Lynne Baab

First post in a new series: Creative prayer

Wednesday February 20 2019

About a dozen years ago I attended a morning of prayer led by Louise Holert, a Presbyterian minister here in Seattle. Louise gave us postcards of sacred art to look at alongside scripture passages. The paintings illustrated the passages. She guided us into times of prayer where we pondered the passage. I found the juxtaposition of art and Bible stories to be very powerful. The paintings gave a richness and depth to my interaction with the biblical passages, and they helped me pray in new ways.

I was thrilled when I learned that Louise has put together a book using 31 paintings of the life of Christ, with instructions for how to prayerfully engage with each painting. I’ll describe the book below. But first I want to introduce this new series I’m writing for my blog.

When I was a young adult, I was taught that there are four components to prayer. We were taught the acronym ACTS to help us remember the four kinds of prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanks and Supplication. Those forms of prayer are still vitally important in my life, and in this series I’ll be writing about creative ways to engage in those basic kinds of prayer. I’ll also be writing about forms of prayer that fall outside those four categories.

Let  me tell you about Louise’s book, Praying with the Arts: Illuminating the Church Year with Sacred Art. She opens with five pages of introduction, where she briefly discusses why she structured the book around the church year, and then moves into a helpful discussion of the power of art and how sacred art can play a role in prayer.

The bulk of the book is 31 paintings, each followed by 2-3 pages of instruction. The painters mostly come from the Medieval and Renaissance periods, including Vermeer, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Fra Angelico. The reproductions are good quality. The instructions begin with a few paragraphs about the painting, including some pointers about the symbolism in the paintings. The introduction is followed by the scripture passage that is illustrated by the painting. Next are two sections that are the meat of each lesson: “For your prayerful reflection on the art” and “For your prayerful reflection on the Scripture.” Each of these two headers is followed by four to ten bullet points with specific ideas to ponder. She concludes each lesson with brief suggestions for prayer and thankfulness/praise responses.

The introduction and the lessons include many wonderful quotations by a variety of authors. I appreciated the richness of the quotations Holert uses. I’m so grateful for this resource linking art, the Bible, and prayer, and I recommend it to you.

If you’d like to try doing something similar on your own, ask God to guide you. Then go into Google Images and search for a story you’d like to see illustrated, perhaps the prodigal son or the road to Emmaus. Or you can search for a specific painter like Fra Angelico or Rembrandt. Maybe one painting will catch your eye, or maybe you’ll be attracted to two or three paintings.

Read the Bible story connected to the painting, and ponder the way the artist or artists chose to illustrate the passage. Notice as many details as you can in the painting(s). You might want to imagine yourself in the painting watching the action or talking to Jesus.

You might want to use the four common forms of prayer, ACTS, as you gaze at the painting. What can you praise or thank God for as you look deeply at the painting? Do you need to confess anything to God? What would you want to pray for, for yourself or others?

A praise song or hymn might come to mind, and if so, sing it. See where God takes you as you look at the painting, and keep the dialog with God open as you gaze.

(Next week: another way of praying with art. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column of the webpage.)

I want to highlight one of the reviews of my book on pastoral care, Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First Century. You can find the review here. You’ll see that the reviewer says that my book would be great to use with groups. Please pass on information about my book to people in your congregation or other congregations who engage in pastoral care ministry or in local mission, especially those who lead pastoral care or mission teams.

What I learned from Bishop Aiden of Lindisfarne

Friday February 15 2019

I visited Lindisfarne, also called Holy Island, a few years ago. Connected to the northeast coast of England by a narrow bit of land that goes under water at high tide, it has a rich Christian history. On the island today, you can visit the ruins of a medieval priory and the ruins of a castle built in 1550, plus a chapel and other buildings still in use.

The Christian community at Lindisfarne was founded in the seventh century by Bishop Aiden of Lidisfarne. Aiden, who was born in Ireland, was a monk on the island of Iona when he was asked by the king in 634 to come to Northern England in the role of bishop. The king was a Christian, and he gave Aiden the mandate of spreading the Gospel in Northern England.

Aiden set up a base on the island of Lindisfarne, connected to the Northeast coast of England at low tide. He spent his first ten years as bishop wandering the countryside of Northern England, talking to people about the gospel. He set up numerous Christian communities.

He received money from various sources, and he used all of it to help the poor and to buy people, especially children, out of slavery. At one point the king gave him a horse to aid him in his travels and evangelism, but Aiden immediately gave it away. He felt that the best way to talk to people about Jesus was to walk at their level, not to be above them on a horse.

Aiden also established a community on Lindisfarne to train ministers. The training emphasized study of the Bible, prayer, fasting, and walking the countryside with Aiden to tell people about the Gospel. That community lasted long after his death.

Aiden is often called the apostle of England because of his evangelistic work that had such a lasting influence. A few lessons I’ve been pondering from Aiden’s life:

1. Aiden seemed to have a seamless commitment to:

• evangelism
• prayer
• meditating on the Bible
• spiritual practices like fasting
• care for the poor
• freeing slaves

I love his wholistic approach to physical well-being, spiritual practices, and social justice. I wonder which components of his approach are the most and least apparent in my life.

2. I ponder what it looks like today to walk at the level of people in need. Obviously horses are seldom involved in this decision in our time, but we still need to think about how to build bridges across barriers of culture and socioeconomic level. I wonder what acts and attitudes of humility today would parallel that moment when Aiden gave away the horse.

3. After ten years evangelizing the people of Northern England, Aiden retired to another island to pray and meditate for the rest of his life. Ten years is not a very long time to have made such an impact.

Thinking about Aiden’s ten years of ministry has been helpful to me. I am a very late bloomer, partly because I battled depression from age 27 to 43. After coming out of my depression, I was ordained as a Presbyterian minister at 45. I got my first book contract that same year. At 55, I began a ten-year teaching career. The past 21 years since my ordination have been full and rich, but still, I often feel a great sense of loss about those 16 depressed years. Twenty years of productive ministry don’t feel like enough.

I feel a sense of freedom when I ponder the fact that Aiden did what he was called to do for that significant decade, and then left it behind to engage in prayer and meditation on the Bible. I’m not comparing the significance of my ministry to Aiden’s, but I do find myself thinking that if ten years was enough for Aiden, surely I can accept that twice that could be enough for me.  

When I visited Lindisfarne (at low tide!), I was stunned by the number of visitors there on a weekday in September. There were several hundred cars in the parking lot, and people streamed across the island. What a joy to learn about the man who founded the monastery on Lindisfarne. May we soak up the model of faithful Christians who speak to us from across the ages.

(Next week: first post in a new series on creative ways to pray. Illustration: the ruins of Lindisfarne Priory. If you'd like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under "subscribe" in the right hand column of hte web page. This post originally appeared on the Godspace blog.)

Two related articles you may enjoy:

     Witnesses and Evangelists                                  
     Celtic Christianity: Paradoxes                  

Chinese New Year: A Case Study for Shifts in Christian Caring

Wednesday February 6 2019

Perhaps you’ve met someone of Chinese descent or someone from China. If so, you’ll know that Chinese New Year is a really big cultural celebration, sort of like Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years rolled into one big, long holiday with lots of food and family time. The date changes each year based on the lunar calendar, and this year Chinese New Year is February 5.

A friend of mine who lived in China told me that the holiday lasts two weeks, with the first four to five days being an intense time of visiting with family and friends. Traditionally, the preparation for the holiday included cleaning the house and replacing the food for the kitchen gods at the family altar.

I learned about Chinese New Year in New Zealand – where I was migrant – from Malaysian students of Chinese descent – whose ancestors were migrants from China to Malaysia and who were themselves migrants from Malaysia to New Zealand.

Christian ministry in the 21^st century has some new aspects, as a big rise in world-wide migration is changing the demographics of our communities and our congregations. In 2017, to love our neighbor must include paying attention to the culture of origin of the people we want to extend care to. When we make friends with people from China or of Chinese descent, that means learning about Chinese New Year and what it means to them.

I want to compare and contrast two ways of attempting to show love to people who come from different countries or ethnicities. One way is to work on being “color blind,” where we focus on what we have in common and do our best to ignore differences in skin color or other differences that come from our ethnic backgrounds.

Paula Harris, a speaker and writer, was raised as a missionary kid, and her parents encouraged her to be color blind, which she views as a loving approach. In Being White: Finding our Place in a Multiethnic World, she describes how she became aware of the significance of ethnicity and what it means to people who live as minorities or migrants.

Harris came to understand that being color blind is good, but inadequate. She and her co-writer, Doug Schaupp, give six reasons why developing an appreciation for ethnicity reflects God’s values. Harris and Schaupp write that colorblindness:

• ignores the heart language of our ethnic minority friends;
• misses kingdom riches God intended for our blessing;
• misses who people really are at their core;
• assumes everyone is “white like me”;
• makes us vulnerable to stumbling into an Acts 6 rift; and
• numbs our hearts to the suffering of our friends. [1]

This year I invite you to have a conversation with any people from China or of Chinese descent that you know. Ask them about Chinese New Year. What do they like best? What did it mean to them as a child? What are their plans for this year? What did they do last year?

If your friends are Christian, ask some additional questions about where they see God’s grace and joy in the festivities. Perhaps the fresh start implied in Chinese New Year makes them think of the fresh start we have in Christ. You could ask about this.   

Around the world, the number of people who do not live in their country of birth has increased to a sum larger than the population of Brazil. In addition, many people are second or third generation immigrants, who have retained holidays and practices rooted in the country of their ancestry. In many countries, indigenous people have cultural traditions, as do many African American people in the United States.

We can try to ignore cultural differences, or we can work on learning about them, affirming them and appreciating what they mean to people we care about. I’m trying to do more of the latter as a spiritual practice that I hope reflects the love of God.

I develop these ideas further in my recent book, Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First Century. I discuss shifts in Christian caring in recent years in the light of world-wide migration.

(Next week: Bishop Aiden of Lidisfarne. Illustration: The Chinese Gardens in Dunedin, New Zealand by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under subscribe in the right hand column of the web page. This post appeared on the Godspace blog for Chinese New Year last year.)

Here's article I wrote that discusses the kind of listening skills that help us understand across cultures: To be a neighbor must include listening. It won an Australian Press Award.

Nurturing friendships in a cellphone world: Hymns that describe friendship with God

Thursday January 31 2019

I’ve been writing about human friendship as rooted in the love between the members of the Trinity and the love of God for us. I invite you to ponder the words to these hymns. In what ways do they enrich your understanding of God’s invitation into friendship with the Triune God? In what ways might they help you rest in God’s love as you seek to love others?

O worship the King all glorious above,
O gratefully sing His power and His love;
Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.
        —Robert  Grant, 1833, based on Psalm 103
       (Listen to the whole hymn here.)

Alleluia! sing to Jesus!
His the scepter, his the throne;
Alleluia! his the triumph,
His the victory alone;
Hark! the songs of peaceful Sion
Thunder like a mighty flood;
Jesus out of every nation
Hath redeemed us by his blood.

Alleluia! Bread of heaven,
Thou on earth our food, our stay!
Alleluia! here the sinful
Flee to thee from day to day:
Intercessor, Friend of sinners,
Earth’s Redeemer, plead for me,
Where the songs of all the sinless
Sweet across the crystal sea.
       —William Chatterton Dix, 1866
       (Listen to the whole hymn here.)

My song is love unknown,
My Savior’s love to me,
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die?

He came from his blest throne,
Salvation to bestow,
But men made strange and none
The longed for Christ would know.
But O, My friend,
My Friend indeed,
Who at my need his life should spend!

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King,
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
In whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.
       —Samuel Crossman (c. 1624–1683)
       (Listen to the whole hymn here.)

(Next week: Some thoughts about Chinese New Year related to mission. Illustration by Dave Baab. If you’d like to get an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column of the whole webpage.)

This is the last post in a series excerpted from my book, Friending: Real Relationships in a Virtual World. The second half of the book describes the skills that help us act like a friend. Whether you read my whole book or not, I invite you to ponder the ways God is calling you to grow in actions that nurture friendship. (I am offering copies of the book at a discount price. It works well for small groups because it has discussion questions at the end. Contact me at LMBaab[at]aol.com if you’re interested. The email address in last week's post was wrong, so sorry, fixed now.) Previous posts in this series:

Nuturing friendships in a cellphone world                
Strong opinions and responses                 
My conversation partners about friendship          
Two views about commmunication technologies            
Changing defintions of friendship                 
Confidence about friendship                
Friendship with God                  
Jesus as friend                      
Friendship with Christ and friendship with others
Who is my neighbor?                      
Friendship as action  

Nurturing friendships in a cellphone world: Friendship as action

Thursday January 24 2019

The story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) has profound implications for friendship. (Last week I described the significance of Jesus’ question to the Pharisee about being a neighbor.)

The challenge in friendship isn’t to figure out who is a friend. The challenge is to grow in ability to act like a friend. The actions that nurture friendships are intentional practices. These intentional acts of being a friend are rooted in the understanding that human friendship is an invitation to participate in the love that the three persons of the Trinity have for each other and the love that the triune God has for us. That love is most visible in Jesus Christ, who lived and died for us, and was raised from the dead to undo the forces of hate and evil in the world. That love is made real in our lives through the work of the Holy Spirit.

When we read the description of love in 1 Corinthians 13, those characteristics don’t come out of a vacuum. They come from God, are best exemplified in the person of Jesus Christ and are made real through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Scholars often point out that, in some ways 1 Corinthians 13 is a commentary on the life of Jesus. He alone is the one who defines love as this sort of love: patient, kind, rejoicing in the truth, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things and enduring all things. In Jesus, love never fails or ends. The four Gospels are full of stories that demonstrate the kind of love that reaches beyond itself and enters into another person’s world. To give just a few examples, Jesus touched a leper, talked with a Samaritan woman at length and set a crippled woman free from bondage (see Mark 1:41; John 4; Luke 13:10-17). All these actions required the ability to empathize with and enter into the other person’s emotions and situation.

Not only does Jesus exemplify this kind of love, he also enables us to love like this as we are remade in his image. Our ability to put on this kind of love, to clothe ourselves with it, comes first from clothing ourselves in Christ (see Romans 13:14; Galatians 3:27). Being clothed with Christ, putting on Christ, is a powerful metaphor for salvation, and clothing ourselves with Christ will enable us to grow in loving like he loves.

Jesus is our friend as the Savior of the world. Jesus is our friend as the one who lays down his life for his friends. Jesus invites us to follow him, to be the kind of friends who stick around when times are tough for others, to be the kind of friends who give and care and reach beyond ourselves. The depth of friendship we are offered in Jesus can be a foundation for friendship with the people we love.

The apostle Paul wrote, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. . . . Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Colossians 3:12, 14). We’ll be able to put on that clothing most easily when we know deeply and profoundly that we’re chosen and beloved by God.

Love is the belt buckle that holds on the new clothing that Paul describes in Colossians 3. The characteristics of the new clothing—compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience—aren’t utilitarian. They aren’t primarily a means to an end, although they do result in very good things. Instead they are rooted and established in love, the love that flows from God. They are a reflection of a deep and profound reality: the love of God for the creatures he made and holds in his hands.

Note the circle this creates. Paul calls us to compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, which are all bound up in love, which we learn from 1 Corinthian 13 is itself patient, kind and so on. We are clothed in loving patience when we are patient in our loving; we are clothed in loving kindness when we are kind in our loving. We become what we clothe ourselves in, and we clothe ourselves in our habits.

Let me say my main point again: The challenge in friendship isn’t to figure out who is a friend. The challenge is to grow in the ability to act like a friend.

This series on friendship in a cellphone world was excerpted from my book, Friending: Real Relationships in a Virtual World. The second half of the book describes the skills that help us act like a friend. Whether you read my whole book or not, I invite you to ponder the ways God is calling you to grow in actions that nurture friendship. (I am offering copies of the book at a discount price. It works well for small groups because it has discussion questions at the end. Contact me at LMBaab[at]aol.com if you’re interested.)

(Next week: some hymns that mention God or Jesus as our friend. Illustration by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column of the whole webpage.)

This is the 11th post in a series. The previous posts are:

Nuturing friendships in a cellphone world                
Strong opinions and responses                 
My conversation partners about friendship          
Two views about commmunication technologies            
Changing defintions of friendship                 
Confidence about friendship                
Friendship with God                  
Jesus as friend                      
Friendship with Christ and friendship with others
Who is my neighbor?