Author Archives: Lisa Lewton

Why is it So Hard to Choose a Book?

Never in the history of humanity has there been access to the volume of volumes available to you today. Not only are there more libraries with physical books, digital books are multiplying across the internet like rabbits.

I rely almost completely on Goodreads to choose a book. If you are unfamiliar, Goodreads is a social media platform to help you and a good book find one another. Adding friends to your profile allows you to see the book your friend is reading, as well as how much your friend did or didn’t like it.

Once a good book and I have found one another, I rely mostly on the Libby app to read it. I do love visiting my local library, however, I also love reading on my Kindle paperwhite.

With all the books and such easy access, why is it so hard to choose a book? Is it because I overindulged in WWII history and can’t swallow another page? Or because I’m in my 40’s and so over hearing women in their 20’s offer life advice? Or because religious books are too preachy? Or nonfiction books too dismal? Or dystopian books too real?

And so, I go back to Three Pines to savor the last few books of Louise Penny’s masterpiece. Whatever will I do when I catch up to the latest book in her series? Let’s talk about something else.

Three Pines aside, why is it so hard to choose a book? Are all the stories running together in the pages and pages available to me? Am I simply in a reading rut, or is it like life, in which there are moments of comfortable monotony? Is the story of my own life enough for now, without stirring more stories into the mix?

Perhaps later today the book I need to read will appear. Books have a way of doing that – choosing you. Ready or not, you will stumble upon the wardrobe where a world awaits you, grace upon grace. You may discover the story you are living is more remarkable and adventurous than you had once thought. You may get caught up in the greater story of God’s labor and love and your place in it.

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Living Is Learning

Today marks the beginning of a new year of living and learning. Today I am grateful to say hello to 45! Even though last night my dad switched the numbers on my birthday cake and we were all confused, today is indeed the dawn of a new year which is not Year 54.

Isn’t it amazing that even after all the years you have lived in your own body, there is still more to learn about you? I find that to be wild. If anyone should know you, it is you. And yet, you are constantly living and learning what you need, how to articulate those unique needs, and how to move along when life falls apart, even for a few minutes.

Can you look back and notice what you have learned as you have lived these past few months or past year?

  • What have you learned about yourself? Does that surprise you?
  • Can you look further back in your family to see when you learned that? From whom?
  • What needs have you been able to articulate in order to live more openly and honestly?
  • What might you let go to free up your hands to let Jesus hold them?

Living has helped me learn how much I need one hour to myself nearly every day. This is a luxury not afforded to everyone. In seasons of caregiving for kids or adults, time to yourself is truly a luxury. And yet, for me time to myself is daily bread. I do need to be given this day and most days the daily bread of time wasted with Jesus. Time to write or read or soak up the stillness in prayer.

It surprises me that I didn’t realize this years ago, and that it has taken years to figure out how to meet this need. But once I could articulate that an hour to myself is necessary for my own well-being, everyone around me understood. The staff with whom I work know that from 8-9:00 am I am alone in my office. At home, when I am in a particular space with my journal or a book, people tend to let me be.

I come from a family of introverts, which means growing up I learned the importance of time alone. We do not need to be visiting or playing games to be together as family. We can simply share space, which I can see in my own kids now.

Living is learning. And paying attention, we also help the next generation in our families learn to live.

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Last Minute Ketchup (and a book recommendation)

We were moments away from a dinnertime-disaster. Special guests who had accepted a last-minute invitation were soon to arrive. The hot dogs and brats were finishing their sweat session on the grill. And we…had no ketchup! A key ingredient was missing.

After double and triple-checking for a sneaky bottle hiding in the pantry, I texted my lovely neighbor who replied, “I don’t have an unopened bottle but you can have the open bottle in the fridge.” Deal. Neighbor to the rescue.

Neighbors can be the way to avoid disaster, at least the dinner-variety disaster. Neighbors can offer ketchup, a friendly wave, a kind word, and understanding when your teenager plays his music at an un-neighborly volume. Like ketchup makes a hot dog, neighbors make a neighborhood, or something like that.

I’m nearing the end of the book: “Start with Hello (and Other Simple Ways to Live as Neighbors)”, by Shannon Martin. I have really liked the audiobook, even more because her voice sounds exactly like Angela Martin from “The Office.” This would be a fun book to read in a group and form neighborhood experiments from her stories.

Martin (not Angela, but Shannon), provides an honest picture of what happens when we get to know our neighbors. She names the awkward parts, the fear of rejection, the reasons we talk ourselves out of it.

I appreciate how she explains the “toxic independence” of our culture, which would first encourage a quick trip to the store before texting a neighbor for ketchup. In truth, I am dependent upon my neighbors for more than ketchup.

  • I need my neighbors if my kid is home alone and suddenly requires help from an adult.
  • I need my neighbors to let me know if something fishy is going on.
  • I needed my neighbor this endless winter to scrape the mountain of snow off our driveway with his blessed tractor.

Living independently is not neighborly and also not good for hot dogs. Or for the guests who will be eating them. A neighborhood of neighbors needing and caring for one another looks a whole lot like God’s dream for the world.

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Sorting the Worries

What do you do when you retrieve the mail from your mailbox and discover someone else’s mail? It is an easy mistake for a mail carrier to make. Like the discovery of someone’s socks in someone else’s laundry pile at my house, it happens.

Mail, like socks, looks mostly the same. For socks, the logo might vary while mail might be differentiated by only a few letters and maybe one or two numbers.

When there is someone else’s mail in my mailbox, I put it back in the mailbox for the mail carrier to sort out, and I am done with someone else’s mail.

Why am I rambling on about misplaced mail and mail carriers? Because this reminds me of some of the worries we carry around. Among the pile of worries we schlep around, some are addressed to us and others are not. Can you think of one heavy worry you are carrying around that might be misplaced? Perhaps that particular worry does not belong in your mailbox, but ended up there by mistake. And now it is time to put it back in the mailbox for the mail carrier to sort out.

Take a look at the worries you are carrying around. Which are addressed to you and which are meant to be delivered straight to God? The latter letters can be let go. Leave it in the mailbox. God will take it from there.

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The Phone Call You Need to Make Today

Someone you know is having a rough day. You may not know it, because your someone wouldn’t want you to worry.

As your someone waits for a diagnosis, pushes through chronic pain, wrestles with gender or sexual identity, grieves a death, or struggles through another sleepless night with a new baby, you have no idea how alone your someone feels.

Loneliness is something of a pandemic these days. How ironic it is that most Americans feel a deep sense of loneliness and mistakenly believe we’re all alone in our loneliness. We are a community of lonely people, including the someone you know who is having a rough day who might be praying a version of this prayer from “Sheltering Mercy: Prayers Inspired by the Psalms,” Psalm 70:

Grant me strength, O Lord.
Can You not scatter these dark spirits
with the sound of a thundering army,
or twist their devil tongues to confusion?

On this day, you might be the one to scatter the dark spirits, to re-member (bring back together) someone with your community. You might be the one to embody the promise and join in the prayer of the next paragraph of Psalm 70:

For You,
Lord of light and beauty,
are Lord over death and darkness as well - 
all evil prostrates in Your presence.
Send those taunting voices back to the depths of the earth
where they belong.

There is a phone call you need to make today to scatter the dark spirits and reshape the community of the lonely into the community of the re-membered.

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Is it an Office or a Study?

Rooms have names to indicate their purpose. There is a bath in the bathroom, a bed in the bedroom, and a space for guests in the guestroom. The laundry room is for laundry, the living room is for everyday living, the playroom is for playfully making a mess.

At the church I serve, there is an office in which I work. An office is a space designated, of course, for working. In Latin, “office” literally means “work-doing.”

In the little church I grew up in, there was no office. The space designated for the pastor was called a study. I knew it as “the pastor’s study,” not “the pastor’s office.” On the occasions when I tagged along with my mom, who printed and folded bulletins in that space, I remember piles of books and that old-book-scent filling the room.

Deacons and pastors, what difference does it make if you call your work-space an office or a study? I wonder if it makes a profound difference. An office is designated for productivity and efficiency, a study is for learning. An office is for doing, a study is not only for doing but also for being. An office is for knowing, a study is for wondering. The installation rite for a pastor new to a congregation requires a response to this promise: “Will you be diligent in your study of the holy scriptures…”

I have tried to call the space in which I work a study, but the word “office” is so entrenched that I haven’t gotten very far. It feels awkward and maybe not productive enough. Deacons and pastors tend to have “office hours” not “study hours”.

While it may seem a small thing to name a space, the name teaches people the purpose. The worship space in a church is for worship, the fellowship space is for fellowship. And the deacon or pastor’s office is for all the books to live where the deacon or pastor studies.

Because really, it is a study disguised as an office.

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The Real Invitation

During their afternoon naps, Cornelius and Peter had unsettling dreams.

In Acts 10, Cornelius, who was not a Jew, envisioned an order from the Lord to seek out Peter, a Jew who was part of the new Christian movement. It was unsettling for Cornelius to imagine seeking out Peter.

In his dream, Peter envisioned an invitation to eat what his Jewish dietary laws forbade, which was extremely unsettling.

Cornelius sent for Peter to come to his home, both of them unsettled.

Together in the same room, Cornelius asked Peter to tell him the Jesus story. Peter did, preaching what he called “peace by Jesus Christ.” (10:36) The problem posed in this story is this: peace by Jesus Christ can be unsettling.

Peace by Jesus Christ invites very different people together. Let’s imagine.

Imagine you are part of the gathering of very different people. Imagine the gathering as the meal of Holy Communion. Imagine at your right is the person with political views the extreme opposite of yours. This is that outspoken, obnoxious, Facebook commenting person. The person you would rather never see, let alone commune beside. And that’s not all!

On your left is the family member you avoid all year long except that one holiday where you are forced to see that person in order to please your mother. The old hurt that exists between you and this family grows like mold. The scene you are imaging gets worse.

Across the table from you are the kinds of people you demean with your friends. They are wrong in every way, an insult to an otherwise orderly society. You curse these kinds of people because your favorite news source has conditioned you to see them as a threat. And now here they are, unsettling you at the table.

Who the heck created the invitations to this meal, you wonder, unsettled? How could this group of people be expected to sit together, eat together, pray together? Ridiculous, you mumble under your breath, along with other words.

And then you remember the invitation, which didn’t seem unsettling until the moment you found your place with these people, who have also found their place at the table, at the invitation of the dark skinned and shaggy haired host.

The invitation is not to people who look or live like you. The invitation is to people who are broken like you. Mercy is the equalizer at this table, Peter discovered when his unsettling encounter with Cornelius became peace by Jesus Christ.

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What Will I Learn Today?

What will I learn today from a book I read, or an article I skim? What will I learn from the ancient Scriptures or from more recent words reflecting on the ancient ones?

What will I learn from my friends, my kids, my colleagues? What will I learn from a stranger I meet?

What will I learn from sitting in quiet or moving through a boisterous sanctuary tonight?

What will I learn in my prayers for help, for forgiveness, for a road map? What will I learn in my prayers for others?

Have you ever noticed, some of what you learn from day to day is actually re-learning? Sometimes, you already knew what you learn again: The book does not teach you a new thing, but reminds you of some old wisdom you found helpful long ago. The Scriptures tell a familiar story of God’s mercy. Your friends remind you what you once knew and often forget: you belong and are loved. Your prayers place you where you have spent so much of your life: in the loving arms of Christ.

What will you learn today? The merciful promise of a God who never tires of teaching you.

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“Getting Old is Not For Wimps”

“Getting old is not for wimps,” said a number of older, non-wimpy members I visited last week.

For a pastor, it is a great gift to constantly be in contact with people in every generation. In a single day, I might teach Holy Communion to an exuberant 3-year-old, ask an aloof teenager at Confirmation about his day, mourn with a recent empty-nester, and learn that getting old is not for wimps.

Maybe this nugget of wisdom stands out to me because I am, indeed, getting older. In fact, my upcoming birthday is the year of the inaugural colonoscopy. Anytime this makes me nervous, I consider all that the non-wimpy older members endure: constant poking and prodding and a schedule mostly shaped by appointments with medical providers. I also heard from some of these non-wimps gratitude for easy access to emergency care. Compared to previous centuries, perhaps this is not such a bad one in which to age.

Still, the work of aging is not for wimps. Overall, I am not such a fan of pain. Not the chronic nor acute kind. I prefer no pain, no aches, no pokes and no prods. I like bone joints to move where and when I’d like, which is also how I prefer to drive: without restrictions or making my children worry. I enjoy the freedom of walking down the stairs without anyone wondering how they will attempt to catch me if I fall.

Getting old is not for wimps, but for people who learn how to mourn. By the time someone reaches “old age”, they have mourned the loss of cooperative joints, original hair color, and the ability to walk through a room without anyone noticing their limp. There is mourning for lost identities (I was a banker, a runner, a respectable non-limper). There is mourning, of course, for the beloved ones who have peeled off along the way, en route to a better place.

No, getting old is not for wimps. This refrain spoken among the people I visited last week was followed by a laugh, a lighthearted framing of our lives. Living requires aging, with all its perks and problems, all its pokes and prods. Living leads to mourning until finally mourning leads to dancing. Even our bone joints are made new on the other side. And all driving privileges are renewed.

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The Word They Didn’t Really Mean

Sunday begins the holiest week of the year for Christians. It begins with Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem and ends with his departure on the cross. What unfolds in the middle is our response to a God who offers to change our lives for good.

Because really, we would rather not be changed. To be changed requires so much of us, maybe even sitting in a different row in church! No thank you, ma’am!

But first, Palm Sunday. Jesus paraded into Jerusalem, parting the crowds of jubilant people crowded together for the Jewish Passover. Jesus’ reputation as one who had challenged the authorities, healed the sick and even raised the dead had preceded him. This was “the guy” they had been waiting for to finally stick it to the Emperor. Jesus’ parade into Jerusalem blatantly mocked the power of the Roman army. He was getting himself into trouble here.

And the crowds were eating it up.

“Hosanna!” the crowds shouted, literally begging Jesus to “save us.”(Remember, salvation not only pertains to the afterlife but to the way we live our lives on earth.) “Save us!” But they didn’t really mean it. They were caught up in the shouts of the crowd. When they realized that for Jesus to save them, they would all need to change, they changed their minds instead, which is why the week ends with Good Friday.

“Save us!” they shouted to Jesus. But what they meant was, “Save us…only if we can continue to live the way we want to live. Save us as long as we can fit in with the crowd. Save us as long as we can protect our own money and resources. Save us as long as we don’t have to entrust our whole lives to you. Save us as long as we don’t need to change.”

This is not the salvation Jesus offers. Salvation according to Jesus is a drastic change. Your life is not your own, if Jesus has anything to say about it. Your life never follows a crowd. Your life is not a continuous climb up a corporate ladder, nor is it busy streak. Your life is meant to be so tangled up with your neighbor’s that you sometimes forget what belongs to whom. That is the salvation Jesus offers.

And this is the salvation the crowd declined. “Yeah…no.” They said, turning around when they realized to be saved is also to be changed. How often do I do the same, turning away from Jesus’ daily offering of salvation, abundant life and mercy because I am so set in my routine and rhythm? So set in saving my money, curating my time, taking care of my own family, sticking to my own goals. Do I really want Jesus to change me? Is my “Hosanna” genuine?

“Hosanna!” Yes, please. “Hosanna.”

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