It all started in the Temple.

Zachariah, the old priest, had been chosen by lot to enter into God's presence – into the Holy of Holies, to offer incense. He stayed inside there for a long time. Too long. Because he was talking to an angel.

The angel told Zechariah that he and his wife Elizabeth – who was well beyond child-bearing years – would be given a son who would be great before the Lord. This son would be filled with God’s Spirit and would turn many hearts to the Lord. He would speak with the power of Elijah. He would prepare the way for the coming of another. The angel’s name was Gabriel. The coming son was to be named John.

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We are all born homeless. This thought finally makes sense to me. It makes sense of the ideas of God and Jesus and church and heaven and hell and eternity. All those loose words feel like pieces of a puzzle I turn around in my hand, trying to get them to line up and fit together perfectly.

We are all born homeless. We just don’t realize it. Some of us were born into gentler neighborhoods, where the sun was shining and the breeze blowing on tree-lined streets. Some of us had to learn to walk around glass and through dark alleyways, keeping an eye out for the coming storm. But all of us were born homeless, looking for our Home.

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What do we know of being an eyewitness? What do we know of testifying about what our own eyes have seen?

Many years ago, as Jeff and I slowly pulled through an intersection, a car ran a red light and hit us. The policeman who took our information returned to us after speaking with the man who hit us and told us he would need to give us a ticket. We were shocked because it obviously was not our fault.

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“Come on in,” she said. “The water feels great.” I dip a tentative toe in breaking the surface. I decide to go ahead and commit; the warm water bubbling hotter as I make my way down the tiled steps.

“There are deer grazing on the lawn below us,” she shares and makes her way through the water to gaze out at them. It has been a long weekend of overflowing abundance and I had been hoping for solitude and silence to soak up the last glow of the day as the sun set behind the snow-sprinkled Colorado mountains.

I quickly let the realization sink in that this woman has stories to tell as she moves through the water to sit even closer to me and begins to unspool her life, the information spilling out and puddling around her like a shiny satin ribbon.

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It's inevitable. Every time, after God has walked me to the stage, put a microphone in my hand, and given me words to say, I wake up the next morning asking, “What? What are your plans for me? Is this really what you want me to do?” And now with social distancing, this path seems to have yellow ‘no trespassing’ tape blocking the door. What am I to do?

I ask those questions, not out of humbleness and obedience, but out of doubt and mistrust. A little bit of frustration. I don’t like this faith walking. I want the whole picture painted out before me. I want “This is the way – walk in it.” But God is being silent on this subject and I don’t like it.

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My brain seems to be in a loop. The words echo around and around because they don’t have anywhere else to go these days. Pursuing peace. Pursuing peace. Pursuing peace. Choo-choo.

We all have been on a new adventure together. But separate. Each morning opens up to a blank slate. My calendar that had been full for April suddenly was wiped clean. We all have opened our hands and let go. There has been loss. Some folks have had much harder loss than others. 

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I am betting the followers of Jesus didn’t see it that way. Just days before they had followed him through the streets to shouts of ‘Hosanna!’ A song of adoration, shouts of salvation echoed along the way as he rode a donkey – the sign of a king, the sign of a Messiah, the sign of a savior – into a Holy City under martial law. He was there to deliver them. Hopes were high. Spirits soared.

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The birth of Jesus on earth was announced with angel song declarations of coming joy and peace. Jesus left this earth declaring the same: “My peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”

Peace. Why are we so far from this peace that the angels announced and Jesus promised? Perhaps it is there in the disclaimer Jesus writes in black and white; “…not as the world gives.” Do we keep grasping for worldly peace instead of something much bigger, something much better? What is the difference here between the world’s version of ‘peace’ and this peace of Jesus?

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Sunday, after on-line Andy and a walk around the neighborhood with my friend Jane, I tried to entice her into heading over to the neighborhood restaurant for brunch (I think restaurants were still open then – just discouraged). She suggested we just have coffee at my house. She has always been better at following the rules than me – so she keeps me out of a good bit of trouble.

Homemade muffins, honey, and coffee. Jane looked at the little green price tag still affixed to the yellow flip-top. “Oh my, are you going to share this with me? This stuff is the price of gold!” “I know!” I responded. “I decided it would be worth it since you just use a little at a time.” Probably the better response would have been, “I wanted to share it because you are worth it.” But Jane doesn’t care for mushy sentiments, so all was fine.

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Do you feel like you have woken up in a foreign world? I do. I spent the last four days in Birmingham, along with a morning adventure into Tuscaloosa, and that world is a world of beautiful southern women, gentle-men, labs lolling on the front porch and children’s toys waiting for them in the front yard. I was in heaven, despite the virus news that broke down the door and slowly streamed its way in. The sun was shining and the buds were breaking forth. Bees buzzed on the blueberry bushes at the side door. Let me say it again – heaven.

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I grew up in a house where the blessing was said before every meal. It was my Daddy's blessing; sort of a one-breath, every word running together blessing that went like this; "Lord-thank-you-for-these-and-all-blessings-Christ's-sake-Amen." We never ever started eating until that blessing was said. Occasionally my mother might say, “I don’t think we blessed the food,” as she suddenly put down her fork and looked around the table at us. I learned, even if I insisted that we had – we would all bow our heads and it would be blessed again.

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I don’t have any original ideas. I really don’t. I trail around on the coat skirts of much smarter people. But they are pretty smart people so I really don’t mind clinging on.

I am in the nose-bleed section, cheering my heart out. They can’t hear me. That’s okay. They give me wonderful things to think about all day long. I thank God for these incredible, gifted people who write profound truths, sing beautiful words with a glorious melody or speak out with a fighter’s stance and rhinoceros skin. 

“Go!” I whisper to them. “Go, and don’t let them knock you down!” And I say a prayer of gratitude that they are brave enough, bold enough to stand up and shout it out.

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I have to admit – this whole idea of choosing a word for the year is new for me. I first heard of this only a few years ago in the small Christian circles where I roam. I couldn’t really get into it although I loved the concept. But last year – my year of slamming the car into reverse, turning the wheel a hard right and gunning the engine, I thought – why not? I am heading down this new curving road where I have never been before – why not throw a guiding word into the glove compartment in case I get lost?

True to my slightly dyslexic self… (and no, I have not been diagnosed except for strangers asking, “So you have a little trouble with transposing things, huh?) …I couldn’t pick one word. I needed two words to tell the story of where I thought I was heading.

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It is in the night that the whispers come, lingering in the shadows, still quietly with me when the sun rises. “You are empty,” the voice tells me. “You have nothing to offer. Nothing anyone wants,” it taunts. As I pour my coffee with this uneasy cloud of worthlessness still hanging over me, I glance at the scripture that has found its home there in my kitchen for the past ten years:

"I am doing a great work and I cannot come down."

I think to myself, “I need to take that scripture down. I have no great work I am doing. I have nothing to accomplish.”

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This I must remember. I must tattoo it onto the palms of my hands: ‘Dirty became the new holy when Jesus died covered in his own blood and your sin.’ This is my paraphrase of Andy Stanley in Irresistible. 

I need to spend less time trying to keep my hands clean of wrongdoing and more time with my sleeves rolled up, reaching out to wash feet and carry another’s heavier burden.

There is no other religion that follows a crucified God. There is no natural inclination to wash the dirty feet of others. Washing, not because we are better or cleaner, but because we are servants. Not exactly the best-paid job in the classifieds.  

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I just got a new car. But it isn’t really new of course. We always buy used cars in our family. Excuse me, ‘pre-owned’. It was something my parents did, and their parents did before them. They never bought on credit; they always saved and paid cash and taught me the value of a car drops like a rocket that first year or two and steadies out to a slower decline after that.

As I think about it, I realize we aren’t brand new sort of people anyway. Pretty much everything we have is used, recycled, handed down, or vintage found.

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The fisherman at the edge of the water handed me a small lightning whelk that he had picked up earlier that morning. “I like the broken ones – I find them interesting.” This one wasn’t broken - it was perfect. A fluid curve tucking into itself. “You keep this one,” he continued. I’m here all the time.”

The back bed of his small covered pick-up was filled with fishing gear and sand-covered pieces of recently washed up trash. He nodded in the direction of two other men in four-wheelers who sat chatting in the early morning light; their version of meeting for coffee I supposed. "Those of us with vehicles pick up the trash that washes up,” he said, explaining the odd items of debris in his truck: broken sunglasses, rope, a shoe, a blue shard of plastic.

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From the time I was a little girl, I have loved the pretty things. Sitting on one of the twin beds in my older sisters' bedroom, I would watch in awe as they applied eyeliner and mascara, clothes for the evening laid out on the bed beside me; matching yellow shoes in their tissue-lined box. It was everything I wanted: perfect paint and sophistication.

These days I falter and pause. All the lovely layers are being stripped away to where the skin is raw and the emotions a bit ragged.

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