Are you waiting, hoping, longing for something?
God encourages us to take heart as we wait – be strong and wait for the Lord.
As I say in Transforming Love: “My soul finds peace as I echo David: Wait for the Lord. Take heart; don’t give up; be strong; and wait. Amen–let it be so.”
I thought it would be fun to kick off this series, following Sheridan Voysey’s foreword to Transforming Love last week, by sharing about my friendship with my sister. Sibling relationships can be intense and it’s not always guaranteed that sisters and brothers will be friends. Mine are:
My sister Beth has always been part of my life—when I arrived I uprooted her from her position as the only child. A few years later, when my brother was born, I took the middle place. Brothers and sisters can share a special bond, as I do with Paul, but there’s something unique about sisterly love.
Growing up, Beth was the trailblazer, the one to wear down our parents about when we could get our ears pierced, or wear makeup, or have later curfews. I benefitted from her quiet persistence—even though I was one of the last to wear makeup in my group of friends.
Beth kept up her independent streak and moved out at an early age. Not having her at home changed our relationship, although I didn’t realize it then. We no longer fought over who would take the first shower or who was using the phone. We grew apart somewhat, with me focused on the last years of high school and her launching into her nursing work and relationship with Dave.
Although Beth and I were never distant, geography during my university years and after meant we didn’t enjoy a day-to-day relationship. Interestingly, after marrying Nicholas, when I moved from Washington, DC, to England, I became much closer with my sister. Feeling bereft of my lively social and professional life while being thrust into an unfamiliar culture, I looked to Beth for companionship. I found her continued gentle spirit ready to listen, to connect, to offer counsel.
She appears in my early memories out of proximity, but in more recent years out of choice. Beth and I are different—she pours out her special expression of compassion and love through her nursing, now with hospice care, while I’m not great even when family members aren’t well. And I know she’d find speaking to a group not on her list of preferred activities. But we don’t have to be similar to love each other. I can always count on Beth—she won’t let me down. That we share a faith in our loving God gives me even more gratitude and joy.
Why not consider your own sibling relations, if you have them, or that of close cousins or childhood friends. How is your relationship with them? How could you strengthen it today?
Explore friendship with Jesus in Transforming Love. Find it – including a free copy of the introduction and first chapter – here.
Hearing that my friend Sheridan Voysey would introduce my new book Transforming Love: How Friendship with Jesus Changes Us thrilled me. Sheridan heads up the new Friendship Lab and is doing important work to further not only the understanding about the importance of friendship but to help people to deepen these important relationships in their lives. I’m so enjoying the pilot course he’s running. Enjoy his foreword to my book:
As survey after survey and headline after headline remind us, the recovery of deep friendship is the great need of the hour. Our countries, communities and even some of our churches are getting lonelier by the year as we live, work and worship alone, surrounded by many but connected meaningfully to few.
I have long had a hunch that the stories of Mary, Martha and Lazarus in the Gospels hold clues to remedy our situation. The three siblings seem to have found a special place in Jesus’s heart. We find them offering Jesus hospitality in their home, eating and resting together. We’re told repeatedly that Jesus ‘loves’ this trio, a term of affection used of no one else but the apostle John (who uses it of himself, and only once). The bond they forge is so close that when Lazarus falls ill the sisters don’t have to mention his name, saying only, ‘Lord, the one you love is ill’ (John 11:3). And yet none of the three is part of Jesus’s inner twelve, or his larger group of seventy-two disciples. Mary, Martha and Lazarus aren’t Jesus’s ministry colleagues – they’re his friends.
We can go further. At the friendship project I lead, Friendship Lab, we describe a friend as someone we can talk to, depend on, grow with and enjoy, and each of these elements is present in the siblings’ relationship with Jesus. Look at how intimate their conversations get, with Martha free to express her frustrations and Mary free to express her disappointment, even in him. See how they can depend on Jesus to help their sick brother, even when it puts his own life at risk. Read how Mary and Martha grow in faith, getting opportunities to learn and serve typically reserved for men in their time, and how Lazarus (literally) steps into a new season of life. Watch how they enjoy each other at celebratory dinner parties. This kind of affection, connection and support is what our lonely age longs for.
And so I’m thrilled to introduce Transforming Love by my friend Amy Boucher Pye. With imaginative exploration of these biblical stories and sensitivity to overlooked cultural details, Amy teases out this unique relationship and the transformative effect it has on Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Because at its best friendship is transformative, shaping our characters and destinies like few other forces can, and what’s true of natural friendship is multiplied hundredfold when Jesus is involved. As Amy takes us into the three key encounters the siblings have with him, ushering us into the story as if it were we instead of they who are sitting at Jesus’s feet, being comforted in our loss, or feeling our cold bodies return to life, we come to claim our status as Jesus’s friends too, and the transformation they receive becomes our own. Combined with Amy’s guiding prayers and creative spiritual practices, the result is a rich, graceful exploration of how Jesus befriends and changes us.
Like other aspects of life, friendship flourishes when we have healthy models to emulate. Well, here’s the model. As a mountain-top waterfall nourishes the valley below it, Jesus is the source of deep friendship, our vertical relationship with him flowing to the horizontal relationships around us. Let’s cup our hands, drink deeply and let this friendship with God transform us into the finest of friends to others.
Read more in Transforming Love. Find it – including a free copy of the introduction and first chapter – here.
I was so honored to launch Transforming Love at the amazing Baker Book House in Grand Rapids, Michigan – a truly wonderful bookstore. Here’s the Facebook live link (in the photo above), which includes a gospel imaginative prayer exercise for you to calm yourself for a few moments and encounter our living God.
If you can buy the book from a bricks-and-mortar bookshop like Baker, please do!
Have just over a minute to breathe and pray? I welcome you to breathe in the love of God, the companionship of Jesus, and the advocacy of the Holy Spirit. Filmed in the beautiful setting of Mulberry House.
More prayer practices on my YouTube channel, and sign up for my monthly newsletter with its special prayer exercise.
How can a friendship with Jesus change us? That’s what I discuss with Matthew Price in a BBC radio interview. Have a little listen; I hope you’ll be inspired (it’s only a minute and a half). If you have a bit more time, here I am with the amazing Maria Rodrigues, talking about intimacy with God – including how Jesus wants to be our friend.
I’m thrilled to be launching my newest book, Transforming Love: How Friendship with Jesus Changes Us. It’s a fresh look at the Mary-Martha-Lazarus story and how their relationship with Jesus made all of the difference in their lives. And how our friendship with Jesus changes us!
The official pub date is 4 May, and we’ll have three events in the coming weeks to give thanks and pray for its arrival into the world. (Yes, books are like babies! You work hard on birthing them and then relinquish them and hope they thrive.)
Might you be able to attend one of these?
[PS – I have TWO books coming out this year! Another lovely art book with my dad in November, called Holding onto Hope. My dad and I will host a Minnesota event in early November, so in-state friends and family may want to wait for that event.]
Soon we’ll be entering Holy Week, when those who follow Jesus join in, again, with the events of the shaping story of our faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
You might feel that you’ve fallen short or failed in what you hoped to do/read/observe during this season of Lent. For me, the Lenten book I ordered never arrived; I’ve waited and hoped that it would come while reading the first week, kindly made available by the author to those of us who decided at the last minute to use her resource.
But in God’s kingdom it’s not too late. He welcomes us to enter into the story fully, whether we’ve been able to be faithful or not. He sparks the desire within us and gives it the oxygen and fuel to help it burn brightly.
I welcome you to enter into the story this Holy Week with wonder and sorrow. One way to do so is through praying through the events of the week as they happen. I share a guide to do so in the linked article, written for my lovely friends at BRF, the publisher of my forthcoming book in November with my dad’s art (which will be perfect for next Lent!), Holding onto Hope.
May you receive from God exactly what he has just for you in the coming week as we journey to the cross and the resurrection.
PS how cool is it to be ‘well loved’!!
I’ve often heard the longest journey being described as that between head and heart. That was certainly true in my life. I think you will find encouragement in reading Edward‘s account of reaching a low point in his life, and God changing him through prayer and contemplation.
About 12 years ago my life went pear-shaped. Over a period of four years, I found myself divorced, unemployed and diagnosed with cancer. I was devastated. My Bible study group leader told me that I was a broken man. Throughout this time I did not lose my faith and still went to church and attended Bible studies. But he was right, in my late 50’s, I was a broken man.
I became a Christian in my teens. I had studied theology at college and had a good knowledge of the Bible. I had always been in good health and had had a good deal of success in my career. I was happily married, lived in a desirable part of the country, and had two lovely sons. I had a comfortable life. But like Job, I suddenly found myself in pain and suffering.
Eventually, I started a moderately successful business and following treatment, my cancer went into remission. As the months went by, I thought about why I had become a broken man. Of course there was all the bad stuff I had experienced, but slowly I realised that my faith was all in my head and not in my heart. I had spent my life reading the Bible, going to Bible studies, and talking to Christian friends but I had never really given much time to talking and listening to Jesus in silence, prayer and contemplation. I reflected on Jesus knocking on the door of my heart and realised that I had never stopped and listened to what he was saying to me, other than what he was saying to everyone else. I knew the Bible but I did not know.
At this time I joined an online Christian dating site and saw someone who would later become my wife. It started when I saw her photograph and read her profile. I liked what I saw. At that point we were only able to know facts about each other such as, our age range, our jobs, and the colour of our hair. We got to know about each other. What we knew was only in our heads, not in our hearts. As we started to write to each other and later we met each other, we got to know each other much better. It was by meeting each other that we began to develop a much deeper relationship than merely reading her dating profile could offer.
I believe my experience of getting to know my wife is much like getting to know Jesus. Being with Jesus in contemplation and silence, listening and talking to Jesus by reading and praying over the Bible, and going to special places to enjoy God’s presence are key ways to develop our relationship with God.
I recently spent time contemplating and praying about Mary visiting Elizabeth and John the Baptist leaping with joy in his mother’s womb when Mary visited. In contemplation, I thought about what it was like for me to be in my mother’s womb. I am sure my mother felt joy but I also think she would have been afraid. My mother was an anxious person. As I grew up my mother slowly developed mental-health issues and had a number of in-patient psychiatric admissions. I found these times difficult and often did not treat her as I should have done. I was angry at my mother and some of things she had done to me. I did not realise at the time, that it was because of her poor mental health. Even in my late sixties I still felt a tremendous amount of guilt. But by becoming still, imagining myself in my mother’s womb, listening and praying to God I started to sense a forgiveness towards my mother and a feeling that I was free from guilt. God has not finished with me yet.
Edward Hartley is a retired nurse and lives in Scotland. With his wife, he attends a lively evangelical episcopal church. He enjoys exploring Scotland and spends much time dog walking. He is interested in Ignatian spirituality and receives spiritual direction.
Order 7 Ways to Pray here for more ways to encounter God. Sign up for Amy’s monthly newsletter, including a prayer practice.
I’m so thrilled to share with you news of my new book, which will be published in May, courtesy of Our Daily Bread Publishing in the States and Form/SPCK in the UK. Transforming Love: How Friendship with Jesus Changes Us is a fresh look at the Mary/Martha/Lazarus stories in the gospels, and how friendship with Jesus makes us into the people we were created to be. It’s filled with approachable prayer exercises as well as an inviting dive into the three gospel stories related to Jesus and the siblings. Your relationship with Jesus will be stronger after you’ve engaged with this book (so say my endorsers!).
How’d you like to help out an author and be on my launch team? Here’s what’s involved: I’ll invite you to a private Facebook group where we can get to know each other and receive and give encouragement. When I did this for 7 Ways to Pray, I was moved by the spirit of prayer in the group. I designated Fridays as share-your-prayer-request day, and it was powerful and amazing how people shared and how God met us.
I will send you a PDF of the book to read in advance. What I’m asking you to do:
And if you’ve read 7 Ways to Pray and haven’t yet left a review, might you take a few minutes to do so? Thank you!
PS for those in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area, I’ll be launching the book at Baker Book House on May 9th in the evening – would LOVE to see you there!
(Note: there are lots of places to pre-order, including bricks-and-mortar bookshops. If you do want to use the Big A and you’re in Britain, please note that the British version of the book isn’t yet available – buy the cover with the blue background when it’s available.)