Loading......Every year I choose a word to live by. It’s more accurate to say a word chooses me. Well, what really happens is I hear God praying a prayer for me. Between 2014 and 2017 that prayer has been “Forward.” And “Forward” became my focus. Anytime I would feel closed-in or uncertain I’d remind myself of my word and voila, unstuck. Now that is freedom! And freedom is also terrifying.
This year however the word that came to me is “Open-Mind.” Not open mindedness. We’ll talk about the difference in a minute. I believe “Open-Mind” is the prayer God prayed that brought me here to St James. For a long time I had prided myself as being an open minded kind of person. But being an open minded person is not the same as when God opens my mind. Open mindedness is a mental exercise. An opened mind is a stature. To put it another way with an opened mind God has led me to walk through doors I once would have simply approved of walking through with my open mindedness. See the difference. “Opened-Mind” is “Forward 2.0.”
Here’s a gritty example. I feel open minded when I mentally agree to support causes that pave the way for new gun legislation. But only a mind that is opened can shove hand warmers into multiple layers of winter gear and splash through downtown Louisville with 1,000 stranger shouting in the pouring rain for March for Our Lives with the desire to join a movement fraught with heated debate.
An even grittier example is Bobbie Schadt. She is not here to tell you about how God opened her mind but ask her when she returns. Today she’s in the Dominican Republic on a medical mission trip with the Solid Rock Foundation. Now I am open minded about mission but God opened Bobbie’s mind to pack up and go.
Let me give you the ultimate example of “Open-Mind.” It’s THE original f-word: Forgiveness. The church is famous for making forgiveness sound like a good idea. When you walk into the building aren’t you hoping to feel forgiven or to feel like you’ve forgiven others. The air tingles with that mixture of hope and fear-- I feel hope that I can forgive and fear that God is powerful enough to grant me such a grace.
Holy Scripture shows how God gets forgiveness done. Let’s look at how forgiveness works in the passage from Luke’s gospel. There’s the resurrected Jesus scaring the wits out of his friends. How does he calm them? By eating a piece of fish. The air is filled with that mixture of joy and disbelief. It’s in that air that Jesus opens their minds saying, “forgiveness is to be proclaimed.” Jesus didn’t say, “You will feel better if you forgive yourself and others.” --as if forgiveness is a decision our emotions can make. Forgiveness comes along with flesh and bones proof. And an assignment. Once he opens their minds Jesus wants his friends to tell their friends all about it: How he died, was raised, scared the wits out of them and ate fish to prove he wasn’t a ghost.
The disciples don’t open their own minds. Jesus opens their minds. And to what are their minds opened? Holy Scripture. And what doors does it lead them through? They didn’t stick around on the beach eating fish. Read Acts for the rest of their story. For St James the ultimate door to which freedom led him was martyrdom.
One last tiny example: Just yesterday I was standing in the hallway asking Debbie to pray for healing between me and someone whom I had wronged. Just then my phone beeped and it was a text from the exact person with whom I was seeking restoration. Prior to that beep I felt open minded about reconciliation. After the beep my mind was opened up enough to call my friend. I also had an eerie feeling God has been eavesdropping on everything Debbie and I talk about.
Last year I felt progressive about controversial topics and my ability to consider diverse points of view. This year I now see my open mindedness was a convenient vantage point from which I could sit smugly aside with my ideology.
Another prayer God has restored to me in 2018 is the Serenity Prayer. You may know it by heart and if you participate in any 12 Step Community. Say it with me.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)
After Holy Scripture, it’s the addiction community where I find the most helpful descriptions of how terrifying freedom feels and how forgiveness is the key to unlock the door to moving forward. On a recent blog I found this:
...Forgiveness is a choice. As I let go of my old beliefs that I have the right to know what another should do, say, or think, forgiveness becomes an easy choice. It's not something I do for the other person, as I once thought. It's a choice I make to free myself - from anger, from resentment, from Victimville. I lived there for a long, long time, and I'm not interested in moving back. They say you can't go home again, well, I'm grateful that through the practise of Al-Anon, not only do I not go back there, I've pretty much bulldozed the entire place - nothing to see there, anymore --all those buildings I'd constructed and maintained with rage and resentment, they're gone, with not even a foundation stone to mark their place.
//al-anonfilter.blogspot.com/2011/06/forgiveness-is-choice-not-happening.html
That is freedom.
I hope God eavesdrops on what you’re saying this week. If so, and you end up with a flesh and blood example of having your mind opened let me, let someone, know. That is after all our job, to pass along the prayers God prays. AMEN.
