Tag: Jesus Christ

A World Without Weapons

jamieahughesLeave a comment

I have dwelt too long
with those who hate peace.
I am for peace; but when I speak,
they are for war.

— Psalm 120:6-7 (CSB)

********

Like many white Americans, I grew up with guns. Nothing excessive. A rifle for deer hunting. My great great grandfather’s pistol that didn’t work (but no one had the heart to throw out). A .38 hidden in my parents’ bedroom, pulled out only to be cleaned or when my father was out of town on a business trip. I was neither drawn to nor enamored of them. They were simply there, part of the mise en scène of my family’s life, much like the laundry basket, the rotary telephone, and the oversized wooden fork and spoon decorating our small kitchen.

But for every person like me, who grew up with a few weapons and no real feelings about them one way or the other, there is person who who was raised to adore guns, a person who—if given the opportunity—would perhaps build and altar made of them and lay prostrate before it.

Don’t believe me? National Geographic photographer Gabriele Galimberti has captured some stunning images of people with their arsenals artistically laid out before them for an upcoming exhibition she’s calling “The Ameriguns.” According to her research, “Of the all the firearms owned by private citizens for non-military purposes in the world, more than 40% are in the USA. Their number exceed that of the country’s population: about 400 to 328 million. In proportion, that’s more than 120 for each hundred; more than one per person.”

And those guns aren’t simply sitting on shelves or in safes either. They’re out and doing irreparable damage. According to Everytown Research, “Every day, more than 100 Americans are killed with guns and more than 230 are shot and wounded.” There are in average of 38,826 gun deaths in this country each year, 60% of them suicides and 36% homicides. And, lest you think the homicide percentage isn’t that bad, be aware that the United States’ gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than that of other high income countries.

If you’re interested in learning more about the negative effects of guns in America, particularly where the white community is concerned, I highly recommend both of these books.

It’s one thing to see weapons glamorized in films or in video games, which I don’t support. It’s another to see them touted in commercials by people who are running for public office. These individuals are supposed to be reasonable and balanced, people we can trust to make good decisions at the local, state, and federal levels in our name.

Recently, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the representative for Georgia’s sixth district in the U.S. House, ran a commercial promising to “blow away the Democrats’ Socialist agenda” using a 50 caliber gun to destroy what looks to be a perfectly good Prius.

But this (aside from the tacky raffle aspect) is not new in Georgia politics. During the 2018 campaign, the state’s current governor, Brian Kemp, ran a series of ads designed to appeal to red state voters, many of them featuring weapons and explosions. He claims he’ll “blow up government spending” and that he proudly “owns guns that no one’s taking away.”

Both Rep. Greene and Gov. Kemp are Christians, which makes their embrace of weapons and bombastic aggression even more troubling. We are meant to be a people who turn the other cheek and love our enemies. We are told that the highest ideal is not to be warmongers but peacemakers. It is by seeking peace that we will be known as sons and daughters of God.

And they’re not alone. Many fellow believers take their love of God and guns very seriously. There are extreme examples like The Rod of Iron Ministries in Texas, which thankfully are well outside the norm. However, in many of your average Southern churches, it is common to find hyper-masculine men’s retreats featuring everything from paintball and turkey hunting to gun ranges and tactical courses. (If you are interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s amazing book, Jesus and John Wayne.)

Beloved, I am so unbelievably tired of it. I’m numb down to my bones, and my heart is heavy with grief. The church is meant for beauty and truth. It is our highest calling to make the love of Christ manifest to the world. But for the most part, I can’t help but feel we are failing at that task. Failing quite miserably, in fact.

That’s why I’m not interested in aggression or “defending” a certain way of life. I do not feel threatened by those who are not like me. I’m with Chef José Andrés, founder of the amazing charity World Central Kitchen, who says, “instead of building higher walls, let’s build longer tables.”

I sometimes feel hopelessness pulling at me like a rip current, threatening to pull me out into a cold and lonely sea, but these two images have helped me stay afloat and fight against the bitter tide.

“Christ Breaks the Rifle” by Otto Pankok
Image courtesy of https://profetizamos.tumblr.com/post/627636704068714496/christ-breaking-a-rifle-by-otto-pankok-1955
“Christ: Swords Into Plowshares” by Kelly Latimore
Image courtesy of https://kellylatimoreicons.com/collections/signed-print/products/christ-swords-into-plowshares

Both are currently hanging in my library where I can see them when I sit down to read. Each day, they remind me that I don’t serve a heartless god, one who revels in bloodshed and human suffering. I serve Jesus, the humble servant who laid down his life for the world and who tells me the Christian’s highest goal is not victory or domination. Instead, he says: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

He promises me that one day God “will dwell with [mankind], and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

My savior says, “He will settle disputes among the nations and provide arbitration for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives. Nation will not take up the sword against nation, and they will never again train for war.”

Breathe in, beloved. Breathe in and remember that Jesus doesn’t take up arms. He takes them in his nail-scarred hands, breaks them over his knee, and drops them in the dirt where they belong.

If you are aching for a world without weapons, without anger, and without fear, you’re not alone. I’m with you. Countless millions are standing alongside us, praying and hoping. And that day is coming. Until then, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

A Better Day That’s Coming

jamieahughesLeave a comment

Crabgrass is growing in the yard between the brick steps. It is among the roses and hydrangeas. The garden, so carefully planted this spring, is slowly going to seed. Wild grasses are overtaking the boxwood wall. A small world that was once tidy and prim is overspreading. Vines cover the carefully spread mulch, and stones walkways share space with wild lettuce.

I have watched this all happen in slow motion, throughout spring and now into late summer, and find I now lack the will to fight. I no longer want to beat that unkempt wildness back. I wish I could just look past it, view the chaos and disorganization as something that has no impact on my life. But I can’t seem to do it. My eyes are drawn to every imperfection, every failure—all the ways I botched my promises to the corner of this world that is my home.

Then there is the tub that won’t drain. The water-stained kitchen ceiling. The sofa constantly shedding pleather like dead skin. My children’s closets. Everywhere I look, something is falling apart, ceding to decay. There isn’t a single place where everything stays put, where a problem solved doesn’t instantly revert.

Image courtesy of The Gleaner. Located at https://www.thegleaner.com/story/news/2021/03/05/rideout-weed-control-vegetable-garden/6906585002/

Surrounded by so many minor tragedies, all of which leave me tired and defeated, is it any wonder that the events of the past few weeks feel like a pile of bruising stones laid relentlessly on my chest? My feelings about COVID-19 come in waves: One moment, it’s fear for my children. In another, I can only feel anger toward those who continue to refuse life-saving vaccines and masks. In a third, it’s grief for those who have died needlessly (and often alone), struggling for breath and begging someone to save them.

I watch people running alongside planes at the Kabul airport, fighting for space on the landing gear—grimly holding on, knowing that even if they fall to their deaths, it’s a far better future than the one the Taliban has to offer. I witness mothers hurl their toddlers over razor wire into the arms of American soldiers, people sleeping in the cold on beds made of stone and cardboard. Sobbing, I pray as best I know how in these strange and trying times, “Lord, fix it. Help them. Have mercy. Please, Lord, have mercy.” And I wonder if my words even travel beyond the tacky popcorn ceiling I hate so much.

I sit, hands over my mouth, and listen to the stories of survival in Haiti. I suffer alongside a woman whose foot was crushed by falling debris and who is recovering from its amputation in a hospital bed in the open air. There is no hospital to house her, for it is also damaged and on the edge of collapse. And then the rains came, so even the small comfort of dry, clean sheets was ruined.

And it hits me, there is no comfort here, no space that is safe from death and destruction. It’s easy to forget that in my middle-class suburban neighborhood—a place where I can hold ruin at bay. For a moment, I quieted the groaning of creation and knew peace. But I am so frail, so feeble, and my best efforts bought only a scant few days of relief, a speck both invisible and unremarkable.

The world is screaming—loud and insistent and in need of deliverance—and there is nothing I can do. I can only bear witness, leave my eyes and ears open to the suffering of others, but to what end? How does my becoming a vessel, however well-intentioned, alter the tide of human suffering? It doesn’t. And yet I continue to hold space, to let myself drown time and again.

I drown each day but do not die. And every time I return to life, I find my lungs can hold just a bit more air. My heart can manage one more beat. My legs grow stronger and can deliver me to the surface one more time before I succumb to grief.

Image located at https://www.ilikewallpaper.net/iphone-wallpaper/Drown-In-Water/20600

Maybe this is what Paul was trying to tell the Corinthians when he wrote, “Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that Jesus’s life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:7-11).

Like David, I cry out, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day?” (Ps. 13:1-2). And while, like him, I know “my heart will rejoice in [God’s] deliverance” and that one day “I will sing to the Lord,” (vv. 5-6), I refuse to turn this moment into a spiritual platitude, a tidy story with an uplifting ending. We have been fed a steady diet of those tales in the American church, and our feast of wishful thinking has left us saccharine and spiritually flaccid.

Dwelling in brokenness is horrible, but I can’t help but feel there’s a reason for my being there. Sadly, the church is no help. I have found no answers there, only dishonored promises and continued failures. To me, it is a place that’s turning inward, concerning itself only with members’ comfort—planning ladies’ socials, community BBQs, and children’s programming while the world outside continues to burn.

But Jesus has not failed. He is there with the people waiting at the Kabul airport, desperate to flee their homeland into an unknown future. He is there with the Haitians who are worshipping outside their damaged churches. He is with me in my distress and bone-crushing grief, his heart more sorrow-filled than my own over the state of the world, even though he can see beyond it to the newness that is to come. And because I believe in him, the one who neither leaves nor forsakes us, I trust his words are true and that a better day is coming—for all of us.  

Sticker Shock

jamieahughes2 Comments

img_6090

 

At first glance, this magnet on the back of my car is nothing special. It’s hardly as cool as my “Team Oxford Comma” sticker or the logo of my beloved St. Louis Cardinals. Heck, even my Valdosta State University alumnae badge of honor is more unique.


 img_6146
Like hundreds of other folks in the place a call home, it indicates that I have a curtain climber or two involved in an afterschool activity known as, you guessed it, “Kid Chess.”

Each Tuesday, our dastardly duo finishes their school day and heads for the cafeteria to learn about “the immortal game,” beloved by commonspun philosophers, kings, and titans of industry. For ninety minutes, they learn strategy and play a game or two with classmates on the same skill level as they. Some weeks, the boys sprint out, their faces flushed with the thrill of conquest. Other times, they more closely resemble Eeyore, the beloved sad sack of the Hundred Acre Woods because they’ve been beaten like a tied up goat. But I’m happy either way because they’re learning how to think critically, to be good sports, and to take risks.

But that’s not what makes that goofy blue knight sporting the Def Leppard do so special.

When we were going through the adoption process—filling out mountains of paperwork, taking IMPACT training classes, and meeting with advocates and case managers, every so often, I would think to myself, Do we REALLY want to do this? Are we sure that we’re sure about this life-changing choice?

Most times, the answer was yes. But there were days (more than I care to admit) when I backpedaled from the entire thing. Days when I heard adoption horror stories in the news or from the mouths of well-meaning friends. Days when I came home exhausted and realized just how difficult life could be for a working mother. Days when my selfishness overruled my willingness to obey.

I prayed for peace about what sometimes seemed like an altogether foolhardy endeavor. I asked for confirmation from God, some grand symbol like the ones he gave Moses in the wilderness or during Belshazzar’s feast. Heck, I decided I’d settle for a little dew on some fleece. But the Lord, as we all know, is not in the earthquake, fire, or whirlwind. It’s the still, small voice we should be listening for, the gentle question that comes to us from just outside the safety of our caves.

Days before our paperwork was approved, I was still wrestling with adoption and with all the worries and expectations that are part and parcel with becoming a new parent. But driving home from work one afternoon, I saw a car with one of those silly magnets on the back, and I found myself saying, It might be fun to raise a kid who plays chess.

Wham.

Just like that, I went from worrying about all sorts of things (most of which have not come to pass) to thinking, It might be nice.

And now—one year after children were placed in our home—that magnet is proudly on display on the back hatch of my filthy yellow car. Evidence that God is indeed at work in the details.

 

At the Risk of Robbing Tim O’Brien

jamieahughes4 Comments

There are things I carry. Cumbersome things like a satchel full of work that needs doing. Things to put away and up, out and down. Armfuls of things from this store or that.

And there are weightier things too. The grief that hangs over me at the thought of my grandfather’s death. The worry that comes from lingering too long over world news. The dull panic that only an adult can know, the kind that comes with the understanding that success and security are ephemeral—the line between them and their antonyms thinner than the logical edge of Occam’s razor.

I pick them up each day and place them on the shelves of my shoulders, bear their invisible weight like Sisyphus once did his stone. And even at rest, I never quite manage to put them down. Instead, I brace myself and pick up new burdens in an attempt to lessen those I already have. A freelance job to cover the cost of that new whiz-bang-gotta-have-thing that might make life easier, safer, better, or more pleasing. A relationship that should make me feel less vulnerable. And in these things I put my trust, though they’re as costly and as ineffectual as Maginot Lines. The peace I crave is not in them, and yet I soldier on, dragging them behind me, leaving ragged scars in the earth.

But I’m not the first to think such madness wise. The prophet Isaiah (46:1-4 ESV) says:

Bel bows down; Nebo stoops;
    their idols are on beasts and livestock;
these things you carry are borne
    as burdens on weary beasts.
They stoop; they bow down together;
    they cannot save the burden,
    but themselves go into captivity.

Old gods of Babylon—deaf and dumb as the gold that bore their image—can do nothing for the men who made them or the flagging beasts who lug them to their hollow temples. But then there is the promise of the One who tells me His yoke is easy and His burden light.

“Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
    all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from before your birth,
    carried from the womb;
 even to your old age I am he,
    and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
    I will carry and will save.”

I was borne—carried, supported, held up—before the world began. Sustained eons before I took my first lungful of air. Borne before I was born. And until my hair turns gray and brittle as old paper, until the very moment I wheeze my last, He will bear me still. Why? Not because He owes me. Not because He needs the challenge. Four simple statements make the reason plain.

I have made, and I will bear. I will carry and will save.

No if you… conditions, no because you… stipulations. “You are mine,” He tells me. “Mine to carry from before birth and beyond death. And I do so because you are my treasure. I loved you before I knit you together in your mother’s womb. Before I gave you brown eyes and long fingers, a love of words and an ear for music. I carried the weight of you, light as an eyelash, in my righteous right hand.”

And so—for the moment, until I stubbornly and disobediently pick up my load again—I bask in that love. And it is so beautiful I can hardly bear it.

Lyrical Witness

jamieahughes2 Comments

As someone who’s spent a lot of time performing and contemplating church music, I know how hard it can be to keep your passion for it intact. That’s why speaking with Keith and Kristyn Getty was truly refreshing. Not only do they have a great love for leading worship, they also are intentional about creating music that helps the church sing well together.

This Q&A with the talented husband and wife duo is featured in the September 2014 issue of In Touch magazine. If you’d like to receive your own copy of this magazine free of charge each month, please visit this page and give us your name and address. There are some great articles and series in future issues, and I’d love for you to be as blessed by reading them as we have been putting them together!

 

 

 

Step Up

jamieahughes4 Comments

Adopting children involves a great deal of preparation–everything from your home to your heart–and we did a bit of both this past weekend.

Our couch and chairs, which were perfect in a two bedroom apartment, left us looking a little house poor in the new digs. So we decided to go ahead and buy a sectional that we could use for entertaining and for what we hope will be many fun family movie nights. So we spent most of Friday hauling the old stuff to Goodwill and then filling the empty space with the lovely piece you see below.

The cat is scoping it out, trying to find the best place to sit. And yes, we are changing the wall color.
The cat is scoping it out, trying to find the best place to sit. And the walls have been painted since. No more gaudy mint green!

 

The new monstrosity comes in four sections: chaise lounge, center couch, end couch, and ottoman. Three of the four pieces weren’t too much trouble, but the end couch (the one closest to you in the picture) was an absolute bear. Even after we removed the wooden feet and tried wedging it through the door from multiple angles, it still refused to go in. However, twenty minutes (and several frustrated grunts) later, we managed it. And I thought I’d never use geometry again after high school.

The schlepping wasn’t the part that got to me, it was getting the pieces up and down the back stairs. The reason? I don’t like moving around when I can’t see my feet. I just don’t believe I’ll hit stable ground when I don’t know exactly where I’m headed. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll find the one hole to step in or that my foot will slip, either of which will end with me crashing to the ground. My brain knows that I’m okay—but for some reason, if I can’t see it, I don’t believe it. And until I can get my bearings, my stomach slushes around in my gut like a boat bobbing on choppy seas.

I felt much the same way on Saturday in our IMPACT training classes at Bethany. As we sat and listened to all the signs a child has been sexually abused and the ways in which he/she might act out, I felt that place in me go loose again. I floated on a sea of incertitude, lost and wondering where this process might take me. The questions flashed in my mind, all strobe lights and gaudy neon…

Who exactly am I bringing into my home?

What kind of damage has already been done, and is there enough love in me to help undo it?

Am I ready to raise a child who has faced horrors I’ve never even imagined?

How am I going to manage this and a full time job?

I honestly don’t know the answers to any of these questions that now hang in the air like an unresolved chord, dissonant and jangling.

I’m in the cavernous space between them and their answers. It’s a place of uncertainty where I can’t see my feet, spiritually speaking. I don’t know where this process will take me, if I will land on solid ground or find myself tumbling down the stairs. “Just show me a few details,” I ask God. “Like how many kids we’ll have. Or how about a heads up about the kinds of behavioral issues they’re going to have so I can research and prepare myself. Just a few clues, God. That’s all I need really.” But He’s silent. Not because He can’t answer me, but because answers aren’t what I need.

The other day, a good friend said, “Jamie, it’s in the act of faith that courage becomes a reality.”

That’s why (as much as I hate it) I need to stand, my foot hovering above the unknown, and trust God to take care of me when it lands. Why? Because the courage comes when you act, not as you wait.

Tim Challies put it this way in a recent blog post about making decisions:

“The thing we want [an answer] is a thing God does not give us. He is far too wise for that, and does not give us that view of the finish line, that sneak peak of the future. He could, of course….But he doesn’t.

Instead, he does something far better: He gives us a view of himself. We don’t need to know the future when we know the one who holds the future. God does not want us to put our hope in a future outcome, but in him. We don’t ground our faith in a result, but in a Person. If we could see the future we would take our eyes off him. If we could see the future, our faith would be in the future. But when all we see is God, our trust must be in him.

God doesn’t comfort us by showing us the future, but by showing us himself. He shows himself as the all-powerful, all-knowing God who is for us, not against us. He shows himself as being far more committed to us than we are to him. He promises that he will never leave us nor forsake us, that he will work all things for good, that he will hold us firm to the end. He guarantees that he has purposes in this world and that nothing can change or interrupt or thwart them. He assures us that he will be glorified. He says, “Don’t look at the future, look at me!”

That’s what I have to remember in the empty, hollow space of dissonance—the resolution will come. Yes, the questions will be answered.

Perhaps they will be fast, miraculous, onomatopoetic answers….Zap! Bang! Boom!

But I think it’s far more likely to happen over a slow passage of years. I’ll get them as I help my children untangle the knots of pain in their souls and put themselves back together. Getting them will hurt, yes, and there will be tears of both joy and sorrow. But I cannot allow the lack of them to delay God’s plan for my life. So bring on the next piece of unwieldy furniture, the next challenge, and the next question.

I’m ready to step up.

Small Change, Big Difference

jamieahughesLeave a comment

I was honored to share the story of Liberty Baptist Church, a small congregation in Fulton, Kentucky, in the June 2014 issue of In Touch magazine. This amazing group of generous people gave enough money to send ten Messengers in Ticuna (a language spoken only by people groups in the Amazon) into the mission field. And their gift has yielded tremendous results in the lives of people they may never meet this side of heaven.

Remember, if you want, you can subscribe to In Touch magazine for free. You can also read our articles online, and if you do, please leave us comments there. We love hearing readers’ thoughts on each and every article we post!

 

 

 

Consider the Bees

jamieahughes2 Comments

For those of you who don’t know, my husband is a journeyman beekeeper. That means our basement is filled with wax, wood, and all sorts of weird things like buckets on sticks and a specially-designed vacuum that can hoover the little critters out of places where they’re not wanted. No kidding.

I’m not as involved with the care and maintenance of all the little divas as he is, but I help out enough to know what’s what. And doing so has taught me a few lessons about God and the wonderful and awe-inspiring ways in which He works.

If you’d like to leave a comment, feel free to do so here. However, it would be even better if you shot on over to the In Touch Magazine website and left it there. Also, if you’d like to receive a print copy of our magazine each month, it’s free of charge. All you need to do is visit this site, give us your particulars, and prepare for all the printed goodness you can handle.

Repeat the Sounding Joy

jamieahughesLeave a comment

Merry Christmas to you and yours! I’ve really been looking forward to the December 2013 issue of In Touch Magazine to hit homes because it is filled with some super cool stuff. Seriously, we tackled everything from Jesus Christ’s genealogy to the truth about the “War on Christmas.”

As always, you can get our magazine in print free of charge by visiting this page and giving us your mailing address. There are even more wonderful articles and changes in store for 2014, so it’s a great time to start receiving our publication!

Below is my contribution to this issue. I was captivated by the ideas of the moments before the angels appeared before the shepherds. Though they’d looked at the stars countless times before, they were still looking. And that’s exactly what we should be doing today. Let me know what you think in the comments below or–better yet–leave a comment on the In Touch website.