Dave Graybeal – The Keith Church Blog

Las Vegas is one of the last places I expected to find spiritual inspiration on something other than perhaps the pervasiveness of sin. But Tracy and I won a trip there a couple of years ago at a fundraiser for the Arts Center, and we traded in the Cirque de Soleil tickets for a chance to see Céline Dion on stage at Caesars Palace. For as long as I’ve known Tracy, she’s wanted to see Céline Dion in concert, and this seemed like our best bet.

After we waited in our seats about a half an hour for her finally to come out and grace the stage, she proceeded to belt out some of her beloved ballads that powered us through the 90s and early 2000s – “The Power of Love,” “It’s All Coming Back to Me,” and the hit song from the “Titanic” movie soundtrack “My Heart Will Go On.”

Toward the end of the concert, she sang another song from a movie soundtrack, a new song from the recently released “Deadpool 2”. I hadn’t seen the movie, so I hadn’t heard the song. But with scenes from the movie flashing across the curtain behind her, she sang words that immediately struck me, that seemed like a psalm, that sounded like a prayer. It was like a bit of church right there in Caesar’s Palace! See what you think:

         What’s left to say?
         These prayers ain’t working anymore
         Every word shot down in flames
         What’s left to do with these broken pieces on the floor?
         I’m losing my voice calling on you
         ‘Cause I’ve been shaking
         I’ve been bending backwards till I’m broke
         Watching all these dreams go up in smoke
         Let beauty come out of ashes
         Let beauty come out of ashes
         And when I pray to God all I ask is
         Can beauty come out of ashes?

Céline Dion – Ashes (from “Deadpool 2”)

Have you ever felt like that? Like your prayers weren’t working anymore? Like you were losing your voice calling on God, only to watch your dreams go up in smoke? Only to be left with the broken pieces of your life scattered on the floor?

These words tap into a longing many of us have in our hearts, a question many of us have on our minds. We long for beauty to come out of the ashes among us. And we wonder if such a thing is even possible. Can such a thing as beauty come out of such a thing as all these ashes?

You see, we know ashes. We know brokenness. We know ugliness. We know loss. But what we need to know is whether that’s all there is, or can God do something about these ashes? Can God somehow bring some good out of this?

“Can beauty come out of ashes?”

This Wednesday is an important day in the church calendar. It’s a day called Ash Wednesday. It’s a day that marks the beginning of the season of Lent, the 40 day journey with Jesus to the cross, and beyond the cross, to the empty tomb.

It’s a day when we are marked on our foreheads with the sign of the cross in ashes that were made from the bright green palm branches of last year’s Palm Sunday.

Ashes from beauty.

Many of us don’t need ashes on our forehead to be reminded, as the old liturgy puts it, that “we are but dust and ashes.” We know that gritty truth all too well. But it probably does help to be reminded of the greater truth that the season of Lent – and indeed the story of Christ as a whole – tell us, which is that God did and that God does bring new life out of death, beauty out of brokenness and ugliness, beauty out of ashes.

So this Wednesday, I hope you’ll come to worship to receive the ashes and to remember this good news. Come as you are. Come in your beauty. Come in your brokenness. Come in your ashes. And let us make our way together toward the life of beautiful abundance that God offers us all in Christ Jesus.

Identity, Image of God, love

Who Gets To Say Who You Are

July 12, 2019July 12, 2019 Keith Memorial United Methodist Church

It was great to be in the Gathering to share in worship this past Sunday. One of the songs that Josh and the band played was a song I’ve been hearing on the radio a lot these days. Andrew’s fiancé Ally sang it so beautifully and so poignantly on Sunday.

It’s a song that started out on the Christian radio stations and then crossed over to mainstream radio. I can hardly get in the car without hearing it come on the radio. I’ve even had the experience once of hearing it on two different radio stations at the same time! Maybe you’ve heard this song, too. It’s by a young woman named Lauren Daigle, and it’s called “You Say.”

Here’s a link to the official music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIaT8Jl2zpI

A few weeks ago, I heard it again, and I began to wonder how it is that this song has become so popular, has crossed over from Christian to mainstream radio so successfully, and has gathered so much attention that Daigle was invited to perform her song on the stage of this year’s Billboard Music Awards.

And then I realized: it’s her lyrics. It’s the transparency, the vulnerability with which she shares her struggles to come to know who she is, to claim her worth, her identity:

I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough
Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up
Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low?
Remind me once again just who I am, because I need to know

And that’s the moment when she unleashes the first “ooh-oh” of many in this song. These days, as soon as I start to hear the meandering piano part at the beginning of this song on the radio, I just go ahead and blurt out a big old hefty “OOH-OH!” much to the annoyance of my family members who happen to be in the car with me.

But who among us cannot relate to those voices in our own minds that try to tell us we’re not enough, that we’ll never measure up to somebody else’s (or even, or especially, our own) expectations of us? Who doesn’t wonder if our lives only amount to the grand total of the difference between the highs and the lows, the good days and the bad? As I shared with the youth at the conference youth assembly a couple of weeks ago, I’m 45 years old and I still fight those voices and wonder those same things.

Who among us doesn’t need to be reminded from time to time who we really, truly and most deeply are?

Then she kicks into the chorus:

You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
You say I am strong when I think I am weak
You say I am held when I am falling short
When I don’t belong, oh You say that I am Yours
And I believe, oh I believe
What You say of me
I believe

What powerful words! Read them again if you need to. Absorb them. Let them find their way into your heart so that you can believe them and trust them, too. Let yourself be the “I” who is loved even when you can’t feel it, who is strong even you’re weak, who is upheld when you’re falling down and beheld when you don’t belong.

And if you’re the “I,” then who’s the “You”? Who’s the “You” she’s singing to here in this song? Who’s the “You” who gets to say who you and I are? Do you see? It’s God! She’s singing this song to God. That means this song is a prayer. It’s a prayer to God. This song that has crossed over to mainstream radio and has won all these awards and was featured on the Billboard Music Awards program is a prayer. And whenever we sing it in the car, or in church, or in the shower or wherever, it’s a prayer then, too.

It’s a prayer for God to remind us who we are, especially when we are so prone to forget it.

The only thing that matters now is everything You think of me
In You I find my worth, in You I find my identity.

So, who is the only one who can tell us who we are? Is it all these voices in our minds? Is it all those voices out there in the world? Who gets to say who we are? The only one who gets to tell us who we are is the one who made us, the one who created us, the one who loves us, the one who saves us.

OOH-OH!!!

Image of God

A Lesson From Forky

July 1, 2019July 12, 2019 Keith Memorial United Methodist Church

I spent one of the most fulfilling weeks in all of my years of ministry last week with the Holston Conference Youth Assembly at Emory & Henry College. One of Keith Church’s former youth directors, Laura Lambert McLean is now the director of youth ministries for the conference. Back in January, she invited me to be the speaker for this year’s Assembly. It was a joy for me to put together some messages about God’s grace and to share some personal stories of how I have experienced that grace in my own life. I also especially enjoyed sharing this week with our older son Noah.

On my first night of worship with the groups – they were divided up into junior high and senior high age divisions – I shared with them some of my reflections on the new Toy Story 4 movie. Our family watched the movie together last weekend, and it just seemed to fit in with the theme of that first worship service on how we are all created in God’s image and beloved by God.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t worry. I’m not going to spoil it (even though I will say beware the ventriloquist dummies!) But the main character Woody and some of Andy’s other toys are now with the little girl Bonnie, to whom Andy had given his toys in the ugly-cry ending of Toy Story 3. Now Bonnie is ready to start kindergarten. She wants to take a toy to school with her, but her Dad says there are no toys at school. Woody gets into her backpack anyway, and Bonnie’s off to school.

Pretty soon it’s craft time. With some help from Woody, she makes this toy doll out of a plastic spork – a combination spoon and fork – that he’d retrieved from the trash. She gives it red pipe cleaner arms. Wooden Dixie cup spoons for feet. Mismatched googly eyes. Little rubber band for a mouth. And she calls him Forky.

I immediately liked Forky. I used to have this pink rubber bendy spoon from the Baskin Robbins ice cream place with gangly arms and legs that I called Spoony. I used it when I taught at a tennis camp in college to teach the kids the correct stances and swings. I think BR still sells them.

But Forky doesn’t realize he’s a toy. He thinks he’s just a piece of trash. There’s this hilarious montage of scenes where he jumps in the trash can, and Woody immediately rescues him. He jumps in the trash again. Woody rescues him again. On and on. Again and again. But eventually Forky comes to realize that he’s more than a piece of trash. He’s a toy. And he’s not just any toy. He’s Bonnie’s toy. Bonnie created him herself, in her own image if you will. And she loves him. She looks for him when he’s lost. She sleeps with him under her arm. Bonnie loves Forky.

Here’s the thing I wanted these youth to know that very first night of our time together. I wanted them to come to the same realization as Forky, that they are not trash, that they are handmade by a loving God, in the very image of that God. That whether they realize it yet or not, they all bear some aspect of God’s character in their own lives.

Maybe it’s God’s creativity that is reflected in their own creativity. Maybe it’s God’s loving spirit that they reflect. Maybe it’s God’s generosity. Maybe it’s God’s concern for justice for those who are oppressed. Whatever it may be, every one of us reflects some aspect of who God is in who we are. That’s true of us. That’s true of everyone else, too. We are not trash. No one else is trash either. Everyone bears the image of God in some way or another.

I asked them, “you know you’re not trash, right?” And they nodded their heads that they did. And I hope they do, and I pray they’ll always remember that. Because the truth is that sometimes people can treat us like they think we are trash, disposable, dispensable. Sometimes we can treat others like we think they are trash. And sometimes we can treat ourselves like we think we might be trash, too. So maybe we need to be reminded from time to time that we are not trash, that we are all of us, every one of us, God’s beloved treasures, infused with the image and imprint of God’s very being, in whom God’s soul takes such great joy and delight.

So then we dipped our fingers in a shell bowl of water, drew a dripping sign of the cross on our foreheads and remembered with gratitude and thanksgiving that we are all of us baptized and beloved children of God. And then we went to have our evening snack. That was one of the absolute best things about Assembly – evening snacks!

Enneagram

Know Your Number – Session 2

June 10, 2019July 12, 2019 Keith Memorial United Methodist Church

A healthy self-awareness is one of the most important qualities we can have as Christians. One of the best tools available to foster a healthy self-awareness is the Enneagram. Rooted in ancient wisdom, the Enneagram explores our key motivations, our core fears, our virtues, our vulnerabilities, and our blind spots. It posits that we all fall into one of nine different personality types, often identified simply by number, that relate to how we approach and experience our lives and our world. In this second session, Dave Graybeal and Mark Reedy explore what our numbers might help us learn about ourselves and our relationships with God and one another. Below you can listen to a recording of the second session of this study!

Session 2 – Listen Here

Enneagram Handout (Mentioned in the Recording)Download

Enneagram

Know Your Number – Session 1

June 3, 2019July 12, 2019 Keith Memorial United Methodist Church

A healthy self-awareness is one of the most important qualities we can have as Christians. One of the best tools available to foster a healthy self-awareness is the Enneagram. Rooted in ancient wisdom, the Enneagram explores our key motivations, our core fears, our virtues, our vulnerabilities, and our blind spots. It posits that we all fall into one of nine different personality types, often identified simply by number, that relate to how we approach and experience our lives and our world. In this two-session introduction, Dave Graybeal and Mark Reedy explore what our numbers might help us learn about ourselves and our relationships with God and one another. Below you can listen to a recording of the first session of this study!

Session 1 – Listen Here