Psalm 27 ends with the admonition to “wait patiently for the Lord, be brave and courageous, yes, wait patiently on the Lord.”

What does that mean?

I normally don’t associate patience and waiting with much bravery.  How brave do you have to be to just sit there?  I suppose it depends on where you are sitting.

The Psalmist makes it clear that he is surrounded by trouble in the land of the living.  That there is no earth on place to remain safe except in God’s holy sanctuary.  So he sits and waits, with everything crashing in around him – with the enemies assailing the front door, he meditates.  “The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger, so why should I tremble?  …Even when I am attacked, I will remain confident.”

What really caught me was what came next in the Psalm: “Hear me as I pray O Lord.  Be merciful and answer me!  My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me.’  And my heart responds, ‘Lord, I am coming.’” (v 7-8)

So much to consider and meditate on there.  The Psalmist is begging God to listen as he pleads for safety, and there is more than enough trouble to focus on.  But somehow he is able to quiet his mind, and heart in order to stopping running around protecting himself, and begin asking God to intervene.

In that space of stillness, with the enemy at the door of this space of peace, God is able to be heard: “Come and talk with me.”  An invitation.  A momentary returning to the garden where man and God may take a stroll together in the soft morning light.  Where all can be confessed, souls laid bare, tender words spoken, peace offered – between creation and Creator.  This is what the Psalmist desires “more than anything” (v 4) – “to delight in the Lord’s perfections and to meditate in his Temple.”

This Psalm is encouraging in that it gives hope to those of us being crushed on every side – with pressures from work, family, finances, and perhaps most of all – the very expectations we have of ourselves.  There are enemies at your gates.  They have surrounded the city and are attacking the sanctuary of your heart.  Is it possible that you have even joined their ranks?  That you have so many stresses and ticking time bombs in your world that it is simply easier or more fashionable in this world to join the cause of your own destruction that to fight back for your sanity and for the divine relationship you share with God?

Your life is in danger, yet you have a choice: run around gathering swords and weapons to fight back in your own exhausted strength, or quiet yourself, and call out to the Lord.  Hear him inviting you to “come and talk,” remembering that just as important as God’s invitation is your response.  Will you be able to courageously wait?

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*Want to learn more about a powerful practice in hearing God’s voice?  Click here.

Consider a tree – it receives its best nourishment not from the most impressive and strongest part, the trunk.  But the trunk is merely the highway of connectivity.  When you look for where the real power of a tree resides, look to the thousands of tiny leaves, soaking in the sunlight and nutrients.  If you can, pull up some of the roots and examine how frail and yet how essential they are in drinking up the liquid life that would otherwise be inaccessible to a starving tree.  The tree, as the strongest organism in the forest, depends on the collective power of its smallest and weakest parts to survive.

Consider the Church – your mind may wander to huge mega churches, beautiful stone cathedrals, the might of the Vatican, impressive ministries, and the strength of over 2.1 billion adherents to the Christian faith.  Or you might see another side of the tree, corruption, scandal, hypocrisy, opposition to social change – but unarguably still obstinately strong.

But where does the real power of the Church reside?  Where does it soak up the light of Christ, hear the voice of the Spirit?  Where does it drink the liquid life of the relational God?  It is in the smallest of relationships. The Life Transformation Group. The church of two (CO2).

What seems to be a weak and frail community is the context to daily seek God together.  Maybe this community is only 2 people – maybe it never grows beyond three. But the intimate communion found there, both with each other and with Christ.  This is where confession happens, where a culture of transformation is developed…or not.  This – in the context of a mutually self-disclosing relationship – is where the truth of God is unpacked and lived out.

Notice how leaves are rarely alone on the branch of a healthy tree.  It’s genetics call out for a community of leaves – of light receivers – to daily…continuously…soak up the light, and yet don’t keep it to themselves.  They are connected to the others also receiving and sharing light.

Who are you on the branch with?  Who is your band of brothers and sisters?  Do you have a friend who knows you through thick and thin, who knows your darkness and anticipates your shared light?  Who is helping you brace for the winds, storms and cold nights?

What does this relationship look like?  Regular, daily, intentional awareness of one another – at more than a surface level; more than (but not exclusive to) sports scores, news, or weather.  It does not have to be a long conversation, or tear-filled prayers.  But it does have to be an honest sharing of mind…AND heart.

Many churches live in the mind quadrant (preacher-centered worship, rows of noses).  Many others live only in the heart (emotional dalliance, exclusively inward-focused).  Both neglect the full human.  Allow a real human relationship to be the center-piece of your faith.

So find your spouse, a best friend, a sibling, or someone you look up to in the faith, and learn how to share the light together.  Practice the “one another’s” of Scripture.  Reveal your fears, joys, thoughts. Learn to lead each other into the presence of God – learn to lead from a step behind – because it is truly Jesus who is in your midst point you to the Father.  Bring something to the table every day – a Scripture, a feeling, a song, a prayer, a picture.  Invite your comrade to celebrate that light together – and to ask how God might be revealing himself today.

This is the stuff of community – the thing Christ died for – to bring us back into communion with God and by proxy to each other.  You will soon find yourself connecting to the largest tree in God’s garden – a family bigger and stronger than any cathedral, any nation, or anything else in all creation.

“…Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way — but for what is right — using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”  — Jesus, Luke 16

This Parable of the Crooked Manager has been one that has haunted my Biblical readings all my life, yet has strangely remained absent from the sermons, classes and seminaries I’ve attended.  Yet it comes directly after The Prodigal Son in a series of stories Jesus is sharing dealing with money and relationships and seeking the most important things.  Its a story of a manager who has been embezzling funds from his company.  Soon the owner finds out and fires him.  As the manager is cleaning out his desk, he does some last minute changes to the books, offering clients to settle their debts for less than what they owe.  Jesus praises this guy for his incredible shrewdness.  What’s going on here?  Is Jesus teaching us to be unlawful with our money?

I see Jesus’ summation of the Crooked Manager (quoted above) as a connecting point to the Prodigal Son and to the rest of his teachings.  Think of it through the lens of religion.  How many do you know who “play it safe” with spirituality, who never step outside of the “laws” long enough to ask if it is actually bringing them life and a closer relationship with God?  I have known Catholics, Pagans and even atheists who do this – who never think to ponder if God might actually be calling them into a personal relationship of freedom and outside the confines of “good behavior” or “law-religion” or “me-centeredness.”  They, unlike the manager, would have left their job quietly and discovered what the manager feared – a lifetime of begging.  Or maybe they would have not embezzled in the first place…but then there wouldn’t be much of a story!

Much like the Prodigal Son, we have the choice to simply follow the rules (the older brother) or to find ways each of us are off in a distant country and return to our Father, desperately seeking forgiveness.  We can choose the life of spiritual stability of the 99 sheep and never experience of being sought after as the 1 lost sheep was.

We can live with a love for “an old time religion” or “advanced philosophies and theories” or “laws that keep me in good graces with the Lord” and truly miss being in love with our Father.

But God sees behind appearances.  He knows our hearts.  He wants to guide us into love.  But my question is, do we have to “get fired for embezzling” or “run of to a far away country and spend our money on riotous living” in order to feel the forgiving love of God?  The answer I think is, “Yes…and we have.”

Yes, we have lived the life of the crooked manager and the prodigal son.  But most of us don’t believe it – and therefore most of us refuse to return to Father seeking desperate forgiveness.  Most of us don’t forgive the debts of others because we don’t believe we have debts that need forgiving in our own life.

If we truly knew where our deeds take us – where our lifestyle of me-centeredness leads – all of us would be leading a life “using every adversity to stimulate us to creative survival” not just compacently getting by on good behavior.