

The majority of the students were very poor and only able to afford the poorest food and water, and maybe health care or education.  Not much.

The middle class students represented people like the ladies in the Bead for Life program, who have worked themselves out of poverty and are able to enjoy a better quality of life.

One of the things I got to emphasize was that often the choices people have to make are very difficult.  Some of the students chose some of the free things like water that had to be carried and was untreated.  We talked about the fact that although this didn’t cost any money, it did cost in other ways, including poor health, time, and energy.  We also talked about how having to take time to carry water or gather firewood kept people in poverty because they didn’t have time to go to school or look for work; they were too busy just trying to survive.

These lessons have been very impactful to my students who continue to have lots of meaningful and thoughtful things to say about what we are learning.

And we continued to talk about KONY 2012 and the controversy surrounding it. 

If you haven’t watched the video yet you might want to check it out here.

If you want to know more about the controversy, check out this here and these resources.

Bead For Life: Lesson 1

We had a very successful week with our Bead For Life lessons.  I taught the lessons to my small group of students, and we strategized together about what our lesson next week should look like.  These lessons have lead to some wonderful discussions with my students, including one student commenting, “Thinking about these people lets me know how good I really have it.  When I’m feeling down about something, my mom is always telling me it could be worse. She’s right.”  They also brought up the Kony 2012 film that came out this week, and that many of them watched.  This was great timing for me.

We had around 140 students join us for lunch to see what we were up to.  In each lunch session, some of my students took the lead to share the information we wanted to get across to the students.  They stepped up and really spoke with confidence. 

We divided the room up into different population areas in the world.  We marked the desks with colors that designated what people group they were a part of.  In each group we had 2 Americans, 3 Europeans, 4 Africans, 3 Latin Americans, and 18-19 Asians. 

Next we talked about poverty in American versus the extreme poverty that exists in Africa.  We talked about the causes of poverty in Uganda, including AIDS and civil war.

To bring it all home I had made a very large chocolate chip cookie for each group.  We divided up the cookie according to how wealth is distributed around the world.  It looked something like this.

We gave each group their share of the cookie and talked about how it was distributed.  Americans got one fourth of the cookie and Europeans got another fourth of the cookie.  Their pieces were huge and only shared by 2 or 3 kids.  The Asians got one third of the cookie but had to divide between a lot of kids.  Obviously, the Africans got the smallest piece and had to share it between 4 kids.

We talked about how it was just chance the way they got their piece of the cookie; just a matter of which seat they happened to sit in.  In the same way, we didn’t have any say about where we would be born.  Each group got to decide how to divide up the piece of the cookie they got.  They could keep it all, save it for later, share it with others…whatever they wanted to do.

It was such a good lesson.  It really made them think.  It made me think. 

I can’t wait for next week.

Blessings!

I am amazed!

I have seen God moving in such awesome ways in my life and the lives of those around me.  They are small things, but I know they are God working in my day-to-day circumstances.

Yesterday I was reading a book about teaching and how to be prepared for your lesson.  My thoughts turned to Camp of the Woods and stories we might teach this summer.  The theme for camp is the Olympics, and I knew that we had used some materials at church many years ago with the Olympics as a theme.  I had looked for these materials at church with no luck, and I even called the company to see if they were still in print but they were not.  Now as I was reading and thinking, I knew I had some books on my bookcase that might have some good ideas in them, so I got up right then to find them.  I pulled the 4 or 5 books that I was interested in off the shelf and when I sorted through them, what should be right in the middle of them, but one of the books about the Olympics I had been hunting.  From there I was able to go online and find 2 more used copies on Amazon.  I had been on this hunt for months, and there the book was, right on my shelf!

Will also went to the doctor yesterday to get his medical clearance for flying renewed.  It went smoothly, and he is good for a year now (Hallelujah!).  The amazing thing was that Daniel Davenport ended up at the same doctor at the same time, and they got to sit and talk about all things flying, and Will got some answers and good advice that he needed to hear.

Then this morning I was searching around on some sights that I like to listen to for devotional, spiritual insights.  I keep hearing people talk about living in community.  Many of the speakers I listen to share how they have opened their home to several people in order to live more like they did in the early church.  It’s such an interesting idea to me, but I thought, “That’s not happening at my house.  I don’t think everyone here is up for that.”  But then I thought,  “I’m going to Camp of the Woods, where I will get to do that all summer!”  One of the things I’ve loved about camp is the communal lifestyle that we enjoy there.  I’m telling you, just thinking about how God has allowed that to happen in my life, when I saw no way for it to happen made me do some shouting this morning. 

This afternoon we got the word from my friend Jane that she is in remission from her stage 4 lung cancer.  Another round of shouting!!

So I bless His name in these good times, these good moments.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow.