The Miracle of the Moment: When Faith Flexes

Late one night in March my son Ethan was born. It was an incredible day. The culmination of months of prayer, joy, nervousness, faith, and preparation. Jamie and I didn’t know how to be parents. Four kids and nine years later I often wonder if we still don’t. But it didn’t really matter at Saint Mary’s hospital in the infant delivery ward the day our Ethan arrived.

Like many first-time parents we were waiting expectantly for the day to come when we would be able to hold our little prince in our arms. Our friends and family celebrated the onset of our parenthood with gifts and parties. It was a season of incredible joy as everyone in our lives gathered around us. A heightened sense of anticipation descended on our circle of friends, close loved ones, and faith family. Ethan’s due date came and went with no small amount of nervousness on our part.

Jamie’s doctor departed for a family cruise and we were introduced to some new guy. He was not the kind lady we had spent the last nine months learning to trust. He seemed capable, sure, and kind, and all the kinds of things you hope for if the situation arises when you need another doctor to perform the baby-delivering equivalent of pinch-hitting.

A week passed. Jamie and Baby Ethan were perfectly fine according to all tests, but I was getting super nervous. Still, this was nothing compared to my dad. Finally, the substitute baby doctor guy announced early the next week he would need to step in and help the process along. Allowing nature to delay much longer would begin to cause opportunities for major complications. We trusted this guy because we trusted who invited him into our lives.

So, on a Monday morning we showed up at the hospital with all our bags packed to begin the process. Boy was it a process. All day tests were running, conversations were had, and doctors seen. It was a day of waiting, praying, and trusting. Like never before, and rarely since, Jamie and I both felt the muscles of our faith flex as if to say, “don’t be afraid.”

We shared the news of what was happening, first with our loved ones, and then the world at large across social media. The love poured in. It was as if dozens and maybe even hundreds of people were lending us their faith because each one knew this was new territory for us. With every passing moment we drew closer to the miracle we had prayed and waited for. As all those moments crept by, we could feel the reassurance of love.

It was like this incredible substance was propping us up. It was a palpable gathering of the unseen activated on our behalf. What one writer in the Bible described as faith via the evidence of things not seen. We couldn’t see it, but we could feel it. The ramifications were evident as our souls were encouraged.

The long day stretched longer. Someone, I think my mother, brought my favorite hamburger and a chocolate shake. I wasn’t hungry. How could I be hungry awaiting such a monumental miracle? But I ate the entire thing and remained not hungry as I drank down all forty liquid ounces of the superb chocolate shakey goodness.

The long day stretched, and yawned, and winked into night as a sliver of the moon rose above our small town as if to say it was almost time. Just like another man in the Bible described the arrival of a baby in a barn—it was the fullness of time, our time, and my son took his first beautiful breath on this earth.

I cried. My wife cried. It was faith made manifest. It was trust personified. It was the full range of the miraculous in motion and thrust upon our family with all the majesty of the moment. Faith was flexing big right before my eyes with the full force of the love God has for all of us.

Ethan was a promise given. A promise born. It wasn’t just a baby born that day, but it was a mother and father, a grandmother and grandfather, an uncle and cousins. A ripple of life echoed across everyone meaning anything to us and we were all changed. We were all made to mean a little more. We were all together in this and it was lovely beyond imagination.

Faith is a muscle we flex across a myriad of moments, but it is also a miracle that resounds with the finality of lightning. It is both ethereal and ever present. It is surmounting and inescapable in its subjugation of the right now and its dance across our unknown.

We can know, and we can hope, and we can see, and we can trust. Even when we don’t feel it, especially when we don’t feel it. Even when it seems elusive and illusive. When our faith seems deeply inadequate, we can borrow some from a friend.

There have been plenty of times when my faith was not enough. I had to look beyond my own hiccups and draw deeply from the reservoirs of a friend. My mentor, pastor, and close friend Mark is a continuing source of this for me.

Mark likes to joke that he is Iron Man because he has a mechanical heart valve. I’ve never done it, because I don’t make a habit of putting my ear to grown men’s chests, but his wife says she can hear it ticking away at home in the silence of the night. Every flicker of Mark’s heart is a faith moment as he trusts in what he can’t see. He’s lived a full life of putting Jesus at the center, loving people well, and leading and serving with great integrity. He is without a doubt one of the greatest men I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Mark had been my family’s pastor for a while. He loved us through some big changes in our life. He led us through even more changes. And he helped launch us into our dream of becoming pastors of our own new, growing, and healthy church family. All of it came with a lot of bumps, talks, prayers, conversations, and confidence. His faith muscle is even bigger than his biceps (which are gigantic). I know when my faith is flickering I can borrow some from him.

There was a guy like this in the Bible who met Jesus one day. He needed help. He needed a miracle. Jesus asked him if he believed and he said, “Yes! But help me with my unbelief.”

This guy’s story demonstrates what way too many people are being silent about in their own faith journey. We’ve spent years communicating (intentionally or otherwise) you can’t experience both faith and doubt at the same time. I’m not buying it. The faith in our life flexes so much more when there’s uncertainty to face down first.

Ethan’s first breaths weren’t the normal baby breaths doctors expect to be greeted by. There was something much different about them. Something alarming to the people who know what to look for.

So, after a moment of celebration and wonder the well-meaning doctor pulled our son from my wife’s arms and whisked him away to another room. Suddenly, here at the end of an already long and emotional day we found the depth of raw emotions butting up against our years of working faith. We prayed. People we love prayed. Friends, family, and our church prayed. Heaven was on the receiving end of a barrage of people flexing together. The culminating trust of so many echoed big along those hallowed corridors.

Part of me wonders if those who went home before us jumped in to lend their faith as they heard the echoes pass them by. It might sound like wonky theology, but I can just imagine Grandma and Grandpa King picking up the clarion call as they mustered their faith from their remarkable perspective. Jamie said it best from the midst of her confused and longing heart, “I want my Ethan.” Love wants what love wants. It wasn’t just a cry of desperation. It was a statement of faith echoing across eternity as it was repeated in the mouths of praying loved ones.

Ethan’s birth was the culmination of something hard to articulate in a few paragraphs. The sudden alarm for his well-being was something altogether different. As the combined prayers of the many continued in petition of our Heavenly Father the strange breathing normalized. Ethan was returned to mommy’s embrace.

Just like that God showed me how good the experience of our faith at work can be. He didn’t show it to me once. He didn’t even show it to me twice. He showed me twice in the same day.

Faith flexed the moment Ethan was born. It was the bright miracle of a new life entering this world for all to see. It was the holy awe of what it feels like to love a living creation of your own soul. Faith also made itself known as the alarming moments of misunderstanding fell away before complete trust in our amazing Father.

Faith is practiced. It is work. It is art. It is a muscle we hone, and it is also a miracle. The miracle of faith isn’t only a progression of movement between moments, it is also a sublime experience of the miraculous in the moment.

There will be plenty of moments throughout our lives when we must lean deeply into faith in the private spaces of our day-to-day decisions. There will also be those penultimate circumstances when a loved one, friend, neighbor, or son needs us and our faith.

Our faith is a beautiful thing when it stands on its own—trusting Jesus like the guy in the story I mentioned. Our faith is a glorious thing when it stands together as it did for us the night Ethan was born. Those are amazing moments of holding, helping, and hoping within a community of people all believing and trusting for the same thing. Such a myriad of personalities coming together and bombarding heaven with a joining of faith catches the attention of heaven in an entirely different way.

Faith is the substance of our hope. It is the evidence of what we don’t see. It is the everyday stuff, the working it out stuff, and it is the miracle happening just when we need it most.

Hug A Skunk

Have you ever hugged a skunk? Not those rare and elusive tamed pet skunks you sometimes hear stories about. I’m talking about wild, untamed, actual skunks. The stinky kind. No? Well neither have I, but I came close once.

When I was about eleven years old my cousin Justin and I were travelling down a country road deep in the mountains of Arkansas one summer night. It was sticky and humid, like most summer nights in our home state. Despite the humidity, dust danced up from the dirt road as the pickup truck bounced along the familiar way, dodging holes and the odd rabbit.

Justin’s cousin Jason was driving, and he tapped the brakes when something caught his eye in the ditch. Sweaty and happy, we all spilled out of the pickup like good little country boys to discover a litter of baby skunks on the side of the road. There were five or six of the little stinkers and they all just stood there looking at us.

We messed around with them for what must have seemed like an hour. We playfully attempted to catch them but in all actuality were just poking them with sticks and watching them turn to point their little butts in our direction. I don’t know the technical term for it, but the part of their physiology that makes the stinky stuff must not have worked yet. Instead of spraying us with their telltale scent they just looked like confused cats fending off our thin sticks with their fluffy tails.

It went on like this for a while before we all gave up and realized we needed to get back to the house or we would be in trouble. So, we loaded back into the truck and went home for the night—dust, skunks, and our hopes of making pets of them left behind.

We were laughing and having a great time wondering out loud what having a pet skunk would be like. It’s not like we really had any idea, but it was fun. It was the stuff of boyhood whimsy and fantasy, albeit an admittedly strange one.

It wasn’t until we got out of the truck that my Uncle Roy met us outside his house and marveled in his direct fashion just how bad we smelled. Had we hit a skunk? We hadn’t even thought about the smell. Because we couldn’t smell it.

But boy—oh—boy could everyone else at the house. Everyone was gagging. Their eyes watered with the weight of their mirth and the pungent stench of country skunk. Jason was laughing hysterically at a punchline unfamiliar to me. We were banished from the house for the evening.

Someone turned on the water hose and we stripped butt naked outside. Scrubbing with dish soap, vinegar, and the cold flow from the hose made the summer night seem not so hot or humid anymore. It was only when we began to be clean that I started to smell the stench.

Somehow the adventure of the moment had masked the associated odor. It seems unbelievable to imagine doesn’t it? Skunks may not be common in your part of the world, but there is an almost universal reaction amongst those I know who come across them. The reaction is not unlike my Uncle Roy’s, “That stinks!”

It makes me wonder what else I’ve let into my life that stinks. Maybe not literally, I’m pretty sure my wife would speak up about an actual physical smell. But what else stinks?

How do I treat my neighbors and friends? What’s my attitude like? How’s my work ethic? Do the people I don’t know very well think I stink?

I’m not sure how much I should worry about all those things, or even if I should worry about those things where most people are concerned. But I do want to worry about them where the most important people are concerned. I don’t want the good times, even the ones which might seem playful or innocent to cause a stink for my family.

I don’t want my neighbors to avoid me because I repulse them either. This can be a tricky thing these days. Especially in a contrarian culture.

Let’s be honest here for a moment. We’ve all met those Christians. The ones who are always causing a stink.

They get mad because a company celebrates Christmas in a way they don’t like. They are touchy about something a movie might poke fun at. Or they just want to kind of police the world with their specific brand of what’s right or wrong.

These Christians can be loud about it. They may even be right about what they have to say. But how you show up determines the reception.

I used to enjoy wielding my faith like a filter for acceptance. But the more I became a student of God’s love for me the more he trashed my filter.

I don’t want my faith to stink. I don’t want to pollute it. I don’t want to water it down. But I don’t want to beat people up with it either.

I think faith is at its best when it’s challenging me to embrace the work Jesus is still trying to do in me. When I get it right it’s winsome and it is inviting. It’s not repulsive or repellant. It’s compelling and endearing.

Often, well-intentioned followers of Jesus wield love like a test; but when you make love a test everyone fails.

There was a lady in the Bible having dinner with Jesus and his friends. Suddenly she took out a jar of extremely expensive perfume and just poured it on Jesus’ feet. It was her way of saying she knew her life was smelly. So, she gave up something dear to the only One who could really do anything about it.

Do you know what happened next in the story? While this lady Mary was crying and cleaning Jesus’ feet with her hair in a beautiful act of love; all the cranky religious people were busy being upset. They were surrounded by the literal smell of an unparalleled act of love. And were too busy making a stink to even catch the significance.

I don’t ever want to try to catch a skunk again. It did not go well. I don’t want to let anything stinky into my life. Instead I want to offer what I can to Jesus. I want to love as many people as possible. I want to let his work in me shape me into someone who is helping people find him.

I’m convinced all of us can stop being offended. We’re only offended because of our pride, and our pride stinks. Jesus didn’t die for our pride. He paid a high price for our invitation into a better way to live. Our every breath is another opportunity to learn it.

When You Are Frustrated Do This

It wasn’t a typical Monday morning. Not after twenty weeks at home in lock-down mode. School was here. Time to face the music.

We’d already made the decision to homeschool our oldest two. You might have read about that previously. But what about the little ones? What were we to do with our toddlers?

How would we navigate all four kids at home, fulfill all of our professional educational responsibilities, lead our congregation, and not lose our minds. Depends on who you ask. More than a few would say we lost our minds a long time ago. Which brings us back to this atypical Monday morning. 

All of us know what it’s like to be frustrated. There have been whole weeks (recently) when I hung out in frustration for so long I fully expected it to start charging rent.

I was frustrated this particular Monday. Why? Because we had made the choice to send our youngest two back to preschool. Not the source of my frustration. But I couldn’t actually walk them into their rooms. That was the source of my frustration.

I’m not knocking the staff or the school. We love our little preschool. King kids have been dancing down those halls for going on eight years—and before that Jamie taught there. It’s the best preschool in town.

I was frustrated because it was time to let go of something I was hoping I could hold on to for just a little longer. See it was my daughter’s first day.  She is seventeen months old. She has never spent an entire day away from Mommy with a stranger. And I didn’t get to be the one to take her to the stranger.

Did I mention I was frustrated? I was frustrated at the options in front of me. I was frustrated at handing that little pink sippy cup over before I was good and ready. Circumstances had wrenched reality right out of my hand. You’d be frustrated to.

You probably have been. These last few months have been repeatedly frustrating for so many of us. What’s ticking you off lately? It’s probably not hard to figure out. What’s that thing just under the surface that seems to make you simmer inside? Loss? Confusion? Missed-expectations? Your frustrations might come from something else entirely. I get it. We all have them.

We all know what it’s like to be frustrated. Frustration often happens where expectations hit a wall.

There we were standing in the preschool lobby. They checked our temps. I signed the paperwork. Everyone was masked up. And then it was time to hand over my children.

Matty took it like a champ. He was so excited to be back at school with his little friends. He was good to go with his Paw Patrol backpack and Ninjago lunchbox. 

Anna didn’t know what to make of it. She is seventeen months old. Do you know how many of those months she has spent at home with Mommy? Seventeen.

But it was time. Time to let her go where I couldn’t go. Seventeen months just seemed too young for that kind of milestone moment. Hence the frustration.

I handed her backpack, some diapers, a lunchbox, and sippy cup over to the director of the school. And then it was time to hand over Anna. She was stoic. She obviously didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t react emotionally. Not like I wanted to. But she didn’t want me to hand her over either. She held on to Dad. She held on to the familiar. Familiar is comfortable.

Our frustrations will often stymie the next step forward. Even when we know one simple step could take us from comfortable to something better. It’s usually just one step. For you, and for the one needing you to make a move. I didn’t know what to do.

And then sweet little Matty stepped in. My rowdy, hyper, rough-and-tumble three year old said, “I take you, Sissy.” As he grabbed her by the hand and bravely walked her through the front door.

The moment wasn’t lost on me. My decisive nature is quick to lean hard toward the solutions I like, and bow up at the ones that irritate me. Sometimes reality yanks the choice away.

When frustration hits big and you don’t know how to handle what’s important you need help. You need a hand. I know I did. But you don’t just need a hand. You need a hand-off.

You might need a friend to meet you halfway and help you carry some stuff. Maybe you need a loved one to just pick up the phone. Or, perhaps you need the innocence of a three year old to take his sister by the hand.

Whatever your frustration, don’t let the circumstances make you overlook the opportunity. Take a hand when you need one. Give a hand as often as possible. Handing off what’s got your goat will help you take your next step forward. Probably the one that will untangle your agitations. Do it.

You might not even know what the hand you need looks like. For me, it’s my faith. The providence of a friend with good timing. Or, the certainty of something more than imagination can muster. Faith is good at steadying me in the midst of frustration.

Handing off frustration to faith doesn’t make me weak to reality. It makes me better at trusting God.

I’m thankful for big faith. And I’m equally thankful for the small hands that remind me. Not everything has to be epic. Sometimes God will simply show up and say, “I’ll take you.” He’ll even do it through a three year old.

Hand off your frustrations. You don’t need them anymore. Emptying your hands of frustrations will free them up for whatever help God sends your direction. I don’t know what it will look like for you. I only know he’ll do it. When he does—just go. Take the hand that’s offered. Let faith in something better lead all of the important stuff in your life. It will take you somewhere you’d never go on your own.

Would you let us know what’s been frustrating you lately? Maybe we can help? And if you think someone in your circle could use some help handing off their own frustrations please consider sharing this with them.