I remember loneliness well. It settled in like a long fog. Everywhere I moved, it was there. I had lost my tightly knit community for varying reasons—in the end, it was for one reason in particular: my friends and I were moving in opposite directions. The eventual separation didn’t happen overnight, it dissolved slowly like a patch of snow on a sunny day hanging on in the shade. There were good reasons for what turned out to be a lengthy loneliness, and my intimate knowledge of Christ deepened significantly, but that didn’t make the isolation any less awful. It was one of the saddest and hardest times of my life.

Looking back, I can see a spotty trail of lily pads that stretched between the riverbank of loneliness on one side and that of new and dear friendships on the other. Those lily pads were people or groups of people. Most of them unassuming Christ-followers who loved me in ordinary yet potent ways. A Saturday morning Bible study at a downtown Nashville coffee shop, a family I had dinners with while commuting to a church in Florida to lead worship, an occasional coffee with someone who knew how to listen well, and many others. Each was a temporary landing pad that helped me make my way from one side to the other. It’s just that at the time I wasn’t sure there was another side. All I knew was that after each interaction I had enough hope in the tank to keep going.

These memories spring from nearly two decades ago. Life has changed considerably for me. But I share them because the more I keep my eyes keen and ears attuned to my surroundings, the more I am aware of how many are living isolated and lonely lives—even the ones who appear social, those out on the block small-talking with the neighbors while the big questions and crises of their lives remain hidden. This is not to mention those who don’t come out at all. Or the elderly in assisted living with few or none to visit them, or the agile and mobile equally isolated because they’re glued to their phones, addicted to interaction without actual relationship. No matter the
reasons, we are a lonely society.

I will never get over how John, one of Jesus’s closest disciples, began his first letter.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:1-3)

One of John’s primary reasons for writing was to reveal the dynamic fellowship we can have with Jesus and how that relationship leads to a whole community of relationships. One of the fundamental aspects of the Christian faith is that we are not to be alone! I hope you hear John’s passion for you. If you are lonely, you are invited into a fellowship with Christ that is dynamic and personal and you are invited into the fellowship of believers. John was getting at the dual nature of Christian fellowship—get to know Jesus and get to know us; get to know us and get to know Jesus! (Not that Christ and His disciples are one in the same, rather our fellowship with the Lord feeds our fellowship with others and vice-versa.)

However, two challenges immediately stand out. How many struggle to think about God on a personal level because their own father was cruel. It is not always easy to experience Christ in an intimate way, to have this fellowship with Him. Obstinate and formidable barriers exist. This is where the fellowship of the church comes in. By reflecting the sacrificial love and visceral compassion of Christ, like John and the rest of the disciples did, we demonstrate God’s goodness to those who have difficulty receiving it.

But this necessarily leads us to the second challenge: the church community—the fellowship of believers John speaks of—doesn’t always act the way we are supposed to. As many struggle to experience a loving God, just as many lament that for them the church community is equally freighted with baggage: betrayal, hypocrisy, gossip, abuse, power-struggles… These are real obstacles we cannot deny.

At the same time, their very existence should further compel us to be safe and broad lily pads for those who cross our paths. Temporary landing spots for some, and longer places of respite for others. We cannot fix a person’s view of God but we can reflect Him in loving clarity because we ourselves are being changed and renewed in His presence. In John’s terms, because we have fellowship with Him. We, equally, cannot solve the problems of the church at large, but we can be a difference maker in our own local churches. If the friends and acquaintances I met during my stretch of loneliness had abandoned the church for all its issues, who knows what waters I would have plunged into. I thank God for them.

If you have a hard time appropriating Christ’s love for you because of past wounds, or if the idea of being part of a church brings up equal distress, may a genuine Christ-follower be in reach. And if you have you experienced the Word of Life, do not keep Him to yourself. The lonely are all around you. Spread your lily pad wide. Who knows who might land in your way?

More From Kelly

I just returned from ten days in Italy. Before you begin writhing with jealousy, let me put an abrupt stop to that. I was working a week of day camp with a team from Justice & Mercy International. We lovingly herded twenty-nine children for ten hours a day. I wouldn’t have wanted the week to have gone any differently—unless perhaps it included basking on the Amalfi coast. I reveled in the time with these delightful Italian, Egyptian, Moldovan, Romanian, and Moroccan children. It was a gift to share the love of Jesus with them in word and deed. Their faces will be with me for years to come.  

So, what does this have to do with hospitality, you ask? Let me explain. We were working with two churches, one in downtown Milan, and the other on the outskirts of San Giuliano. Our team of twelve stayed across three homes, Sam and Joan’s, Michael and Nina’s, and Glori, Jake, and Max’s. What our team experienced living with these three generations of family members for ten days is something I will be thinking about for weeks to come. Hospitality is not something they do on a Wednesday night, or a Saturday morning, or for a few days when guests come. It’s a lifestyle. 

Now I know what you’re thinking… Kelly, I can’t do one more thing. I can barely handle my elderly parents, children, and the neighbors I already have. I’m terrible at keeping my house tidy. I understand. I feel a little maxed out myself. But I don’t think showing hospitality is so much about how you and I can do more, as much as it’s about shifting our mindset. When we arrived at Michael and Nina’s house, we discovered a few of our team would be rooming with a woman from Ukraine who’d been living with them for the past three months. They almost always have people staying with them who need a place. On the last night of our trip, a twelve-year old boy made a bed in Max’s home. The boy’s mother is ill so my friends were taking him on their family vacation. When we gathered for dinners, often others would show up because they happened to stop by or didn’t have any other place to go. I got the sense that anyone and everyone was welcome. I returned with a longing for my doors to feel a little more open, and my table a little more packed—it’s okay for place settings to be squeezed and presentation to be less than perfect.

 On one of the last nights of our trip, my pastor Jeff asked Nina to share one thing she wanted to leave with us. She said, “always make room for one more.” What if this became the posture of our hearts? It doesn’t mean making an additional meal, just adding another plate. It wouldn’t require a separate trip to the pool with your kids, just putting one more child in the car. It might mean sharing a room with someone for a few nights instead of having it all to yourself, or packing an extra lunch for your Saturday outing. What would it look like for you and I to make room for one more person? That’s the question I’m asking myself. 

Paul tells us in Romans 12:13 to pursue hospitality. It’s right in there with sharing with others, blessing those who persecute us, being persistent in prayer, and patient in affliction. The one thing I love about pursuing a lifestyle of hospitality is that it fosters relationships. It gives others a place. It connects us. You don’t have to be a fantastic decorator, or have a ton of extra space, or be a great cook, you just have to be willing to make room.

For one more.

More From Kelly

Offering forgiveness is one of the hardest things God calls us to do. It’s funny, really, because it’s such a pleasant gift to receive, but a real gut punch to extend. It’s like the wind at your back versus the wind in your face; the direction it’s going has a pretty significant effect on how we feel about it.

While there are many reasons why forgiving others is challenging, I think there are three reasons worth thinking about. The first is that harboring unforgiveness makes us feel like we’re in control. When someone hurts us, betrays us, takes something from us, or abandons us, clutching unforgiveness is the one thing we still have to hang on to. If we give that up, what do we have left?

This leads us to a second problem. We don’t trust God to make things right. Put another way, we wonder if He’ll truly mete out justice the way we would. Can we really trust Him with our pain, or to deal with our offender. And, thirdly, it’s really hard to forgive others when we don’t recognize our own need for forgiveness. It’s truly remarkable how blind I can be to the ways I hurt other people, and yet I have eagle eyes when spotting another person’s sin against me.

So, what are we to do? Well, we start with what Jesus tells us, and that is to forgive those who have sinned against us (Matt. 6:12). From the most egregious sins to the petty ones, Jesus doesn’t tell us it’s extra good of us if we decide to forgive, rather He commands it. The good news is that whatever Jesus commands us to do, He enables us to do. So, let’s begin here—we must forgive, and He will help us do it.

While holding on to unforgiveness might make us feel like we’re in control, in reality we become a slave to it. And where unforgiveness is in charge, its closest friends are always close by—they go by the names of Bitterness, Anger, Revenge, Martyr, Cynic. But when we forgive, we release the person who hurt us to the Lord. We trust Him to handle it. We transfer the load from ourselves to His capable hands (1 Pet. 4:19). He is a good Father, perfectly just, all capable, righteous Judge. We can trust Him with our offenders.

Finally, the more in touch we are with the forgiveness Jesus has given us, the more freely we’ll offer forgiveness to others. In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus tells a story of a servant who owed His master 6,000 denarii. The servant didn’t have the money to pay and pleaded with his master not to sell him and his family to pay the debt. Surprisingly, the master had compassion on his servant, released him, and forgave his debt. In a shocking turn of events, the servant who had been forgiven turned around and choked a man who owed him only one hundred denarii. The story is clear: Jesus had tremendous mercy on us, and we are to have mercy on others. In fact, Jesus tells us to forgive “from our hearts” (Matt. 18:35).

Oh, yes, we will need Him to help us do this. We will need Him to change our hearts. We will need Him every step of the way. Let us start by remembering the mercy He has shown us. And surely forgiveness will begin to flow.

More From Kelly

I’ve been thinking about what it means to find our place. We can think about this in several ways. Whether we’re looking for where we fit in our immediate community, or where we feel valued at work, or the kind of ministry we feel called to. It seems we’re always looking for our place, where we belong and where we’re known.

I’ve been thinking about this mostly in terms of my calling as a believer in Christ. Where is my place? Where is your place? What has God gifted each of us to do and who has He called us to be? The New Testament writers talk a lot about this, and Paul famously speaks specifically about our unique gifts and callings in
1 Corinthians 12—a great passage for further reflection.

But I was in a very different passage recently that made me think of both place and space. In Genesis 26, we find God blessing the patriarch Isaac with an abundance of wealth and resources. As a result, the Philistines got jealous, as we humans do. Instead of saying snarky things on social media or gossiping, they stopped up Isaac’s wells. And when Isaac’s servants dug new ones, the Philistines claimed that those were also theirs. There was quarreling and fighting, and just like in our own day, conflict happened because too many people were fighting over what seemed like finite resources. Everyone was chasing their water, their well, their place.

Isaac and his people decided not to fight and kept on moving. Isaac’s servants dug a fresh well and hit an abundance of water. And guess what they named it? Rehoboth, which means, open spaces. They exclaimed, “For now the Lord has made space for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.” (Gen. 26:22.) They had found their place. And when they told Isaac about the well God had given them, they said, “We have found water!” (Gen. 26:32). And the whole city was called Beersheba, which means “well of the oath.”

There’s a great deal to this passage that can’t be fully explored in this short devotional. But what I hope you will ask the Lord is to show you your place. Because here’s the thing. We spend an awful lot of time fighting over wells with the Philistines of our culture—the ones who tell us to dig for the water of status, more money, a more comfortable lifestyle, a social media brand, a person who’s going to make everything better. The space is crowed and the water limited. But when we surrender our wants for the wants of Christ, our will for the Lord’s, our battles for His provision, He leads us to the place of our belonging. And it is there He gives us success. How do we know? Because where the Lord makes space, He grows fruit (look back at Genesis 26:22). As we ease into the summer, one of the things I’m going to be doing is praying about the place God has called me to serve in the way He’s called me. I hope you will do the same. My encouragement to you is to stop fighting over the wells this world has already packed with sand—it’s a constant conflict that never ends with living water. Let the world have what it has. Seek the living water of Christ (Jn. 4:14). And as you seek Him and His righteousness above all else, you will find your place. And it will be right where He is.

More From Kelly

I don’t know how far spring has descended into your life, but for Nashvillians, we’re in the blissful middle of low-seventies and green buds. I have a single tulip that, with admirable resistance, has pushed forth her blush petals against the frost and chill of winter. The blooms of my azaleas look like cotton balls exploding out of previously barren bushes. The doors are open. Everything is waking up, and the birds are singing about it.

So, what does all this make me want to do, you ask? Spring clean, of course. Spring is an innate wake-up call for us to mimic the newness we witness in creation. Dust off those window sills, pack up the wool sweaters, and get rid of a few piles. Not only am I ready for my hardwood floors and kitchen countertops to glow like the lengthening days of spring, I want my soul to reflect the purity and newness of this hopeful season.

It is no accident we celebrate Jesus’s resurrection in the middle of spring, the season of old giving way to new, death trampled by life. In an effort to deepen our understanding of what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross, I want to look at three aspects of Jesus’s death that I pray will be like taking a lemon-scented cloth to the dust that may have collected on our hearts. The more we understand about what the cross accomplished, the more we can appreciate Jesus’s sacrifice.

Three Aspects of the Cross

You may have wondered, why did Christ have to die? Couldn’t there have been another way? What did Jesus actually accomplish for me? Part of the answer to that question is found all the way back in Leviticus. In chapter 16, we see that animals were sacrificed as a way of atoning for Israel’s sin. In other words, since God is holy and righteous, Israel’s sin had to be dealt with. Instead of God’s wrath falling upon His people, it would fall upon the animal sacrificed for the sins of the community. This is what we call substitutionary atonement, because the animal stood in the place of the people (substitution) as the necessary sacrifice for sin (atonement).

Substitutionary atonement has two unique features, the first is propitiation. It means the appeasement of wrath. I think most of us shirk back from the idea of God’s wrath. How can a loving God be angry toward people? I think of some of the terrible evils inflicted upon children, or the betrayal and abuse of perpetrators. Aren’t we glad that God is not passive, but hates sin and the effects of sin (Matt. 18:5-6)? But back to our main point. In ancient days, the animal was the propitiation in that it appeased God’s wrath.

One of my favorite aspects of the atonement, is the second feature: expiation. It means, the removal of sin. Lev. 16:20-22 says,

When he has finished making atonement for the most holy place, the tent of meeting, and the altar, he is to present the live male goat.  21  Aaron will lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the Israelites’ iniquities and rebellious acts—all their sins. He is to put them on the goat’s head and send it away into the wilderness by the man appointed for the task.  22  The goat will carry all their iniquities into a desolate land, and the man will release it there.

The Old Testament gives us such a visual. A literal “scape goat” representatively takes our sin upon itself and carries it into the wilderness, never to be seen again. For those of us who deal with regrets or shame from the past, what a picture of freedom this is.

The problem is that substitutionary atonement in the Old Testament was a temporal answer for the problem of sin. It was a provisional means pointing toward an ultimate solution. In keeping with our spring-cleaning metaphor, the sparkling house got dirty again. Another round of dusting and polishing was needed. This is where the sacrifice of Jesus comes in. Instead of the blood of bulls and goats being slaughtered over and over, year after year, Jesus laid down His life for us once and for all. He was our substitute. He provided the payment necessary to deal with our sin. Not only did He forgive our sin, but as John writes in 1 John 1:9, He cleansed us from all unrighteousness.

Living in Spring’s Newness

As you welcome the longer days and linger outdoors, watching Blue Jays alight on your porch, enjoying the scent of flowers throwing off the covers of winter dormancy, remember these are all signs of the resurrection. Reckon that you can live in spring’s newness because of what Christ accomplished for you on the cross. He stood in your place, becoming sin for you, so that you can become the very righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21.) Get up! The sun is shining. Browns are giving way to every hue in the rainbow. Jesus paid an incalculable price so that you might live. It turns out, spring cleaning isn’t just for houses, it’s also for hearts. Let Him cleanse you anew. 

More From Kelly