fifth sunday in lent

Sundays are the Christian Sabbath, a day of rest, like God's respite after the first Creation.

Sundays are always a celebration, even in the season of Lent, like the celebration of resurrection at Easter.

So today I'm going to rest and celebrate. I'm going to sit and enjoy. I'm going to make time for some relaxation and recreation, as I re-create and revive myself in the hopes that I will find new life.

day twenty: the gift (cards) of giving

We've made it halfway. Day twenty of forty.

This culinary care has been tiring. It takes a lot of planning, time, and energy to try to make this whole experiment work. It disrupts our usual schedule, puts us in some uncomfortable positions, and makes us do these things we said we'd do even when we don't want to.

Then again, I guess that's the point of the Lenten season: to disrupt, unsettle, and discipline; to shake us out of our regular routines and comfortable lives; to stretch us towards a better life.

In any case, it's been tiring, and we're feeling it. So today was a nice change of pace. We went to a Hardee's near our church, within sight of two missions (the Triune Mercy Center and the Salvation Army shelter) and bought four $5 gift cards, and then drove around to look for people who might need them. We didn't have to go far...

Our first beneficiary was a man in the parking lot talking to an ambulance driver. The man told us that he was trying to get something to eat, and the driver said he wasn't allowed to carry cash but he wanted to help somehow. Problem solved. I handed the man a gift card, and as I walked away, I heard the driver say, "Well I guess somebody's looking out for you today."

The second and third recipients were two guys walking across an adjacent parking lot. We pulled up beside them and rolled down the window. "How are you guys doing? We've got these gift cards to Hardee's...would y'all like a couple of 'em?" They were very thankful, saying "God bless y'all!"

Just a couple of doors down, we saw a gentleman sitting on the steps of an abandoned building, so we drove down there. I got out of the car and introduced myself to "Bones." He had half a dozen loaves of bread, and he said that he was going to "feed the birds, and feed my soul...I got my Bible to read, too." I asked if he had anything for himself, and when he said he didn't, I offered our last gift card.

From start to finish, the whole process only took about 20 minutes. It only cost us $20. It happened within walking distance of our church. It wasn't very relational, but hopefully it met a need. In fact, I'm thinking about starting to carry a few such gifts cards with me all the time.

I don't know if any of the religious/God talk was sincere. I could imagine that I would talk that way to do-gooders, in hopes that they might be willing to offer more. But even if the "God bless yous" and talk of Bible-reading were for show, maybe just saying it can have a positive effect...just like the discipline of Lent, even when we're not totally into it.

second sunday in lent

This is my body, broken...

We speak these words around the table as the family of God - breaking bread together, sharing communion with one another and with our Creator, remembering the Crucified One who suffered (and suffers) from us, for us, and with us.

We celebrated the Lord's Supper last Sunday, gathering to pray around the common table; to partake of bread and wine (grape juice, actually...we are Baptist, after all); to reaffirm our shared calling to be disciples of Christ - healing the sick, comforting the afflicted, freeing the captive, serving the poor - even if it leads to the suffering of the cross.

And although we are in this season of Lent, with its self-denial and cross-bearing and reflective mood, there was an air of excitement and passion as we renewed our commitment to be followers of Jesus, wherever that may take us.

That was Sunday morning.

This is my body, broken...

I found out late that night that an older church member had fallen down the stairs in her home on Saturday night and lay there until Sunday morning. She was badly injured - multiple broken bones, massive bruising and bleeding, head trauma - and was on a respirator in ICU, and they didn't know if she would make it.

I went over first thing on Monday morning and had a chance to see her. She looked like she had been savagely beaten. She didn't even look like herself. This person who had always been so graceful and refined, was now reduced to the raw, battered shell of the woman she once was.

I spoke to her quietly for fear that even a loud voice would cause her more pain, and as I did, one eye fluttered open and the smallest tear slowly formed at its corner. As the tears welled in my own eyes, I prayed with her family members and we stood around her bed.

That was Monday morning.

This is my body, broken...

How often do we say, think, or hear these words without a second thought? How often have I stood over a communion table, bread in hand, speaking these words but not understanding what they mean?

This idea of a body, broken is not as neat and tidy as we make it sound in our prayers or rituals. It's fairly easy to speak these words and say a prayer over the broken body of Christ on a communion table, because they can remain hollow and empty in their rote repetition as they dissipate into the air.

It is much more difficult to pray over a broken body on a hospital bed. The words fall flat on the floor, heavy with the gravity of the moment, and there's no way to make that prayer sound pretty and polished...we probably shouldn't even try to.

How do we recognize brokenness even as we celebrate communion? How can we find communion and wholeness in the midst of pain and brokenness?

I don't know. But I did, right there in the ICU, standing over a body, broken...

Note: This lady passed away early Thursday morning, and the funeral is being held today. Prayer for her family are greatly appreciated.

day ten: selfless?

I am a selfish person. I know I am. Even as I am trying to “deny self” during this season of Lent, in the back of my mind, somewhere in a dark corner where I hope people don’t poke around, is selfishness. We all have it to some extent. And, in many cases (at least in my life), it gets camouflaged in “selfless” acts.

Of course, there is a selflessness in volunteering, giving, sharing, etc. But rarely are our motives pure. These things make us feel good. In fact, we sometimes do them to make us feel better about ourselves, to mask how selfish we are in every other aspect of our lives. But it still feels good and feeds my ego to get a pat on the back or a note of thanks for my good deeds.

Part of my journey this Lent is learning how to give without the get. If I don’t get anything for my giving—not one smile, acknowledgement, thanks, or warm fuzzy feeling—hopefully I can learn how to give up my selfishness, to turn my focus outward so much that I become self-less.

Today was a learning experience in this journey.

Dozens of senior adults gathered at our church this morning to hear from professionals about how to deal with the challenges of aging, and we had agreed to help with refreshments for today’s culinary care. We bought frozen mini-quiches from Costco, popped them in the oven for 15 minutes, and set them out in a line of refreshments.

It was easy, convenient, and required virtually no sacrifice of time or money on our part. Hardly anyone realized that we had even brought food. It didn’t really make me feel good to have done it, which bothered me.

But what bothered me even more was the fact that I realized I craved the acknowledgement (or at least the good feeling I got) for giving and serving. I had missed the point.

Lent is not about making ourselves feel good for giving (or giving up something). We don’t perform "selfless" acts in order to think more highly of ourselves. We do it to break ourselves of the desire for that kind of self-affirmation.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to perform a completely selfless act. Is there even such a thing? I don't think so, but that doesn't diminish the good that can we can do when we try to focus less on self and more on others, even when we don't succeed.

first sunday in lent

I know that we aren't doing anything on Sundays, because technically Sundays are not included in the 40 days of Lent (see intro to culinary care here). But I do want to post two things each Sunday.

First, I want to post some pictures. It may just be a slideshow from the past week's entries, or something completely different. This week's entry is the latter.

Our group of young adults from the church surprised our friends Amy and Ryan on Friday night for a going away party. Ryan has a new job in Lexington, SC, and this is their last weekend in town.

Ryan and Amy

They thought that they were just meeting Suzy and me for dinner at Liberty Tap Room, home of the Freedom Burger: a bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg (which is, of course, how freedom would taste if it were translated into a sandwich). But instead of just Suzy and me, Amy and Ryan got this crowd:

A motley crew, but we love each other

 We ate dinner, talked, enjoyed each other's company, said some goodbyes, and polished off most of a sheet cake that could serve 50 normal people, or 20 of us.

We'll miss you, Ryan and Amy! (But I'll see you in a couple of weeks when I'm in Columbia!)


Second, each Sunday I'd like to share the calendar of ideas that Suzy and I are using to do "culinary care." Here's what we've got so far (and this could change):



If you are interested in joining us in any of these ventures, just let me know. We'd love to have more people involved. And even if you can't join us to participate directly, maybe you can do something similar in your own life that would invite others to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps 34:8).

Culinary Care

“taste and see that the Lord is good” Psalm 34:8

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
			22	23	24	25
			Give couple a buy-one-get-one-free card to the Peddler for a date night	Baby food/formula to Eastside Crisis Center	Lunch for Phil	Hand out bottled water on the Swamp Rabbit Trail
26	27	28	29	1	2	3
	Make a meal for a couple who just had a baby	Bake a cake for senior adult group at the church	Bake cookies for new neighbor	Volunteer at Project Host soup kitchen	Make dinner for homebound church member	Provide refreshments for community-wide seminar at church
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
	Bake a cake for custodians and assistants at work	Put out a bird feeder	Donate baby food/formula to Safe Harbor (for victims of domestic violence)	Donate food to Catholic Charities	Volunteer for Meals on Wheels, delivering food	Take college students out to dinner
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
	Pay it forward at fast food drive-thru	Leave dollars in vending machines	Donate canned goods to North Greenville Food Crisis Ministry	Hand out gift cards to fast food restaurant	Provide fertilizer for Travelers Rest High School organic garden	Hand out bagged lunches at Falls Park

I'll leave you with this image of our den:

day two: baby steps

Day two, and I'm already wondering what I've gotten myself into.

Suzy and her mom spent the entire morning at Costco, stocking up for what we'll be doing these next couple of weeks. They brought home boxes and boxes of food, now stacked up in the back room of our house. Then...*drumroll*... she showed me the receipt.

Sweet. Lord.

Hundreds of dollars later, and we didn't even get everything that we would need for just the first couple weeks of Lent! (By the way, I'm going to keep track of how much we spend on this 40 day project and post the total at the end.) And I still had to stop by the grocery store to pick up goods to donate to the Eastside Crisis Center, today's culinary care recipient.

But what to donate? This blog is gonna get really old really quickly if every other day you read, "...And so we took some more canned goods to yet another food pantry." So I thought we'd do something a little different.

Our tiny pile of baby food (picture enlarged so as not to be so embarrassing)

Baby food.

I had interned at a similar non-profit for a couple of summers during college, and I remembered that people would sometimes come in and ask for baby food or baby formula. The sad part was, we hardly ever had any on hand because people usually didn't donate it. Most people, like me up until that point, think of the hungry person to whom they give to be a grown man, probably homeless. But a parent or family with a baby? A baby in America wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't be hungry...right?

Sadly, they can...and are. And these precious gifts from God didn't do anything to deserve to be hungry (of course, a homeless addict may not have either, but that's another sermon). As a new father, I can't imagine not being able to feed my baby when he's hungry, and it is unconscionable to me for someone else to have that kind of need.

But it happens...every day, even in our city. And as with most issues of poverty or hunger or injustice, I get overwhelmed. I never feel like I am doing enough. In fact, when I brought home a grocery bag filled with jars of baby food, I suggested that we give it all to the Crisis Center, and we could just buy more to give to other organizations. Suzy could tell that I was feeling the burden already. She reminded me that it's just day two. We've got thirty-eight more. We've got a lifetime, really.

What she said reminded me of a passage in The Message. Matthew 10:42 gets paraphrased like this:
     "This is a large work I've called you into, but don't be overwhelmed by it. It's best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who's thirsty, for instance."

A cool cup of water.
A little jar of baby food.
Baby steps on our journey.

day one: date night

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent. And this year, it's also day 1 of our 40 days of culinary care. We decided to start simple.

A couple at our church has had a rough couple of weeks. They've faced tough decisions, been working long hours, and feeling a bit run down. They needed a night out.

Since Suzy and I eat out so much (too much), we invested in a Peddler card (for The Peddler Steakhouse). You pay $100 and you get 10 punches. Each punch is good for one free meal with the purchase of another...a buy-one-get-one-free deal! So you can get two filets mignons for the price of one -  perfect for a date night!

We had one more punch left on our card, and we'd heard this couple talk about how much they love The Peddler's steaks, so we decided to give them our last punch. We figured it might give them an excuse to have a date night, relax a little, and enjoy a nice dinner out, even in the midst of a tough time.

We know we're not feeding the hungry or poor. We realize that this was no grand gesture or major effort or big sacrifice on our part. But we decided to start close. Going out for dinner is something we really enjoy, so we thought we would pass that along to some friends who would enjoy a night out and a good meal. After all...who wouldn't?

forty days of culinary care

Chocolate. Alcohol. Meat. Sweet tea.

These are just a few of the things that I’ve given up in past years for Lent. But this year I wanted to do it differently. Enter: my brilliant wife. Suzy came up with the idea of blogging through these 40 days of Lent, finding ways to care for others using food.

So here’s what we’re going to do:

40 days of Culinary Care. Each day of Lent*—Ash Wednesday (February 22^nd this year) through Holy Saturday (April 7^th this year)—we are going to share love by sharing food. Sometimes we’ll be cooking. Sometimes we’ll be donating. Sometimes we’ll be serving. Sometimes we’ll be getting really creative, because it’s hard to think of 40 different ways to do this.

I’ll be blogging each day to share what we’ve done. I feel kind of weird doing. It feels a little pretentious and self-righteous. Please understand: I don’t have any delusions that what we’re doing will change the world, or even that it will be all that meaningful (for us or anybody else). Honestly, I just thought it was a cool idea when Suzy suggested it.

I am hoping, however, that this undertaking will give me some discipline during these seven-ish weeks. I am hoping that it will make me more intentional in my Lenten journey, more aware of how I use food (to show love, to feel comforted, to display status or power, etc.), and maybe even more aware of how the accessibility of food is a justice issue—not just on a global scale, but in my everyday, normal, routine lives.

I’m sure that I will stumble my way through these 40 days. There will be times when I will screw it up or miss the point; when my hypocrisy will be exposed; when I will not feel like doing anything at all and will just go through the drudgery of whatever we have planned, simply so that I can post something here. If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to watch the idea unfold, and to see where it takes us.

Hopefully, by the end of this season, we will be able to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps 34:8).

*Sundays are not included in the 40 days of Lent, because Sunday is always supposed to be a celebration of Christ’s resurrection. That’s why they are called the Sundays in Lent, not the Sundays of Lent.