Last week I had the privilege of presenting workshops at the Daughters of the King Triennial. They are sisters in Christ committed to service and prayer in the Episcopal Church. Their Triennial was held in Indianapolis, Indiana, a state I had never visited before. These prayerful, servant- women gathered from all over the world, and it was an amazing feeling to pray with women from Africa, Texas, Brazil, and other places from all over the world. We prayed in different languages, but to the One Creator. We sang in different languages, but sang to Our God. Although these women came from different parts of the globe, they came for the same reason. To deepen and renew their commitment to living a life of prayer and service. Our skin color looked different, the stories of our individual lives were different, our churches and service projects might be different, our ideas about how to make the world a better place might be different, but the one thing we had in common, was to celebrate the differences and strive to love each other better.
Speaking of different. It was very different for me to leave my children for five days! Different, but good for everyone! My children got to experience the fact that life can go smoothly with Dad! I got to experience how different it was for me to get to miss my children. How good it feels to take a break, and how wonderful it feels to reunite after a few days away. It was different for me to just focus on myself, other passions that I have, and it was extremely different for me to sleep in a little, have a glass of wine with friends, have some "girl time" and talk about something else other than my children, and it was different for me to experience supporting Charles and everything he was balancing at home! Church, day camp, meals, Spanish class, lunches, laundry. He was awesome at it all as he always is. It was definitely different for him too! I am so blessed by his support, his prayers, and his blessing to pursue my adventures of writing and speaking.
It is important in our lives to "do different", to "try" different, and to "live differently" for awhile. Our ability to adjust, adapt, change, and be transformed, lies at the heart of "doing" and "experiencing" different. When you think about it, many of the stories in the bible are about living differently. Any of the gospels could hold the title The Gospel of Different. The Old Testament is made different by the New Testament. We have all set out to live differently from Adam and Eve. The way Jesus arrived into the world was radically different. A young girl, receives the message of an angel, and risks her life, her reputation, and a "normal" future by saying yes to something extraordinarily different...impregnated by God, betrothed to a much older man, and giving birth to a son who was "different" from everyone! You can't get much "different" than that!
And then there is the Book of Exodus. Moses was to lead the people out of their slavery to sameness and into the wilderness of different. The people of Israel panicked and asked Moses, "Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? Leave us alone it is better to be slaves to the Egyptians." Definitely not the happy campers Moses was hoping for. But Moses responds to their experience of different by proclaiming, "Don't be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm." It is so easy for us to panic and be afraid of what is different. It is so easy for us to jump to conclusions about what is waiting for us. It is so tempting to keep our minds in the condition of slavery to our past. It is so easy to think that we are going to die out there in the wilderness of different.
As parents raise children, you often hear moms and dads say that they just want their children to have a different life than they did. They want a life that was better than theirs. They want their children to have a life that is a little "easier" for them to live out... Less struggling, better physical health, bigger and better opportunities, healthier relationships, and the list could go on and on. And it was the same for Mary and Jesus. Mary instinctively knew that God wanted us to experience a different life. And so he sent his son Jesus, the Master of Different to show us how to live a more loving, peaceful, and purposeful life. And Jesus spent his life trying to teach us how to be different people. Jesus was our savior from our love of, and our loyalty to, "the same". All he really tried to demonstrate, in what he taught and what he did, was that "the same" way of doing things isn't working. We all pray for a different world, but we all keep doing "the same" things. Jesus came to be the Savior of our Sanity. The miracles he was able to perform were miracles that changed what was the same to something that was different. He helped people that were experiencing the same old sickness and disease into a different life of health and wholeness. He changed enemies into "friends" and changed fears into faith. His message was always the same. If you want to experience something different then you have to do different things to get a different result. Jesus knew that a "different" experience began with a "different" thought.
When we pray, do we pray in order to have everything around us change while we get to stay the same? When you go to church, do you attend church expecting everything there to always stay the same, all the while expecting new people to attend? Church goers who want different people to attend, but who don't believe that they have to try different things, in order to welcome these new people with new and different needs, aren't likely to experience a different result in attendance, in pledging or stewardship. The same thoughts, the same beliefs, and the same attitudes will result in more of the same. Same doesn't grow different. If you go to the doctor with certain symptoms and you are prescribed certain medications, only to find out your symptoms aren't better, you need to try a different medicine, or a different approach, to experience your health again. If you envision growing a flower bed of tulips, but you planted the same seeds of marigolds that you did last year, you are going to get the same marigolds, and can only hope, or keep wishing, for tulips.
Sometimes "different" is a choice that we make, and most of the time when we choose "different", it is always a move toward greater happiness. But there are times in our lives when "different" chooses us, and those are the times when we feel caught between two shores, the shore of "sameness" that we left behind, and the shore of "different" that we are moving to. When "different" chooses us, it is tempting to want to cling to familiar shores, where we knew exactly what we were doing, why we were doing it, and where we could do it with our eyes closed. Wading out into deeper and "different" waters can feel like we will drown in the unknown, the unfamiliar, and the unchartered spaces of a brand new path. Different can be awkward while you get your "sea legs" underneath you. Different can feel dark, while you wait for the light to dawn on your mind, helping you to overcome false mindsets and the untrue stories you've told yourself about how bad different is going to be. Different means change and expanded happiness. Sameness means stagnancy and the slow and certain death of greater possibility and strengthened faith. Different requires a deeper and stronger faith. Sameness requires being right instead of happy, and staying "comfortable" instead of stretched. Sameness is a false happiness, an underlying degree of depression and suppresion of Truth. Sameness thrives on the belief that everything is going to hell. Sameness can be hell, cleverly disguised, and believed to be heaven.
Jesus was always warning us about sameness. He understood that hating your enemy only created more hate and more enemies. So he taught us something radically different to do. Love your enemy. Pray for your enemy. Bless your enemy. The same belief of I can be hurt and attacked by people has to be changed to a different belief: No one can hurt me. They are teaching me how to grow my spirit and become a more loving and forgiving person. Even they come to me in love. The old and same belief that I must attack back so I think I feel better and they hurt more has to change because it only multiplies more hate, more revenge, and more violence. Turning the other cheek is different and will produce different results. Instead of thoughts that rest on plotting revenge, now you have thoughts that rest on God, thoughts that rest on peace, thoughts that rest on spirit instead of flesh.
Every day when we wake up, our prayers for the day should include asking God to show you a different way to be, a different thought to think, and a different action to take. We can be different and be comfortable because "different" has to be given a chance to become our new "comfortable". Different can be our new "ordinary". And this "different" will eventually become our new "same". And then this different that has now become our "same" will eventually have to be questioned and evolve into another new "different" way to be.
As things are now experienced, there is a marked difference between "heaven" and "earth". The Lord's Prayer is a prayer that we pray in order to experience heaven and earth as being the same. And if the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, then what is within our hearts and minds is going to have to become different in order to experience the blessed "sameness" of heaven and earth. Jesus made it very clear that we are going to need to do things differently in our lives if anything that we want changed is going to be changed. "Different" is not an option anymore. It is not something that we are going to be able to try one day and then go back to what we think is comfortable. We are going to have to commit to the "different way" to create something different and better, until that "different way" becomes the natural way, the only way, the highest way. The more people that are willing to risk being and doing different together, the more likely that the different way will be here to stay.
The good news is that we don't have to "do different' alone. We have the Holy Spirit, given to us as a gift, because Jesus knew that life was going to be different without his physical presence on earth. We can ask God for what we need, and if we have belief, God will supply whatever it is we need to make a difference in our world. A difference in our world only comes from different prayers, different thoughts, different beliefs, and different visions. We cannot expect "different" to be a crowd pleaser. Oftentimes, one voice that calls for something different is the lone voice in a sea of voices crying out for the same. But we are never left alone, standing by ourselves on the shore of "different". Grace and faith will cause us to be bold and free to walk on the waters of different to the opposite shore of sameness, never looking back... Hands always outstretched to the one who slept peacefully in the boat while surrounded by the stormy waves of "different".
If you are unhappy, think different thoughts. If you are worried, think different thoughts. Loving the "same way you've always thought about it and done it won't make a difference, it only makes more of the same. Ghandi thought differently and acted differently. Martin Luther King thought and acted differently. Mother Teresa prayed, thought, and acted differently. Rosa Parks got to sit on a different place on the bus because she was fed up with sitting in the same place on that bus. Nothing can change if you don't dare to think and do differently. Sometimes we convince ourselves that it is just easier to keep things the same. Change is too hard, too difficult, just too much. What if Mary decided that bringing Jesus into the world was too hard, too difficult, too painful, and just too much for her to do? What if Jesus decided that dying for us was just too hard, too difficult, too painful, and just too much for him to do? Being something different, if we do it alone, is too hard, too difficult, too painful, and too much for us to do, but with God, being and doing something different, is possible! God is different from us, and to be imitators of God, we are going to have to become different people. We cannot have a divided mind when it comes to creating a more loving, peaceful world, free of fear. Any one who doubts is unstable and double-minded and cannot imitate You. James 1: 8. Having faith in sameness creates more instability than trusting that God will meet you in the "different", and through your faith in something new, a world of stable peace and steady love is established. It is impossible to believe in fear and create a world free of fear. It is impossible to curse our enemies with our mind and our revenge, and experience a loving world. It is impossible to love only the people that are like you and worship the same God you have made in your image, and experience a peaceful world.
Let us abandon "sameness" where "sameness" begs to be different. Let us make ashes of our thoughts that cling to "only this way has worked in the past" when "only this way" longs to rise up from those ashes and light a fire, blazing a path of "the new way". It is on this path that we will stop and remove our sandals and bend our knee at the burning bush of something new. May its heat mold our hearts. May its flames inspire our minds, and may its beauty light up our eyes and fill them with a new vision, a new "different" to aspire to. Thank you, Moses, for leading the people out of the Egypt, out of their slavery to "sameness". Thank you, Abraham and Sarah, for believing that your old age didn't have to mean the same barren result. Thank you, Daniel, for believing that lions didn't always have to hurt you and keep you trapped and fearful in a den of death. Thank you, Mary, mother of Jesus, for allowing God to do something different in your young and fragile years, that would change our same world forever. May your example keep us alert to any "sameness" that needs to be made different. May your example keep us aware of my contribution to sameness and my fears of being a contributor to different. May your lives give us hope that we can be holy agents of change, with God's help and God's grace. May we feel strengthened through the power of the Spirit when sameness is popular and different feels too lonely and too risky. I know Mary, a mother, and a woman, must have felt lonely and feared the weight of risk, while surrendering to someone and something different. She carried on. She kept moving forward. For the sake of something different and right, may we always carry on. May we keep moving forward, even when we cannot fully see the end result or have all the details and control that we might like to have. Moving toward "different" we can rejoice that God's unconditional love for all of us is the same and eternal.
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