The Gift of Curiosity

“How does a caterpillar make a cocoon?”

My three young children are incessantly curious, asking questions of nature, of people, and of God. As their mother and primary answer-giver, I find their curiosity alternately fascinating and frustrating.

“Why does Emma have two daddies and two mommies?”

I used to relish curiosity. But lately busyness and the relentless demands of motherhood have sapped my inquisitive drive. Now I spend as much time saying “Because!” as I do trying to explain or inspire.

“Mom, why can’t I put my flash drive/battery/wire invention in the electric outlet?”

“Because, honey! Just because! That’s all I can tell you!” I say, a few decibels too loud as I attempt to write this post.

I spent four days away from my kids last month on a business trip with my husband to Las Vegas. To shed the role of mother, even for a few days, felt like taking off a winter jacket soaked with cold rain.

I left for a morning run after a leisurely breakfast, rather than my usual quick jog in the dark while the rest of the house sleeps. As I looked around this strange city, I found myself curious. “Why, God,” I asked, “is this man sleeping on this bridge?”

“What is his story?”

“Are you here?”

“Why do you let this stuff go on?”

“What do people here feel about you?”

“How much do I shape how I see you with my white suburban-woman attitude?”

I was curious. And that is a gift. Curiosity is born of observation, of looking outside of ourselves with a desire to know the world. It is other rather than self-centered. It desires to ask and seek. A curious mind is open to new discoveries. A curious mind is open to God’s dynamic and creative work in this world.

Curiosity sent Moses toward a flaming bush, saying to himself, “I will go see this strange sight, why the bush does not burn up.” (Exodus 3:3) And God spoke.

Curiosity had Abram asking God, “What can you give me?” and “How will this be?” And God answered. (Gen. 15)

Curiosity had the shepherds scurrying off to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus, saying “let’s go and see this thing that has happened, that the Lord has told us about.” (Luke 2:15) And God showed up.

Curiosity had an important official of the queen notice a man named Phillip and
invite him up in his chariot to explain the book of Isaiah, asking, “Who is this prophet talking about?” (Acts 8) And the Good News was known.

Yesterday I stood at the kitchen counter, a place where my feet wear grooves into the floor. I call it “my office” since I can spend the entire workday in front of the sink, washing yet another set of dishes, cleaning up yet another messy meal. My daughter scraped a chair across the floor and scampered up next to me. “Why can’t I stir the brownies? Why can’t we just eat it raw? Why can’t I crack the egg? Why does ….” I sighed, wanting again to stay in auto-mommy mode and answer, “BECAUSE!”

The Holy Spirit stirred in me, reminding me that God delights in me being like a child. That I bring my questions and curiosity all the time, and that He is infinitely patient with my wonderings. Can you do the same for your own? prompted that still, small voice. It was a comfort to know that God does not tire of my questions. It was a challenge to continue to let the little children—my own—come to me, so I can lead them toward the truth of our mighty yet intimate God, a God who delights in our curiosity, a God who never says, “Because.”

First as God’s children, then as leaders, it is a gift to be curious. Curiosity opens our souls to the unexpected. As leaders, curiosity has us asking the hard questions of ourselves and our ministries. It leaves the door open to creativity and change. And when those we lead see us model curiosity and openness to God’s work, a deep sense of synergy can connect us all in the way we offer life in Jesus Christ in powerful ways.

Do you consider yourself curious? How has it informed your leadership?
Where has God led you through your own wonderings and questions?

Our Restless Lives

I was recently flipping through a copy of Good Housekeeping and scanned the editor’s opening letter. She described being at an “improbable place: a women’s retreat” for part of a Saturday. “Ironically,” she wrote, “the topic was time—how to think about it, handle it, make peace with never having enough of it. And I discovered that it was… all but impossible for me to just sit still and listen—not take notes, not check my BlackBerry, not multitask in any way… Like most almost every woman I know, I live life in a terrific hurry, as if time is running out.”

Let’s see… Always being short on time; addiction to multi-tasking; feeling harried (and in great company being harried). Sounds all too familiar.

The biggest antidote that we have against the weight of the 24/7 life, I’ve been thinking, is the one command we 21st century Americans are most apt to break: keeping the Sabbath.

In Jesus’ day, the problem with the Sabbath was that people were overcommitted to keeping it. It had become legalistic and cumbersome, a burden to God’s people. It was so bureaucratic that the Pharisee regulators were thwarting God’ purposes—and Jesus rebuked them from getting between God and the refreshment he wanted them to enjoy.

Today most of us have the opposite problem. Far from over-keeping the Sabbath and getting caught up in legalisms related to inactivity, most of us simply ignore it. Day of rest? Really? You mean, every week?

My life—like many involved women who are gifted for leadership – is multi-faceted and sometimes downright complicated. I mother three kids under five, manage a household, consult a few hours a week, and help lead a women’s ministry at church. Activity is constant. Weekends let me catch up on all the stuff that didn’t get done during the week (often more productively because my husband can watch the kids so I can really crank it out). Maybe you can relate.

The editor’s inabililty to sit still resonates with me because this is the condition of the 21st century woman. Sitting means it’s time to check email. Walking means it’s time to pull out the iPod. Driving means it’s time to make a phone call. The kids’ nap means it’s time to get some work done. Watching TV means it’s time to fold laundry. Along with my whole generation, I’m losing the ability to be fully present—to attend fully to the moment at hand.

If Jesus walked the earth today, I have to think he’d have different words about the Sabbath—and about what we’ve allowed our lives to become. God has commanded us to rest—to build regular and intentional rest into our life. Not only do we refuse to do it, we’re unlearning the skill. We do the opposite of rest: we maintain continuous activity. The daily life of the modern women is becoming an Ode to the Restless Life.

It’s a radical thing, the fourth commandment. Taking one in seven days to unplug from the buzz and noise, to not work? Can God really want me to spend a full 15 percent of my week away from my to-do lists?

Radical and also wildly inconvenient, it takes a lot of planning and forethought to have a day without cooking, laundry, or business work. It frankly feels like a real nuisance and, ironically, a poor use of my time.

This attitude doesn’t surprise God, though. That’s why he uses the phrase “deny yourself” in relation to the Sabbath. God knows that discipline is tied to refreshment. Rest will not simply happen to us; we must actively build it into our lives.

And God, who is the author of time, also knows how it works. He knows that time will rule us if we don’t handle it His way. He knows that endless multi-tasking erodes our spirits and renders us spiritually weak. God knows the enemy uses modern time-saving devices as weapons against us, to wage slow war on our souls. He knows that if we prevail in training ourselves in perpetual distraction, we will lose ability not only to rest in him, but to hear from him.

That’s why the most radical thing I can do this weekend—and the most obedient—is nothing (productive). For a whole day. I can keep the day “holy unto the Lord.” With practice, maybe I can even become, through God’s grace, one of the few women out there who doesn’t, in the editor’s words, “live life in a terrific hurry.” Perhaps the legacy of this kind of life would honor God more than anything else I could ever do with my time.

The Conservation Conversation

I love the old hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King.” Whether spiced up by David Crowder or belted out in the King’s English, my soul is forever thankful to St. Francis of Assisi. When his 12th century refrain pops onto the screen in our sanctuary a burgeoning desire for God have me fearlessly belting out the lyrics.

Thou rushing wind that art so strong
Ye clouds that sail in Heaven along,
O praise Him! Alleluia!

This hymn carries my heart to the Creation story and to God’s divine hand moving over the stillness of this planet, jolting it to life and movement and being. It takes me to Psalm 19 where “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” It carries me to Isaiah where the very mountains and hills burst forth with the life from God.

I cannot stand atop a mountain peak or soak my bare feet in the salty ocean without giving thanks to God for the blessings of Creation. Even in my youth, long before I knew the name of Jesus, my very soul would move and groan for God in nature. Several of the most poignant moments in my life have been in the fullness of God’s created world.

I know the same is true for millions of people. Just think “summer camp.”

Thus, the fired-up, cannot sit still, gotta shout it out feeling I get when I sing St. Francis’ words.

This is a glimpse of my story as a Christian who cares deeply for the environment. Last month (April 22 to be exact) the world celebrated Earth Day. Millions of people across this terrestrial ball did their part to clean up trails, pick up trash, plant a tree etc. I applaud the efforts of this global event.

Yet many churches still find themselves frustrated by this planetary agenda. Perhaps politics turns them off. Some cry “pantheism” and fear worship of trees rather than God. Others simply feel pressured to respond to a movement that they do not believe God cares about. I understand these sentiments.

But churches need to begin to understand the rapidly growing camp, squarely rooted inside of evangelicalism, that says caring for the planet is not first and foremost about any of these issues. It is about caring for the gift of the earth that God gave us. The very streams, trees and even the fire ants and gnats that God put here to help us thrive and survive.

The Creation Care movement for Evangelicals is less about “mother earth” (even though St. Francis himself interestingly uses this term in the fourth verse of this hymn) and more about every day people doing their best to take Genesis 1:28-30 seriously.

Christians who balk at this conversation often pull out tired arguments about worshipping trees or cite shabby politics. Yes, theology and politics play an absolutely vital role in this conversation. To assume differently would be utterly ignorant. But for the church to consistently slough off this movement and assume the conversation is only about politics or pantheism is to let bad theology reign.

Rather than forming a proper theology of Creation, many churches operate in a reactionary way and miss the opportunity to live as visionaries for what is possible on God’s green earth. Therefore, they put care of the planet into the hands of everyone but the church.

Reclaiming this conversation to bring hope and healing to “all creatures of our God and King” is essential for the church. To read Psalm 19, Romans 1:20, Genesis 1 or to sing, “Let all things their Creator bless, and worship Him in humbleness,” and then to leave church as if none of that actually applies is to thumb our noses up at God and say “thanks but no thanks.”

To embrace the environmental conversation from a place of good theology, prayer, and a proper perspective on God is to help the church move toward the world and to empower the church to engage issues of justice, poverty and the planet (all three are inextricably linked). The church must move beyond the false dichotomy that says this conversation is either bad theology or bad politics. We must begin to live into the reality that this conversation is about caring for God’s gift to us and the people of this world, present and future, to all creatures of our God and King.

How active is your church in this "conversation"? What can you do to make this conversation happen?

Honoring Moms in a Whole New Way

Last month, I guest-lectured in a Women’s Studies class at Bethel University. My topic was How Motherhood Shapes a Woman’s Soul, but I ended up talking more about how motherhood sort of mirrors God, how being a mom (or hearing from moms) helps us understand God, his relentless love, his willingness to forgive and his patience with the whiney little complainers that we are.

Frankly, I was amazed at how engaged the women (and man) in the class were. I’m used to talking about issues maternal, but usually it’s to moms. Not to 21-year-old college seniors. But either these students were actually interested or exceptionally polite. I prefer to assume the former. After my lecture, we even had a lively round of Q&A. They asked lots of great questions, but two have really stayed with me.

The first that stuck was: “Why would anyone want to have kids?”

And the other was: “Why haven’t we ever heard this before? Why is it that I’ve gone to church my whole life and never once heard that moms might have special insight into God that should be shared?”

The first question made me laugh (and made me realize perhaps I ought to be guest-lecturing in abstinence classes!). The second question made me want to cry.

While I sort of fumbled through the answer to why one would want to have kids (because my desire to have kids came suddenly, mystically, in an unexplainable, primal, out-of-the-blue sort of way), I did better with the second question.

I told her I figured we didn’t hear much about it in churches because women haven’t been doing a lot of the talking in churches—at least in the history of the American church. And since the Bible routinely refers to God in fatherly images and since men are usually the ones doing the talking, it’s just easier to focus on the “fatherly-ness” of God. But this isn’t to say we don’t have reason to talk about God’s motherly-ness, as well. It’s even biblical. There are plenty of nurturing, mother-ish images of God throughout Scripture. Jesus even refers to himself as a mother hen. And heck, even Paul describes himself as a nursing mother. Not that he’s God, but he was comfortable with the comparison.

Throughout much of church history, I am told, the motherly images of God were common. Julian of Norwich has this beautiful hymn, which now may seem jarring, even scandalous, but apparently in the 14th century, it would’ve been seen as apropos. It goes like this:

Mothering God, you gave me birth in the bright morning of this world. Creator, source of every breath, you are my rain, my wind, my sun.

Mothering Spirit, nurturing one, in arms of patience hold me close, so that in faith I root and grow until I flow'r, until I know.

Lovely, right? But why do I write all this? What’s my point? Well, this Sunday is Mother’s Day, that always makes me nervous—at least about church. I always get nervous about how women might be made to feel like motherhood is a woman’s highest calling, and I get nervous for women who long to be mothers but who aren’t, and I don’t like how we always seem to get a “girl” sermon that day (my church is doing Ruth. Yours?).

However, the question I got in that class made me think of why we should be celebrating Mother’s Day in church and how far the church has to go yet in how we “handle” motherhood. How we talk about it, how we honor it and how we let it become something through which others can see God. I think we need to reclaim and reveal what our church fathers and mothers once understood: that motherhood has something to teach us about God.

I think it’s up to us, women leaders of the church, to make sure that mothers aren’t honored simply because it’s hard work, simply because it’s a high calling, simply because it’s a wonderful and crucial job, but because we do have something to share about who God is. Because it’s one of the many experiences of life that God “gifts” us with that do help us understand his heart better. Heck, even the longing for a child—that desperation any woman who’s struggled with infertility other circumstances that prevent her from having kids understands—shares something so sweet with the heart of our God who longs for us to love him

So if you are a mother or you have a mother, take it as part of your call as a woman leader this Mother’s Day to honor moms in a new way—and that is, by giving voice to what motherhood teaches us about the heart of our own mothering God.

What do you think?