Inspired music. Infectious joy. Dancing and celebration, reflecting and dreaming, and most of all, love.
I believe this is what heaven will look like. Every tribe, every nation, every language. Love for one another that is not limited by skin color, culture, or language. A love for everyone. Together, we are humanity. We are in this together. We have one world to share in peace, one voice to speak with kindness, one love to give freely to every single human being created in the image of God. There is no place in the gospel for racism or nationalistic superiority. “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” Sounds an awful lot like the message of Jesus to me. What is important is that, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, love must overcome. If I have all wisdom and knowledge, theology and bible verses, morality and “goodness” but I don’t have love, I am nothing. Nothing.
Querida gente latina, mis amigos, te apoyo. Me alegro de conocerte y el honor es mio. Que Dios te bendiga y te proteja. Que tu sabes tu valor, y que eres amado y respetado. Estoy aqui por ti, luchando por ti, orando por ti, y levantando contigo. Muchisimas gracias por compartir tu cultura, tu musica, tu amor, y tu poder. Te debo tanto. Lo único más poderoso que el odio es el amor.
Some of my fondest childhood memories are found in the warm and comforting embrace of food and tradition. As are the vast majority of Americans today, I am the descendant of immigrants. With ancestry rooted mostly in Denmark and Norway, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Switzerland, and probably others as well have weaved themselves into my origin story as well. I remember growing up enjoying lefse and krumkake around the holidays, and the Velkommen sign in my grandma’s kitchen. Over time, those traditions have become memories, no longer a part of my daily custom. However, there is something that strikes a deeper chord than desserts or a welcome sign. There is a rhythm of life experienced in Scandinavian regions called Hygge. It’s a practice of embracing the cozy and comfortable, of a welcoming spirit to friends and neighbors, and a recognition of us all being in this together. Particularly in the freezing northern regions where the dark, cold winters can feel eternally depressing.
One of my absolute favorite things to do in life is to travel and immerse myself in a new culture, language, and custom. We typically try to avoid resort vacations, although there’s something to be said about unlimited coconut shrimp and Margaritas on the beach. More often, we stay in modest accommodations, eat local fare, and do our best to learn and experience the culture of whatever corner of the world is graciously hosting us at the time. I’ve found some common themes that seem to weave through our shared humanity, revealing that at our core we are much more alike than certain talking heads would like us to believe.
Hawaii greets us with aloha. Aloha. The same word being used for many different purposes that include a greeting as well as love. The phrase is used often to “live aloha”. Live welcome. Live love. Traveling south to the beautiful and peaceful land of Costa Rica, which by the way does not even have a national military, we are embraced and welcomed by “Pura Vida”. They abolished the national military in 1949, instead redirecting funds toward education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Similar to aloha in Hawaii, pura vida is used in many different ways but always carries with it a philosophy of gratitude, simplicity, and joy. In France, this same concept is at the heart of French living. “Joie de vivre” describes all the goodness of slowing down to enjoy the deliciousness of a good espresso and croissant, spending the afternoon in a park with some fine wine and cheese, or simply strolling through the streets with no agenda. They actually have a word for that. To “flaneur” is to just casually walk through the streets, aimlessly aware of all the beauty happening around you and just enjoy the journey.
Isn’t this what we’re really all longing for in our life? Hygge. Aloha, Pura Vida. Joie de vivre. There’s a lot of bad in the world. A lot of division and far too much hate. We have somehow forgotten that we have a shared humanity that really gives us much more in common than we may realize. Conceptually, it’s perhaps easier to see this on a global scale, and yet miss the fact that our neighbors also share this same, common thread of humanity. Our mandate to love our neighbors doesn’t come with fine print. No caveats or loopholes. We don’t get to neglect this because our neighbor looks different, speaks a different language, or has a different set of beliefs than we do. And to make this a bit clearer, your neighbor’s immigration status does not exempt you from loving them, from welcoming them, and embracing them as human beings with dignity and compassion. This will be the bridge that erases the lines that divide, and brings unity to our community, healing to our nation, and a sense of hygge, aloha, pura vida, joie de vivre, or whatever you want to call it, to our lives. Paz y amor.
“Just a little bit more.” “Then I’ll be enough.” Two quotes from two men from two different generations.
Jim Carrey, as he announced the nominees and winner of best motion picture comedy, said he doesn’t just go to sleep as a regular guy. He goes to sleep as a two-time Golden Globe winner. And he doesn’t just dream, he dreams of being a three-time Golden Globe winner. “Then I’d be enough.”
John D. Rockefeller was the world’s first billionaire. After starting out as a bookkeeper apprentice at 16 years old, he eventually built his fortune in oil and business. When he was asked how much money is enough, he sarcastically quipped, “Just a little bit more.” His response wasn’t one of greed, but an admission that no matter how much money he made, it would never be enough.
My wife and I were watching an episode of The Chosen recently. There are a couple scenes that similarly portray Jesus seated at a table with his friends and one-by-one around the room, each states some faithful act of God “would have been enough”. Whether acts of deliverance for the nation, personal healing, or just his steady presence through their troubles, they acknowledge the goodness of God in each faithful act. He didn’t need to keep showing up for them because he had already done enough to prove his love for them, and yet, he just keeps showing up. We were then chatting this morning about the faithfulness of God in our lives together over the past 32 years of marriage, and we were overwhelmed to consider the countless times that God just keeps showing up for us. Whether we have fallen due to our own failure and clumsiness, or we’ve been pushed down by the cruelty of the world, he has always, always been there as a dad lifting us up, brushing the dirt from our knees and wiping the tears from our eyes. Each time would have been enough, yet again and again and again he just keeps showing up.
Perhaps like me, you can sometimes get distracted by the busyness of life. Maybe you feel a bit shell-shocked by bombs going off all around us every day. Social media fuels the fire of anxiety about the political divisions, the tension in our society and culture that feels like it’s being ripped in two. Issues and ideologies constantly fight for your attention like jealous lovers full of hate for any other that vies for your affection. We are told who to hate rather than how to love. Our differences are magnified while our common humanity is forgotten, dehumanizing those who disagree with “our side”. Through all noise and smoke and chaos, stop for a moment and take a breath. Consider the ways that God has showed up in your life. Tell yourself a better story. Remember all the good. Turn your attention to the blessings and beauty in your world. This doesn’t mean we forget about the tragedy and heartache that we have faced, but we acknowledge that we have made it through. We’ve all experienced the pain of failure, betrayal, loss, and countless other reminders of our frail humanity. I’ve been there more times than I care to count or admit. But every time, I have experienced the love of God picking me up, brushing me off, and setting me back on my feet.
Maybe this post is just for me. If you don’t relate to this, that’s ok. But for me, I need to remember the ways God shows up for me. I have to tell better stories and focus more on the redemption than the failure. There is enough hatred, violence, war, and division in the world. Sometimes it’s good to just take a break from the bombs and remember the blessings. I hope you can remember all the ways God has shown his love for you, and allow that to reshape your perspective today. And in the midst of all the noise, maybe we can be ones who can change the narrative. As we remember the ways we have been loved, let us love one another.
Life gets in the way of living sometimes. The daily grind of jobs, bills, and responsibilities can feel like a vacuum sucking the joy out of your life, replacing it with a suffocating discontentment that constantly tells you tomorrow will be different, but tomorrow never comes. We keep going around and around, hoping to be freed from the mundane and enter the story as the hero, or even as the villain. Anything but just an extra or afterthought. And yet, most of us….well, we’re just living life and getting by. We aren’t saving the world, and (thankfully) we’re not out robbing banks and wreaking havoc, either. I say, “We” in order to frame this in the third person and avoid the vulnerable honesty of “I”. I don’t like to say “I” because as soon as I do, “I” become responsible for the confession and “I” have to either continue in the same pattern or make a choice to change. If I generalize and say, “we”, I can stay personally removed from the indictment, remaining anonymously among the “we”, and sharing admission amongst the other 8 billion humans. So let me rephrase this to be clear. “I”, not “we”….I sometimes find myself simply living, surviving, treading water, and struggling to keep my nose above the waves. However, I’m grateful that’s not the end of my story. There is more, my friends. More for me, and more for you as well. If you feel like me at times, stuck in a maze wandering around looking for cheese only to realize the maze is just a circle going around and around, let’s pause a moment and discover the “more” that is available.
With infectious joy pumping through the speakers, the combination of piercing lyrics and a genuine smile radiates through the crowd. I’ve seen Switchfoot live in concert several times, and they never disappoint. Their energy on the stage is convicting and inspiring as Jon Foreman’s voice rings out, “We were meant to live for so much more. Have we lost ourselves? Somewhere we live inside.” Have we lost ourselves? More personally, have I lost myself? When I find myself simply coasting through life, disengaged and disconnected, have I lost or forgotten my purpose? It’s an interesting phenomenon that happens. When we ignore the reason for our existence, we end up just existing. Not thriving. Not fully alive. Not infectiously joyful. Just existing. I believe this is the key to the “more” that we were meant to live. It is in knowing and remembering our purpose. We set our eyes toward the purpose, keeping our hearts and our attentions fixed at all times. Like setting a goal, if I get too focused on the daily tasks and forget why I’m doing them, I’ll lose interest in the tasks because they were never the purpose. The goal is the purpose, so I need to keep my intentions focused on the goal so I don’t lose sight of the “why” and become disconnected from the goal. Similarly, our purpose must remain at the forefront of our thoughts, motivations, and intentions to keep our hearts from sliding into a dull and disengaged state of going through the motions of life but not really living at all. So, what is your purpose?
This can be a difficult question to answer. Believe me, I understand. I’d be lying if I said I have this all completely figured out. I lived much of my life in a perpetual state of confusion about my identity, purpose, and value. My identity was whatever someone thought about me, and my purpose was to try to make that impression as good as possible. The problem is that I could only keep up the facade for so long before the house of cards tumbled, and I discovered some serious flaws in the foundation I’d built. Somewhere deep in each of us is a heartbeat, a rhythm set to the tempo of our creator. His fingerprints are all over us, as we have been created by him and in his image. It is in God that we live and move and have our being. Our identity and our purpose. God is love, and therefore, as ones created in his image, we are to love as well. God moves with justice for the oppressed, so we should do the same. God proclaimed good news to the poor, which is what we ought to do as well. But these are all things we do. We love, we do justice, we proclaim good news, and we feed the poor, care for widows and orphans, welcome the foreigner, and so on and on. There is so much to do that we can lose sight of the purpose behind it and fall into a trap of doing instead of being. Our purpose is in the “being”. Being known and loved by God. Being thankful for life in our souls and the breath in our lungs. Being so overwhelmed by the kindness of God toward us that all the other good things just spill out to the world. Love is no longer a chore but just spills out onto your neighbor. Kindness isn’t veiled in feigned religious words but pours out of our lives on all those around us. Peace isn’t something we just pray for, but it radiates from our lives to bring healing to a world at war.
Sometimes it’s the same ol’, same ol’ mundane busyness of life that gets in the way, and other times it may be forgetting or losing sight of the deep purpose of our normal everyday. Whatever the reason, I have to remind myself that there is more. I choose to wipe the sleep from my eyes and remember I was created for more than just a ho-hum, mediocre existence. We were made to be a reflection of the creative genius of love in the flesh, of relentless hope in the face of darkness and despair. To do that, I need to once again get my eyes off myself, off my own, tiny little sphere of relevance. I lift my gaze to stare in awe at the magic and enormity of the truth that I, you, we were created on purpose. Created with purpose. As one of my favorite artists, Propaganda, says, “You are Heaven’s handmade calligraphy”. I stop viewing myself as nothing more than a sinner saved by grace. I am God’s handiwork; a masterpiece created to be a display of God’s love to the world. And so were you. So I choose the “more”. I choose to live fully alive, out loud with love and joy. I crank up the music and sing at the top of my lungs. I dance to the beat of God’s kick-drum pounding through my veins and remember that I was meant to live for so much more.
I’m not trying to brag, but I’m currently sitting at a 458 day streak on Duolingo. I’ve been a lifelong learner of Spanish, starting in 7th grade Introduction to Foreign Language class. At nearly 50 years old, I should be completely fluent by now but unfortunately I’m still far from it. I listen to Spanish music, have a few native-speaking friends that I chat with anytime I can, and am frequently on top of the leader boards in the weekly Duolingo standings, but I still struggle. Years ago I was working as a Medical Assistant rooming a young girl who arrived at the clinic for an exam. As I did my best to explain to her in Spanish that she could get undressed, put on the gown, and wait for the doctor to come in soon, her friend told me that the girl was “embarazada”. I didn’t know that word, but it sure sounded like “embarrassed”, so I tried to reassure her that she didn’t need to be “embarazada” (embarrassed), but as it became clear that we weren’t quite connecting I went to ask another M.A. for some help with translation. It turned out that I was the one embarrassed as I learned that “embarazada” actually means “pregnant”. I wish I could say that was the only stupid thing I’ve mis-translated in Spanish, but a) that would be an absolute lie, and b) mistakes are just the natural way of learning. For another fun example of my blundering Spanish, check out a previous post Native Tongue.
Learning a new language is difficult, particularly as an adult. I have a friend who is nearly 80 years old who still struggles with English through his native French tongue, and he’s lived here in the U.S. for over 30 years. I’m telling you, if you haven’t tried to learn a new language you should give it a try. I’ve often heard people say that if people are going to live here in America they should just “learn the language”. Forgive me for saying this, but those seem to also be the same people that expect everyone to speak English when they travel to other foreign countries on vacation. Whether we’re talking about immigrants trying to establish a new life in a land of opportunity, or vacationers sipping Margaritas in Cancun, language can often be a significant barrier to understanding our fellow human beings. Experts say there are over 7,000 distinct languages, with new ones still being discovered and others that are lost and extinct. I’m just dabbling in Spanish and French. I can’t imagine identifying over 7,000 languages. That would break my brain for sure!
Perhaps there is a way we are designed to interact with the world that goes beyond any written or spoken language. When someone gives you a kind smile, it can speak volumes. Holding the door for someone can tell them they are valuable and you respect them. Sharing with someone in need inaudibly says, “I love you” in a way that anyone can understand. An act of kindness is a word spoken to the soul of another human being, regardless of their native language. Love speaks to the heart of a person in a way that no audible language can do. Speaking fluent, perfect Spanish, English, or any other language will never have the impact or touch the world in the way that simple acts of love and kindness do. I think we’ve all experienced this at some point and can relate to the feeling of being loved by someone else’s kindness. And, it must be said that the opposite is true as well. When we don’t show love or treat others with kindness, we dehumanize them and strip them of their dignity and value they deserve as someone who was made in the image of God. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL men are created equal….” All means All, regardless of language, nationality, color, or beliefs.
No matter what language you speak, let your words be seasoned with grace. Let your life be dripping with kindness toward others. Particularly when you find yourself in a situation with someone who may look different, believe differently, or speaks another language, choose love to be the way you see them and connect with them. Immigration papers, or the lack thereof, does not determine the value of a human being. Worth is not determined by their ethnicity or native language. Don’t let love be lost in translation, but be clear and intentional in your love for God and for others. And, maybe if you feel so inclined, sign up for Duolingo and learn a bit of a new language so next time you’ll be able to tell someone in their own native language “Hello” or “Welcome”. Who knows, you might even end up making a new friend.
One Love One Voice 