Christians don’t do that, do they?

We were attending a large church, large enough for two services in a big auditorium but still small enough to know people. We had been there a while, and knew a lot of people through Sunday School, mission trips, and adult classes.

A friend from work attended with his family. We never saw each other at work; different facilities and totally different parts of the company. But we connected at church, shared work war stories, sat in classes together, and helped each other through our children’s teen years.

And then – train wreck. For a time, his wife stopped coming to church; he would bring the kids. Then he told me his marriage might be over. And then his wife started attending church with her boyfriend.

I didn’t know the whole story, only having heard one side of it. But it was devastating to my friend, to the children, and to the church.

And then another friend, one I knew professionally, decided she wasn’t happy in her marriage. And she knew God wanted her to be happy. So she walked out on her husband and child. Later we learned she walked out of one relationship to be in the relationship she had already developed with a co-worker.

Then a couple we were in a small Bible study group with broke up. He decided he didn’t want to be married any more. As it turned out, he had a relationship at work.

And then a friend, with whom I worked in ministry for years, told me he and his wife were divorcing. She had told him to leave. This wasn’t a case of infidelity on either side; it was more that their marriage was wrecked and neither saw any hope for trying to retrieve it.

All of these people were Christians. Bible-believing, church-attending Christians. In every case, no one had a clue, even their closest friends. They came to church every Sunday wearing their Sunday smiley faces. With ample opportunities to share their hurting in prayer, classes, small groups, and individual friendships, they had said nothing.

And it made me wonder if the problem might be the church. You’re not supposed to have problems like this if you’re a Christian. It’s non-believers who have these problems. It’s the culture.

And maybe it is the church.

In Heart Made Whole: Turning Your Unhealed Pain into Your Greatest Strength, Christa Black Gifford says that “Jesus’ intention for us as believers is never to suppress the truth of our emotions and put on fake religious smiles, attempting to deal with very natural things on our own. When life hurts, we hurt just as He did—and that’s simply okay.”

Gifford and her husband went through the agony of losing a newborn child. It could have destroyed them both; it could have destroyed their marriage. They had dark, black days, and they probably still do, but they knew that the depth of their pain was known and understood.

We the church need to do better.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Heart Made Whole. Today concludes the discussion. To see what others are saying about this chapter, “A Heart Made Whole,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by Lila Frerichs via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Thinking with the Heart and the Brain

It’s about 60 A.D. The Apostle Paul is in Rome, a prisoner, awaiting his audience with the emperor as is his right as a Roman citizen. The waits could be long, and Paul likely waited about two years.

In the meantime, he writes letters to the churches he helped to found, in what is now present-day Turkey and Greece. He was particularly close to one church, that of Ephesus, located on the coast of what was then the province of Asia (present-day western Turkey). Ephesus faced the Aegean Sea.

Ephesus was the provincial capital, famous for its temple of Diana or Artemis. The city’s amphitheater could hold between 25,000 and 30,000 people. It had a stadium like all important cities of the empire. Paul had founded the church there, and had stayed in Ephesus for three years. He knew the city, he knew the people, and he knew the church.

His letter to the Ephesians is primarily a letter of encouragement (other churches, like the one at Corinth, received reprimands). And early in the letter, he uses a curious expression: the eyes of the heart. “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened,” he writes, “in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you” (Eph. 1:18).

We associate the heart with feelings, and particularly love. We associate the brain with thinking and with the processing of what the senses absorb. But as Christa Black Gifford points out in

Heart Made Whole: Turning Your Unhealed Pain into Your Greatest Strength, the heart and the brain are intimately connected.

“But when you ask people to turn on all of their heart to experience God,” she says, “some get very nervous that you’re asking them to turn off their brains. …In fact, the condition of your heart is most affected by the three-pound organ sitting inside your skull.”

And that is the connection Paul is making with “the eyes of the heart.” He’s telling the Ephesians to fully experience God by opening the eyes of their heart.

To feel, the heart must understand; to understand, it must see; and for the heart to see, the brain must be operating. Experiencing God is an all-sensory experience. The heart is involved, but so is the brain.

And no, you don’t check your brain at the church door. If fact, the brain is vitally necessary for faith. It’s vital for both the expression of faith and the deepening and maturing of faith. Faith is not an all-emotional experience.

We hear what Paul says. We bring our brains to bear on what we believe. And we open the eyes of our heart.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’re reading Heart Made Whole. Consider reading along and join in the discussion. To see what others are saying about this chapter, “Your Heart-Brain Connection,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Life sometimes doesn’t turn out as planned. Sometimes?

I officially retired, at least from my day job, about 18 months ago. We had been planning for it for some time; I had given my notice of intent to retire almost a year before the official date.

The planning had been extensive, involving a financial advisor, an attorney, an accountant, a few other specialists (Do we need long-term care insurance? How do we start planning for medical insurance?). It was complicated, but we worked through it, with the help of a lot of good people.

Then, last December, Congress made a change in Social Security, and it was done on the quiet. The change didn’t disrupt the present, but it surely disrupted the near future. Everyone scrambled, and finally figured out the impact, recalibrated, and planned a way forward.

Now, with a new election and a new Congress (and President), we’re already hearing about plans to make changes in Social Security and Medicare. On the one hand we have government programs that aren’t sustainable, and with 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day, will become more unsustainable. On the other hand, you have a lot of elderly (and soon-to-be-elderly) people who have tried to plan their retirement based on the system they know and have paid into their entire working lives.

It’s unnerving. You think you know what to expect and then everything changes. One thing is certain: the new Congress will not be able to slip major changes in Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare on the sly like they did the last time. (And let’s be clear – the change last December was done by a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Democratic president.)

So we have to keep a careful watch on what Congress will be up to. It may make good and needed changes, but we all still have to keep a careful watch.

What’s different for people like me and my wife is that we have a sturdy rudder to keep us on track when things get difficult. My first 18 months of retirement have been anything but calm. Financial changes. A client who didn’t want to pay for work. Family issues. Health issues. It’s been one surprise after another.

Yes, we can get tense. Yes, we can get angry. But we both know we will be okay.

What we have is called faith in God, and while that faith has sometimes sagged and stretched taut, that God has not. It’s like a whisper in our ears: “Steady as she goes. I’m here. I’m still teaching you things because you can teach experienced dogs new tricks. Be calm and know who I am.”

In Heart Made Whole: Turning Your Unhealed Pain into Your Greatest Strength, Christa Black Gifford says this: “Because of salvation, you will never again face a problem alone. The almighty God, the solution for everything, has unpacked His bags and made His Permanent home inside, giving you endless access to His perspective, wisdom, counsel, comfort, power, and grace.

And that, my friends, I can say from personal experience is the truth.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’re reading Heart Made Whole. Consider reading along and join in the discussion. To see what others are saying about this chapter, “The Naked Heart,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph by Flash Alexander via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.