Archive for the ‘Lent’ Category

Friendship and Confession…

February 22nd, 2008

Confession isn’t popular. People not only don’t like to do it, they don’t even really like to think about it or talk about it. One way I know this because I don’t like to do it or to think about it or talk about it (not to mention that the blog I previously wrote on confession is incredibly unpopular statistically, but I digress…)

Yesterday, a friend asked what my focus for this third week of lent was and I told her “friends or more generally focusing on my relationships with those the people I come in contact with.”Her response was something to the extent of asking what that will look like and asking “so will you be confessing to friends this week?” I was kind of taken back by the question… I hadn’t planned on it. I didn’t want to confess to friends. I think as I had been thinking about this week I had thought mostly about praying for people I know and for the strangers I pass by, about being open to God leading me to talk to someone I normally wouldn’t talk to or to listen to a friend who needs a listening ear. I had thought about focusing on being a good friend to my friends and to those I wouldn’t normally consider my friends. But, I had forgotten that being a good friend requires openness and honesty and being open and honest requires confession. And I had forgotten the other focus of Lent that God kept bringing up in my research… repairing brokenness.

Is there brokenness in my relationships with others (whether they are family members, friends, acquaintances, etc) that God wants me to confess and mend?

Lord, look for truth deep within my relationships and show me where I might need to confess to them and to you and repent and change the way I relate to others. In Jesus name. Amen.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

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Week 3 of Lent… being a good friend… to all…

February 19th, 2008

So, for those of you who don’t know I decided to join my friends the Malouf’s in journeying through different areas/relationships through prayer during Lent. And so this week Tara writes about praying for, thinking about and noticing the “invisibles” around us. Those people that live in close proximity to us but maybe aren’t our friends or acquaintances. It’s a challenging idea and I encourage you to read more of her thoughts on her blog.

So, here’s where I am this week – week 3 of Lent… I think because I focused so intently on my marriage (a wonderfully rewarding discipline/focus) last week I feel like I would be missing something to jump right to praying for and focusing on brokenness in my relationship with the “invisibles”… I think I still need to pray for and focus on mending brokenness in my relationships with my friends and family. But, I was also really challenged by Tara’s thoughts on the invisible and I don’t want to miss out on that either. So, where does that leave me for week 3 of Lent? I think I am just going to focus very generally on praying for all those with whom I have contact this week. Focusing on what it means to be a friend to the invisibles and my friends alike. I will be asking God to repair brokenness in my relationships with those that I know intimately, with those that I know personally, and with those that I only come in contact with socially. For me this week will be a time to ask God to reveal people to me – reveal to me how I can befriend the friend at my side and the unknown “invisible” that I pass by on the street. I think sometimes those that I call “friend” can sometimes become just as invisible to me as those that I pass by on the street and choose to ignore.

One thing I would like to incorporate as a discipline and practice for this week is the Caim Prayer – or Celtic circling prayer. Tara wrote some about this concept here  and I have been thinking and reading a little bit about it as well. I want to approach my relationships and friendships this week with an intent awareness of God’s presence, asking Him to surround and encircle each that I come into contact with.

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Lord, may you use this week to shape me into a better friend to my friends, a better family member to my family, a better neighbor to the invisibles that I come in contact with. Change me, Lord, make me more like you. Help me to really see people this week and be aware of how to love them in ways that feel loving to them. In Jesus name. Amen.

Rejoicing in the journey –
Beth Stedman

Photograph by Beth Stedman

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Complementarianism, Christian Egalitarianism, and some other thoughts…

February 15th, 2008

In keeping with the focus I picked for this week of Lent – family/marriage - I have been thinking a little bit about the different ideas held by Christians on leadership and authority in marriage.

Most of the churches that I have grown up in and the people I have been around have taught and encouraged a Complementarian view of marriage. The Complementarian view is that men and women are “equal in their essential dignity and human personhood, but different and complementary in function with male headship in the home and in the Church.” And on some levels I think this is still the view that I subscribe to… mainly because its so framiliar to me, but also because I know myself and I know my husband. We are clearly very, very different and we clearly need different things and it makes sense to me to acknowledge those differences in desires/needs when talking about our roles in marriage. But, I also struggle with this view and there are times when I have problems with it… clearly there are those who have taken and do take this view and take the concept of Christian hierarchy in marriage and do terrible things in the name of it. But, I’m not really talking about that… sometimes I feel like even in a genuine and kind adherence to this view there are some problems and it can push women and their view points and opinions to the side lines and margins in a way that can be detrimental not just to those women but to those who could benefit from what those women have to add to the conversation. I think in all honesty even though I have theoretically subscribed to this view I don’t think I have ever liked it much. But, I think I started being more ok with this idea when I got married…which is odd, right? I started thinking about why that is and I thought maybe it was just because I married well and my husband is someone who I don’t mind submitting to and following – I trust him. But, then I started thinking about it more and realized that in our marriage I never really have “submitted” and never have really needed to. There has really never been a decision we have made that we haven’t talked through together and come to some sort of agreement together. So, that got me thinking…we both would probably call ourselves Complementarians…but are we really? In actuality… in how we really live out our relationship are with Complementarians…I don’t really think so…

Christian Egalitarianism is the other major view on authority and leadership in marriage and the more I hear and read about it the more it makes sense to me. And the more I realize that in actual practice is is probably closer to how my husband and I treat each other.

Really though I think the best view I’ve ever seen on authority and leadership in marriage comes from watching my parents relationship and listening to some of the things that they have said about marriage…
I vividly remember my dad and I talking about Ephesians 5 once. We were talking about the role of husbands and wives that Paul lays out there and I remember my dad stopping me and telling me to look at it in the context of the whole chapter. He pointed out verse 21 (the last verse under the previous heading and the right before the section on wives and husbands) it says “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” – submit to one another! Wives submit to your husbands! Husbands submit to your wives! Each of you submit to one another! My dad then pointed out what if we thought of it not so much in term of men being the head and women submitting but in terms of each of us submitting to the other one. I thought a lot about this and later it dawned on me maybe Paul is just laying out in this section HOW we should submit to one another. Wives how should you submit to your husband’s? By respecting him!  You show respect to him by letting him know that you believe in him, and trust him and think he’s a man – by listening to him and yielding to him as if you were listening and yielding to Christ himself.  And husbands how are you to submit to your wife? By loving her! You love her and submit to her by giving yourself up for her – by putting her needs and desires above your own just like Christ loved us and gave up his very life for us. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Lord, you have created us unique yet equal. In Christ there is truly “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus”. But, you have called us each to submit. You call us to submit to you and to in turn submit to one another. You call us to serve one another in love. You call us each to be imitators of Christ and to like him make ourselves nothing, “taking the very nature of a servant”. Lord, forgive me for the times when I have been unloving toward my husband, the times when I haven’t submitted to him, the times when I haven’t served him, the times when I haven’t respected him, the times when I haven’t put his needs above my own. Forgive me for what I have done and for what I have left undone in my marriage. And teach me not to fight for control but to in humility take on the very likeness of Christ and serve. In Jesus name. Amen.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

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Roundup From Around The Web: Lent

February 15th, 2008

Today’s Roundup From Around the Web is all about Lent. What people are saying about Lent and what they are doing about Lent. I hope you find it informative and helpful in your own journey through this and future Lenten seasons. J

Phyllis Tickle is blogging for Lent! In the last few months I’ve had a number of people recommend her books to me but haven’t had a chance to pick any of them up yet. So, I was excited to learn that I could read her blog and get a taste for this renown writer. And I have to say I’m really enjoying it. I will definitely be picking up at least one of her books very soon. Yesterday she wrote a very interesting blog on Valentine’s Day.

Someone sent me a link to this site in a comment to my blog Lent: an Introduction, a little bit of history, and a few ideas and I thought it was worth sharing here as well. I have gotten a few links to a number of wonderful sites about Lent but this is one of the best one’s I’ve seen – lots of clearly communicated info along with devotions for every day of Lent and movies to watch and discuss during Lent as well as a number of other resources. Enjoy!

The Dogwood Abby site shares a very radical practice they are undertaking for Lent – this guy is going to carry his trash with him during Lent (with a very exceptions). It’s pretty extreme but I think it’s interesting and am curious to see how it goes.

Others at Communality have decided to undergo an energy fast for Lent. I liked this idea a lot.

This is an article about Lent and Justice and the connection between the two. It was written by Julie Clawson (whose blog I have read off and on for a while now and love – it has always inspired and challenged me a lot).

Moot Community in London is putting on an art exhibit for Lent – the exhibit features paintings, photography, sculpting and a variety of other art forms all focused on the theme of Lent and portraying Lent through art. Here are a few pictures taken from the exhibit. I think this is a very cool idea…maybe something we could do here in Prague next year…???

 

Rejoicing in the journey –
Beth Stedman

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Some “truths” about marriage that I’m trying to learn and remember…

February 13th, 2008

In keeping with my desire to pursue and look for truth in my marriage this week during Lent I thought I would share some “truth” I’ve learned about marriage over the past few years. I admittedly haven’t been married very long and I have a long way to go in figuring out marriage and what it means to commit to loving someone for the rest of your life. But, I have learned a few small things in my first 2.5 years of marriage and I’d like to share a few of those things with you all today as they have been valuable lessons for me and it’s good for me to take a second to remember them.

When Bryan (my husband) and I were dating (well, I think actually engaged at this point) there was a time when I was feeling really neglected by him. I felt like he wasn’t spending time with me and wasn’t sharing his life and his thoughts with me. I remember calling my mom one night crying and having a long talk with her about it and I remember she shared a story about her relationship with my dad and about what God taught her through a difficult time they had. I remember her challenging me to “encourage the positive”. Basically she told me stop nagging Bryan, stop complaining about what he’s not and instead focus on what he is. Focus on and encourage and praise the good things about him as a unique creation of God. Instead of pointing out the things he is doing wrong (or the things he is not doing right) point out to him and praise him for the things he is doing right, the good things that he does. She told me that if you treat a man like a man then he will act like a man. If you respect them and praise them and encourage the good things they are and the good things they do then they will do the good things more and more and the other things less and less. But, if you nag them and complain about the things they do that you don’t like then they will feel defeated and emancipated and will start to with draw from you. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe put it well, “If you treat a man as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become the bigger and better man.” I’ve tried to never forget that lesson and I can’t tell you how many times remembering that pearl of wisdom that my mom passed down to me has helped me to step back and mend brokenness in my marriage.

Love is a choice. Love is not a feeling. Some days I feel love for my husband and other days I don’t. Some periods of time in our relationship I feel close and connected to him and all is right with the world…and other times I don’t.  But, love is not just a feeling, love is an action. It is choosing to act as if I did love Bryan even when I don’t feel love for Bryan. It took me a while to realize that this acting isn’t fakeness and isn’t hypocrisy… it is love. But, it didn’t take me long to realize that the miracle is that in acting like you love someone the feelings often follow close behind. “You can act your way into a new way of feeling quicker than you can feel your way into a new way of acting.”

After many years of watching and talking with couples who have been married much longer than I have I have come to learn that marriages go through seasons. There are good seasons and there are bad seasons and neither lasts. Well, I guess bad seasons can last for a long time sometimes and if you give up trying then they may last forever, but as long as you continue to stick it out and continue to at least try to love each other through whatever season comes then the bad seasons don’t last. The moon is not always full and it’s not always thin either, the tide is not always out and it’s not always up. Marriage is not always good, but it’s not always bad either. And neither season lasts forever. “More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse” (Doug Larson). “One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again” (Judith Viorst).

Men and women are different. I’m sure your saying to yourself, no duh, Beth! Of course men and women are different! But, really, I don’t think I realized HOW DIFFERENT men and women really are until I got married. Bryan is NOTHING like my girl friends (and that’s a really good thing) and he is (for all our commonalities) NOTHING like me. Learning to deal with these differences is I’m sure a lifelong process but I guess the first step is to recognize how truly different we are. “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility” (George Levinger). Recognizing that Bryan is not like me can free me up to allow him to be the unique man that God made him to be and it can free me up to admit that I may not always understand him and that is ok. 

Anne Taylor Fleming said that “A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time.” This struck me and I think that another thing I’ve learned or started to learn about marriage is that there is always going to be a tension between the needs of the individual and the needs of the couple. We are each unique and uniquely different creations of God and we each have our own desires and dreams and gifts and passions – sometimes those things might overlap, but they won’t always. And I’m realizing that part of marriage is learning to allow each other to dance a solo while also together dancing a duet. We are unique individuals but we are also one in marriage through Christ. “And the two will become one flesh.” We need to be united and connected as one being, dancing one dance for our creator. But, I’m starting to realize that we also need to allow each other to follow the unique and individual callings and dreams that God places on our hearts – we need to let each other dance our solos sometimes. And support each other through those solos. This is a newer realization for me and something I’m still wrestling with. What does it look like to be truly two unique individuals and yet also truly “one flesh”…?? I’m not sure yet but it’s another thing I’m learning about marriage.

Lord, continue to teach me and stretch me. Show me what you desire marriage to look like and continue to transform my own marriage into a thing of beauty for your glory.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

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