Gathering Voices: Faithful Conversations from The Thoughtful Christian

Red Tails

A Film review by Edward McNulty

Rated PG-13. Running time: 2 hours 5 min.

Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make your vindication shine like the light,
and the justice of your cause like the noonday.
Psalm 37:5-6

Largely financed by George Lucas, this fact-based but fictional story of the Tuskegee Airmen chronicles just part of the fight on the ground required for the African American pilots to get the right to fight in the sky. It skips most of the ground battles against the racist Army heirarchy fought back in the US, so well told in the HBO filmThe Tuskegee Airmen, although Clarence Howard is shown as the Washington-bound black officer who fights the military bureaucracy and prejudiced congressmen for his squadron's right to fly and fight. (The HBO film depicts well Eleanor Roosevelt's role in making sure that the black squadron would receive a green light.)

This film focuses instead on the action in the skies where the pilots protected the B-17 bombers flying over Germany. The Germans had been able to lure away the fighters piloted by whites that were supposed to protect the bombers that the bomber attrition rate had climbed to an alarming rate. Ordered to stay with the bombers rather than engaging in dogfights, the Tuskegee pilots gave far better protection, and yet still managed to shoot down a great many enemy planes. The Airmen, the tails of their fighters painted red, performed so well that the once prejudiced bomber crews changed their views concerning African American pilots’ skills. (One wonders whether any of those white flyers ever questioned racist practices after the war when they returned home.)

The film succeeds far better as an action film than as one exploring the depths of racism. The computer generated aerial combat scenes overshadow the shallow dramatic ones, almost turning what could have been a sociological film into a comic book action movie. Indeed, with its stereotypical characters—there is the pipe smoking commander; a hot shot pilot who loves to show off his flying skills, a can-do maintenance man able to patch up a damaged plane overnight; a pilot with a drinking problem, a religious pilot with his picture of “Black Jesus” taped to his control panel, and a snarling Nazi airman whom we cannot wait to see going down in flames. There is a bit of flag-waving, so that the film reminded me a lot of those I enjoyed as a boy, films such as God Is My Co-Pilot and Flying Fortress. In such films here is never any doubt that God is on the side of Americans killing Germans, nor is there any qualm raised about thethousands of civilian deaths caused by our massive bombing attacks.

Cuba Gooding, Jr., who plays the desk-bound major in charge of the squadron also starred in the far better 1995 film mentioned above. To discover the enormity of the racial barrier faced by the squadron at its very inception I urge you to see it. In Red Tails, when one pilot enters into a liaison with a local Italian beauty, there is not a ripple of criticism from her family or from the Air Force brass. This romantic interlude might have been added out of concern for women viewers, but it brings into question the filmmakers' hold on the reality of the times. Despite this and other shortcomings, the film does a service by bringing to a mass audience a little known episode in the long march toward racial equality.

A touch of chastity or continence, anyone?

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

Last week I wrote about my friend Caroline Simon’s new book, Bringing Sex into Focus. I quoted Carol in her description of chastity, “the virtue that helps us focus our sexual energies on committed relationships.” Chastity also enables “the successful integration of sexuality within a person that results in inner unity between bodily and spiritual being.” When we are chaste we are able to use our “sexual powers intelligently in the pursuit of human flourishing and happiness.”

Carol has several cool charts in her book, and I found a pair of them quite helpful. Aristotle, she says, taught that states of character range along a continuum. He believed there was a difference between (1) being virtuous and (2) being well behaved, which usually means a person has to struggle to live according to the values they hold dear. Some others, further along the continuum, (3) may struggle but fail. And, with respect to any virtue, there will (4) be yet others who don’t try to live by that particular value.

A general chart looks like this (p. 74 in Carol’s book):

• Virtue – habitually acting well and enjoying it
• Continence – successfully struggling to act well
• Incontinence – unsuccessfully struggling to act well
• Vice – habitually acting badly and enjoying it

If we believe that chastity is a virtue worth pursuing, Carol writes, then “it is an aspect of character that a person can aspire to, achieve, stray from, regain.” She presents a chart laying out the four stages related to chastity (p.75):

• Chastity – an integrated sexuality resulting in inner unity between bodily and spiritual being as well as respect for other’s sexual integrity
• Sexual Continence – successfully struggling to act chastely
• Sexual Incontinence – unsuccessfully struggling to act chastely
• Lustfulness – Sexual dis-integration resulting in habitual enjoyment of treating others as collections of sexual body parts

Why does this matter? I had never considered the difference between chastity and sexual continence. As a married woman, I have been sexually faithful to my husband, Dave. Sometimes I’m attracted to other men, sometimes I’m not. I thought my goal was simply to be faithful to Dave, whatever the attraction I’m feeling. And, in one sense, I suppose that’s true. But what about “the successful integration of sexuality within a person that results in inner unity between bodily and spiritual being”? For me, most issues related to unity between my body and my spirit relate to overeating and struggles with my weight. But I’d like to start praying for “successful integration” in other areas including sexuality.

For people who aren’t married as well as those who are, this way of thinking about a virtue can be very helpful. Carol cites the young woman who had had sex one time. She looked at it as having given away her virginity, and then figured since she had lost that pure state, she might as well keep having sex. That emphasis on virginity makes the issue into an all-or-nothing phenomenon. Carol writes, “Celibate chastity is the ability to happily dedicate all of one’s life, including one’s sexuality, to the service of God.” This clearly could apply to someone who is technically a virgin and to someone who is not. Adultery could be viewed the same all-or-nothing way – I’ve done it once, why not keep doing it? Aristotle’s virtue continuum leaves room for anyone, no matter what they have done, to grow in wholeness and spiritual health by moving further along the continuum towards a place where chastity is a contented state and even a source of joy. This sounds to me like the grace of the Gospel in Jesus Christ.

Very thought provoking. Very helpful.

Carol is blogging regularly about sexual issues on the Psychology Today website. This post relates to what I’ve written here. You can see a list of her recent posts here. 

 

Booing the Golden Rule - Really? Booing the Golden Rule - Really?

A Gathering Voices post by Beth Pyles

        Some time ago during one of the many presidential debates, candidate Ron Paul suggested that the foreign policy of the United States would do well to follow the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  The response of a significant portion of the audience in the hall, most of them, I would hazard to guess, Christians, was to boo.
        It is shocking to hear the Golden Rule booed in any context.  
        My own belief is that the crisis of our time and place is not a lack of faith in Jesus, but rather a lack of belief that Jesus is ‘up to the job’ – I think, without meaning to, we have somehow rewritten our understanding of just who Jesus is and what Jesus does and can do.  And so we believe we have to act in the ways we do, because Jesus just isn’t up to the job.  
        An example: on the eve of the Iraq war, I coincidentally happened to attend a church meeting as a student observer.  The minister asked his Session to reflect on what Jesus would do when it came to the decision whether to go to war or not.  
        The folks had many and varied answers; they were all thinking seriously on it; they were all taking their faith and their understanding of God and God’s word into account, including one gentleman who just couldn’t contain himself; the words literally burst from him: If you’re asking me if Jesus would ride into Baghdad on top of a tank, well, of course he wouldn’t.  But Jesus would be wrong!  
        The silence that followed his outburst was, as you might imagine, stunned.  I don’t know how he and his church family dealt with that in the days, weeks, months and years after I left.  But his statement has never left me.  
        What was going on in his heart, I cannot know.  But I can tell you what I thought then and what I think now: I think the man is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ, but that somehow, over time, he has stopped believing that Jesus really is the Savior, the Messiah, the Rescuer.  Somehow, he has come to believe that Jesus just doesn’t understand what we face; that somehow, Jesus isn’t up to the job.  
        I don’t know what else to call that except a crisis of faith.  So it’s my own guess that too many in the debate hall the night Ron Paul invoked the Golden Rule may suffer the same problem: believing that Jesus is a nice enough guy, that Jesus is a good model to follow for our kids; but when it comes to the world of grown-ups, when it comes to the serious ‘business’ of the work of nations, Jesus is just too darned naive to be considered, let alone believed or followed.
        If I am right; if this is so, more’s the pity.

Seeing sex more accurately

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

True confession. I like romance. I like thrillers, murder mysteries and adventure movies best when they have a romantic subplot. I like books and movies that are straight out romances. I like to watch people fall in love.

I like reading about and watching people navigate feelings of attraction, and I like it best when the attraction results in love, commitment and life-long faithfulness. Admittedly, few novels and movies portray love that lasts a lifetime, but I relish it when they do.

My enjoyment of romance, and my even greater appreciation for portrayals of life-long love, came to mind when I read my friend Caroline Simon’s new book from InterVarsity Press, Bringing Sex into Focus: The Quest for Sexual Integrity. Carol uses six “lenses” to discuss sexuality: covenantal, procreative, expressive, romantic, power and “plain sex.” She argues that we all use these lenses at different times when we think about (or engage in) practices including sexual intercourse inside and outside of marriage, flirting, seduction, pornography, prostitution, and homosexual sex.

Carol’s writing is so clear. Carol has been a close friend since we were in our early twenties, and I knew her while she pursued doctoral studies in philosophy and later flourished in her teaching career at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. I have always enjoyed talking with her about complex issues because she thinks so clearly. Reading her book is a privilege because it is a window into her thought world, characterized by straightforward, helpful and oh-so-clear analysis.

Carol advocates the covenantal lens as the primary lens that Christians should use to think about sexuality – sexual intercourse in the context of a life-long commitment. But she says that most people use other lenses as well, and she argues that we should use them to some extent. I have come to the conclusion that there’s (mostly) nothing wrong with my love of romance because (a lot of the time) I value romance in the context of commitment. There are moments in my marriage when the plain sex view is significant – simply enjoying sexual intercourse as a bodily gift. Other times the expressive view of sexuality needs to take a slightly greater role – my awareness of being female and created by God to be a sexual being.

My favorite part of the book was Carol’s discussion of chastity. Carol describes chastity as much more than a synonym for virginity; we can be chaste as single people or as married people. We are chaste when our experience of and involvement with sexuality is whole, life-giving, rich and full. She writes that chastity is “the virtue that helps us focus our sexual energies on committed relationships” but is also “the successful integration of sexuality within a person that results in inner unity between bodily and spiritual being.” Chastity enables a person “to use one’s sexual powers intelligently in the pursuit of human flourishing and happiness.”

Here’s a longer quotation that summarizes her ideas well: “Chastity allow us to take our sexuality with us wherever we go without treating other people as collections of sexualized body parts. If we are married, chastity allows us to desire our husband or wife as a whole person – body and soul. Chastity allows us to make love in a way that celebrates our wife’s or husband’s whole embodied self, extended from remembered times and to anticipated times. Chastity helps us be faithful to our husband or wife in health, in sickness and ultimately in death. If we are single, chastity allows us to be sexual while refraining from intercourse and without being restless. Whether married or single, chastity allows us to be happily and robustly embodied – to be content, yet aware and appreciative of our own body and the bodies of others.”

(Stay tuned for more on chastity next Thursday. Sorry I can't put page numbers beside the quotations. I read the book on my kindle.)

An odd (and challenging) juxtaposition

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

My son sent me a link to an article in the Stranger (a Seattle area alternative newspaper) about the furor around Mars Hill Church in Seattle. The article is entitled “Church or Cult?”, which gives you a hint of the tone. I not only read the article, I read most of the 200 comments and some of the blog posts for which there were links in the article.

I’ve always had a lot of mixed feelings about Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll, the controversial pastor there. Because Seattle was my home until 2007, I’ve met people who attend Mars Hill, and I’ve heard them talk about the ways they have grown in faith in the church. In some ways, Mark Driscoll has been prophetic in trying to describe a form of Christianity that is not feminized. Those are good things.

However. A big however. I disagree with many of Mark Driscoll’s views on the role of women in ministry and in marriage. I found the Stranger article titillating, a sort of guilty pleasure. And yet I hate to see Christians discredited in the press. I was glad some members at Mars Hill defended the church in their comments.

I probably spent an hour and a half reading the article, the comments, and the blog posts. I felt uneasy and disturbed for the rest of the evening.

The next day I woke up feeling fine, and during the day I wasn’t thinking about Mars Hill at all. Late in the day I happened to remember that a friend had raved about a sermon at her church, the church where I used to work, Bethany Presbyterian Church in Seattle. I went online, found the sermon, and discovered that Pastor Heidi Husted Armstrong had preached one of the best sermon I’ve heard lately. She focused on parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt 13:24-30, 36-43), and she talked about the fact that all of us as individuals, and all of us in Christian communities, are a mix of wheaty-ness and weedy-ness. Jesus says that we are to let the weeds and wheat grow up together until the end of the age. To tear out the weeds now would be to damage the wheat.

Suddenly Mars Hill was back in my mind. There’s definitely wheat at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, even though it pains me sometimes to acknowledge that. I believe there are weeds there as well. Because God, the Lord of the Harvest, has asked us not to tear out the weeds prematurely, I have to have patience. I am called to speak the truth as I see it, but to speak in love (Eph 4:15). 

Heidi quoted Gregory the Great in her sermon: The good we do has no value if we fail to be patient with the evildoing of another. Do I really believe that?

I felt such a myriad of emotions when reading the Stranger article: glee and sorrow, coupled with shame at my own response. The juxtaposition of those emotions with Heidi’s sermon actually seemed to illustrate her main point. Wheaty-ness and weedy-ness were evident in my thoughts and feelings.

I’m glad God will deal with wheat and weeds at the end of the age. I’m glad I can rest in God’s competence to do that. But I do feel challenged to find a bit more love in my heart for people with whom I disagree.

A fast from news media, part 5

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

For a week now I’ve been reading the local newspaper as I eat my breakfast. If I’m home for lunch, I continue reading it over lunch. A few evenings a week, I’m also reading news online. I’m coming out of my news fast, which began in mid June.

I’m struck by several things as I reengage with news media.

1. Local-ness really matters to me. I really do enjoy knowing what’s happening in my community: A spate of burglaries in a particular neighborhood. A decision by the city council. An out of season weather pattern.  I felt strongly that my news fast (as enjoyable as it was) couldn’t last forever. I want to be an informed voter. All of those local tidbits I read in the newspaper help me see patterns of what’s happening in my city, which helps me vote more responsibly in local and national  elections.

2. At the same time as I enjoy the pattern of small and large news items that make up the day’s news, I am also struck by how banal so much of the news is. Throughout this news fast I have pondered how I’m going to find news that I actually want to read and that actually feels right to read. At one point in the fast, I decided that I should pray more often before I pick up the newspaper or go online for news, asking God to guide me as I read. I haven’t done that in my first week back with the newspaper, and I need to do it.

3. Speaking of banality, the national and international news often falls into that category as well. I must confess to a love of following presidential election politics. Ever since mid December, I’ve been reading a bit about the jostling for the nomination for the Republican candidate for president. So much of it has no lasting value. With Ron Huntsman bowing out of the race, I can only be glad I didn’t spend a lot of time reading about him.

4. Perhaps I should talk about addiction, rather than banality. As I dip my toe back into the news, I can see already that certain topics engage my interest much, much more than others. (Presidential election politics for one.) I can read about those topics long past the point of reason, grace and love. I can get so absorbed that I enjoy watching for mud-slinging that parallels my own opinions. I sometimes delight in the downfall of people I haven’t agreed with. 

Six months away from the news has brought these patterns into focus for me. I know I need to engage with the news, at least to some extent. I know I need to pray more as I begin to read, and pray after I read as well for the needs I’ve read about. I know I have a tendency to go too far when I read about some topics.

I know I’ve got to reflect and pray some more about this topic. When I do, the scripture that keeps coming to my mind is Philippians 4:8, and I find myself wondering, over and over, how a person can remain faithful to Paul’s words while also engaging with news media. I guess it’s a wrestling match that never ends.

Philippians 4:8 says: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” A wrestling match indeed to honor these words and engage with the news.

(Here are the previous posts about my news fast: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.)

Looking forward, looking back

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

In these early days of 2012, are you thinking about the year that’s past? The year to come?

Last week I wrote about New Year’s resolutions, and I got a couple very interesting comments from friends. One friend said she doesn’t make New Year’s resolutions. Instead, she does an “examen” of the past year, asking questions like these: What blessings did we experience? What was I grateful for? What not-so-much?

Examen is an ancient prayer pattern which provides a structure to examine the ways we were aware of God’s presence during a specific time period (a day, a week, a year) and also the ways we felt God was present to us but we resisted that presence.

Most years I write a Christmas letter to send to family and friends. When I pondered my friend’s pattern of engaging in examen at the end of each year, I realized my Christmas letter functions that way for me. I usually start thinking about the letter in November, and I ask some of the same questions my friend asks. The letter doesn’t end up describing everything I’ve thought about, but the process of thinking about it and writing it helps me get a perspective on the year. And that’s valuable.

One year I didn’t get the letter written until well into January, and I think the lateness of the letter came from an absence of time in November and December for reflection. I remember that year I did a lot of reflection in early January. Here we are in early January again, and it’s simply not too late to spend some time pondering the blessings and challenges of 2011.  Where was God present in your life in 2011?

Another friend responded to my column last week by saying that she doesn’t do resolutions. Instead, she said, “I try to pick a word that will set the tone for the year. This year the word is ‘notice.’ I am finding that through my days I need to notice the world around me more.”

I love that word. I am passionate about the need to spend more time and energy thanking God, and thanking the people around us, for the gifts we receive. (I wrote about thankfulness here.) In order to express our thanks, we have to pay attention to what’s going on around us. We have to notice.

As a result of my friend’s comments about choosing a word for each year, I’ve been thinking about what word I might choose for 2012. Perhaps something like “listen” or “follow.” I want to do a better job in 2012 of trying to listen for God’s voice to guide my decisions about how my spend my time and energy.

In several social settings in the past week, my husband and I have asked people if they’d like to come up with a word that summarizes their hopes and dreams for 2012. Our friends have chosen words like these:

• grateful
• health
• Emmanuel
• fun
• seek
• spontaneity
• work
• Word

 We enjoyed hearing our friends describe the thoughts that lie behind these words.  Because of those conversations, I’m going into 2012 with a sense of expectation and encouragement, looking forward to seeing where God is at work in the days and weeks to come.

Do New Year's resolutions help?

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution that actually helped you change a bad habit or develop a new skill? Or have you found resolutions to be a dispiriting and discouraging waste of time?

 

When I was a teenager and young adult, I enthusiastically made New Year’s resolutions, and I kept a lot of them. I can’t remember the specifics of a single one, but I remember spending a lot of time in December thinking about what small thing I wanted to change. Maybe the key to my enthusiasm about resolutions back then lies in the word “small.” As far as I can remember, I never attempted to change anything major.

Sometime in my late 20s or early 30s I stopped making resolutions. I don’t remember much about why I made that decision. After I stopped making resolutions, I often saw articles in magazines or newspapers that talked about New Year’s resolutions as pointless and an exercise in frustration and futility. In fact, some authors seemed to be saying it would be better not to make resolutions at all, than to make them and not keep them. Making a plan and not fulfilling it does something destructive to the human soul, they seemed to be saying. Better not.

About ten years ago I made a New Year’s resolution for the first time in a couple of decades. I had bought a book of abdominal exercises for women, and I made a resolution to begin to do exercises for my abs. A year went by, and I didn’t start. The next year I made the same resolution. And the next.

It took about five years for me to begin to do abdominal exercises. Now I’m pretty consistent at doing them three times a week, and I can tell a difference in the way my stomach feels. Flatter and more muscular in a small but wonderful way.

So now I find myself wondering: Did the resolutions, repeated year after year, help me start to do the exercises?

I study and write about Christian spiritual practices, those repeated actions that help us keep company with Jesus. I am convinced we are shaped profoundly by what we do.

Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life, noted: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Moments really do matter. Our choices of which actions to repeat – abdominal crunches, prayers at bedtime, Scripture memory, and so on – really do make a difference over the span of months and years.

What helps people get started doing something they have never done before? What helps people begin to do something consistently when they had only done it sporadically before? New Year’s resolutions helped me start new habits when I was a teenager and young adult. Yes, they were small habits, but small habits do make a difference. I wonder part of the benefit of those resolutions had to do with the time I spend in December pondering my life and examining the patterns of my days.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. As you think about 2013 coming soon, how do you want to shape your days so your actions will impact the pattern of your life?

I Will Speak Peace to You

 

A Gathering Voices post by Beth Pyles

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The Senate has passed an appropriations bill allowing the military to indefinitely detain US citizens while in the United States for suspected ties to al Qaeda or associated groups.  Given actions by the current administration and a ruling by the Supreme Court last year, the work of groups such as Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), with whom I have served in Iraq, makes me subject to this law.  

 

On June 30, 2010, the Supreme Court decided in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (HLP),  that a citizen of the United States can be deemed a terrorist by providing information and/or training on peaceful, non-violent resolution of conflict.  My thoughts at the time:

The cruel irony in our country today is that Lockheed-Martin, GE, Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater and its successor and others in the arms industry can legally sway elected officials towards violence and war by spending money (in campaign and lobbying efforts) as  constitutionally-protected free speech; yet if I speak to non-government actors committing violence with a view towards peaceful resolution of the conflict, my speech is not free.  Indeed, it comes at great cost, for it dubs me an aider of terrorists.

 
Congress and the President have successfully passed and imposed a law which prohibits aid to foreign terrorist organizations.  That makes sense.  But “aid” is defined to include “expert training”.   By a majority ruling, the Court agreed with the Executive Branch that such things as training folks how to engage in peace and reconciliation with the other side(s) to conflict constitute forbidden expert training.

 
I am heartbroken.

The kinds of things made criminal by the Court’s ruling include teaching human rights law and conflict resolution, as those would be the imparting of a specific skill or specialized knowledge. 

Now we face an ever-expanding incursion into the founding principles of this country, including not only free speech, but also due process of law, the bedrock upon which we rest our sense of collective self as civilized: that rules apply and that they apply equally and fairly, to all; and that no one, regardless of category (and there have been many) may be denied such things.

In this particular challenge to fairness and access, the impetus must be remembered: peace and peacemaking are seen as dangerous, subversive, threatening, while war and violence are viewed as our safe haven.

Apart from the sheer illogic of such thinking, apart from the surrender to moral bankruptcy it represents, stands the person of Jesus the Christ, the very Prince of Peace, the culmination of God's own peacable-kingdom vision.

As the Psalmist proclaims, I will speak peace to you.  (Psalms 85 & 122)

To whom would we not?  How can we not?  For it is a word from our Lord.

_______

Should you want to know more on how these laws are affecting the work of various charities worldwide, check out Charity & Security  

Jesus' presence in pain

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

 

Two weeks ago, on a sunny afternoon, I got out my bicycle for a ride. As I pushed off with my left foot, I felt something snap or pop in my left knee. I rode a couple hundred yards slowly, checking to see if I needed to stop riding.

Yes, I definitely needed to stop.

I got home, put ice on my knee and elevated it. I’m not able to take painkillers, so ice has become my friend. At first my whole knee hurt, but as I iced it off and on the rest of the afternoon and evening, the pain became localized in the back, so I focused the ice there.

That night as I tried to sleep, my knee felt like it would explode. It was a pain so absorbing it dominated all my thoughts. I finally slept. The next morning it was clear that the pain was localized in the back of my knee, right where the hamstring muscles attach to the knee. I talked with a doctor friend who said I was doing the right thing by continuing to ice it and waiting to see if I needed further medical attention.

Each day my knee got a little bit better, but I noticed a few days later how tired I was. Some of the fatigue came from not sleeping as well as usual, and some of it came from coping with the pain all day long.

Now, two weeks later, it’s 90% well. I’m not writing about it to ask for sympathy or advice. I’m writing because I have been pondering how little empathy I’ve had for people with chronic pain. Pain is absorbing and exhausting. It limits a person’s view to the immediate, as if life is telescoped and truncated. Pain limits the ability to love others, and the big picture of what God is doing in the world feels far away and clouded. The pain determines so many aspects of daily life. Can I do that action without making the pain worse? What do I need to do to compensate as I make a particular movement?

This present moment of pain is all that matters.

In this Advent season when the whole world appears to be festive and when everyone appears to be focused on parties and shopping and gaiety, I invite you to think about the people you know who experience chronic pain or who are experiencing some specific form of pain right now. I invite you to pray for them, asking that God would meet them in their suffering.

Christmas appears to be a happy holiday, focused on the joyous birth of a baby. However, this baby was born into humble circumstances. As a man, he suffered as he made his journey to a painful death. Because of Jesus, anyone who suffers can have companionship in suffering and redemption of the pain. The companionship and redemption often don’t make the pain go away. But it does make a huge difference to know we are not alone as we suffer, and that something good can come from it.

I know a hurt knee, painful for a couple of weeks, is a ridiculously small form of suffering. But it got me thinking, and I’m now praying for people in pain in a whole new way. And that’s just one form of redemption that I experienced because I hurt my knee.