The Courage To Abide In An Anxious World
A meditation on being a friend in hard times, grounded in the way God loves us all
For the entire meditation, click here to access it on YouTube - below is a summary of the eight brief stories I shared with the HU students:
STORY ONE: Coach Kara Lawson of Duke University women’s basketball team has an inspiring two and a half minute clip motivating her athletes - here’s the part I quote to open my meditation:
“It will never get easier. So become a person who handles hard better. Anything meaningful pursuit in life will never be easy. It goes to the people who learn to handle hard better.”
STORY TWO: We are standing on the fifth floor of the Jerusalem International YMCA (JIY) tower, the CEO is playing the carillon, casting Christian hymns across the city when sirens go off and we are commanded to immediately seek shelter in the basement.
STORY THREE: As we prepare to land in Tel Aviv on October 7th, we see on the news that thousands of rockets have been launched into Israel. We knew this was bad news, we just didn’t know how bad it would get. What we thought was a hard trip was getting harder.
STORY FOUR: Our second day at the JIY tower includes seeking shelter from rockets, during which we circle up to pray as a worried team of five. While praying a woman from England uninvitedly joins our circle. This prompts a transformation of purpose for why we are in Jerusalem during this time of war.
STORY FIVE: Remembering the story I tell myself about how Christ Jesus is at work in every person I see. This empowered our scared team to see the other fifty scared people at the YMCA through the eyes of Jesus. We felt the invitation to be present to whoever approached us while we sat around the cafe tables, to be open to listening to anyone we conversed with, be willing to encourage and support all who sought it. This became very empowering for us and those we connected with at the JIY.
STORY SIX: When Jesus teaches his disciples in John 15 about what it means to abide in his love, to love one another like God the Father loves him and thus how he has loved them, the context of it is within a nation under Imperial occupation. The political and religious rulers violently eliminate any who subvert the peace. The disciples of Jesus and their families and neighbors lived in a land torn asunder, it was as if they were cursed by God. It made it hard to understand and trust what Jesus was teaching them about abiding in Christ and the love of friends.
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.
No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you andappointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.
These things I command you, that you love one another.”
[Jesus; Gospel of John, 15.9-17 NKJV]
STORY SEVEN:exploring the real power of loneliness, anxiousness, and friendship as an experience of love. We will always have the experience of being lonely and anxiousness because of the structures and violent realities of our world - but will there be quality friendship love which endures all things, forgives all things, hopes all things? Abiding in the love of Jesus is experienced through being fully with our friends in an anxious world - and this requires courage.
STORY EIGHT: the original reason for why we were in the Holy Land was grounded in an experience I had in 2020 when I first met Peter Nasir, CEO of the East Jerusalem YMCA. The group I was with had toured the YMCA buildings and programs they run for youth in Jericho, Bethlehem, Ramallah and East Jerusalem, helping make peace and bringing healing to youth traumatized by violence in the land. It was very inspiring and overwhelming.
When I asked Peter what I could do to support him, me being a Y leader in far away Indiana. His reply changed my professional and personal life: “Can we be friends.”