Black Bean Pizza
Preheat the oven to 350 — put the pizza crust in the oven while it preheats
Once preheated, take the crust out. Add a thin layer of ranch, then the beans (after rinsing them), then cheese — covering all over until there are no black beans or crust showing
Bake for 13-16 mins
Take out, cut into 8ths, cover with shredded lettuce on top
This specific recipe comes from a dear friend and a precious member of our church body. It is her favorite type of pizza, and she was so excited to share this recipe and experience with us when she and her mom came to eat dinner with us. It has very specific instructions to it, very specific ingredients and brands to buy, and very specific ordering of all those things.
It was a blast of an evening, and we had such fun learning a new favorite food. As they were leaving, the daughter turned to us and said, “Thank you so much, I know this is more than a normal style of pizza,” and I was, of course, responding, “Oh, it’s no problem! “ and “We’re glad to make it special!” etc etc, which is great BUT … as is often the case, the Holy Spirit started tickling my brain.
How come it’s so easy to do all these things someone you don’t know as well but it’s so hard for you to do ____ for your kids? (you can fill in the blank on whatever comes to mind)
And it can so often be true.
A lot of my giftings revolve around Pastoral or Service-oriented things and situations, so I enjoy serving behind the scenes or sitting with people one-on-one. The irony is that if I expend all of my energies with strangers, ministry partners, congregants, or even friends, then I come home and am left drained — and those close to me get the leftovers.
Rather than my most loved people (for me — my wife and kids, for others, it could be extended family, intimate friends, parents, etc), getting the best of me, I find they get the dregs. Instead of me automatically responding to them in love, patience, accommodation, gentleness, service, or kindness, they often receive my tiredness, snippiness, irritability, bitterness, or frustration.
Now obviously those other people and area need to receive those emotions and fruit of the spirit from me as well, but I just can’t help but get stuck on that thought — what is my default reaction? Because that is what most usually comes out with my family.
And I’ve realized an important truth — I need time with God.
Now this seems obvious, especially to a '90s kid, I mean “read your bible and pray every day and you’ll grow, grow, grow,” right? Maybe …
More than just intake, I have found I need silence, stillness, and solitude to recoup energies and to maintain my formation into the image of Jesus.
I crave contemplation, still and silent rooms, walking in the woods alone, and coffee cooling on the ledge as I’m lost in a book. I love to Retreat with the Spirit to seek Jesus. It’s not a hard ask for me.
I love to Retreat …
Recently, I was able to go to one of my favorite places — St Francis Springs Prayer Retreat Center. This is my go-to space when I need time to reflect, especially in a time of transition and/or turmoil, which is exactly where I find myself now.
Transition isn’t always bad — this past week I finished my last presentation for my Master’s! — but transition almost always brings discomfort.
Transition is not where people like to live. Just ask any refugee, who, on average, has to live in tents in refugee camps for at least 10 years before finding their names on the list to head to a new country where they can attempt to put down new roots.
This is why most people hate moving. We’re excited to go to a new place, but the in-between moments are not fun — we can’t find anything, everything is in boxes, and what if the sale of the house falls through?
Transition brings a lack of rootedness. It brings questions. It brings those prayers as we find in the Psalms. We don’t always recognize this or take time and make space to do so. But transition is worth meditating on because, like everything in life, it forms us. If we’re intentional about giving it to God, then he can use it to form us into Jesus’ image.
Just ask Jesus, he spent all night retreating and sweating massive drops of blood before the climax of his earthly story came (Luke 22). He spent time asking God questions and surrendering to his will. He spent time in the dark just like we do. So we have a High Priest who knows our sleepless nights of wondering and wandering and weeping (Hebrews 4.)
He Retreated into God’s presence …
Now, while there is much merit in contemplation in isolation, and there are many examples of this in Jesus' own life, with his retreating to the desert to pray (Mark 1:35, Luke 5:16, 6:12, Matthew 14:13, 14:23, and more) this was not the end goal for Jesus.
This was all to serve the coming back into the community to glorify the Lord in action. Jesus did not retreat permanently into the wilderness. He went to his own people to seek, to save, to serve the vulnerable, and even to enter into the foreigner's life, as is seen with his engagement with the woman at the well (John 4). He was one of embodied, engaged presence, not of stoic, contemplative retreat. This is the danger found in disengagement if we let it be the end goal or the primary space to seek holiness.
Humans are meant for community.
Holiness is meant to be found in community.
How can one know if one is further in their love for God without the measuring stick of loving others?
Spiritual formation . . . is always profoundly social. . . . Anyone who thinks of it as a merely private matter has misunderstood it. . . . Jesus gave a sure mark of the outcome of spiritual formation under his guidance: We become people who love one another.
Dallas Willard
Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ
In the withdrawal from the community for the sake of long-term contemplation, there is no communal pursuit to be engaged with. This is the defining problem with a life that centers solely on private faith to be first present in order to better the world around the individual or to join in the church in worship rather than one whose holiness is strengthened by finding a communal calling to holiness centered in the Body of Christ. There very much needs to be personal faith, but it’s not private.
We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Life Together
Without community in faith to take our perspective off of our own self as the center in the formational relationship and pursuit of holiness, we are limited in our growth and sanctification. Both are needed, but there is a clear gain to positioning them in the proper perspective that personal holiness is found within community, not before it.
When persons move exclusively toward personal holiness, the result is a very peculiar kind of piety, to put it gently. Their lives tend to become compartmentalized. Their spiritual life is in one compartment, their daily life in the world in another.
M. Robert Mulholland Jr.
Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation
We can Retreat … but all for the sake of coming back stronger to love others. If I find myself drained and I go off to Retreat with the Lord, it is not strictly for my own formation alone but rather to be refilled to come back stronger into Community. It is for my family’s sake, for my children’s sake, for my wife’s sake, for my church’s sake …
Jesus Retreated …
We Retreat …
… To Return.
This is the point.
We Retreat into God’s bosom for comfort, for answers, for a quiet space all so that he can send us right back into the community we come from to show his love. He doesn’t even promise us the answers to our questions; he only promises himself.
But yet,
He is enough
He always will be
I walk on the edge of a razor, in the hands of a complicated Savior, harmonize with the earth below me
I sing your glory
I wish you were a little safer, you don’t taste like an eucerist wafer, you’re all bloody like a blood red steak, you’re just more than I can take
I sing glory with no answer to the question, I sing glory like an angitated freshman
I don’t care if you show up or ignore me
I sing your glory
All I can do now is believe
All I can is exalt you
He is both our quiet strength in the Retreat and the strength in our hands and feet on the Return. He will give us the quiet strength to do the daily struggle of loving well at all times. To love our neighbor as ourselves and thereby show our love for our God.
He won’t drop us.
He is the Alpha.
He is the Omega.
He is the Beginning.
He is the author of our Saga.
He is the Gentle & Lowly.
He is the Shepherd of the Sheep.
He is the King of Kings.
He is the keeper of our sleep.
He is.
How could we not come back refreshed to love after being in the presence of Love itself?
We might not get all of our answers, but we can exalt him and walk back into our lives ready to do his will.
We Retreat …
… to Return.
So that our default reactions are to love others.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Maybe you are in a moment of needing some Retreat. I pray the Lord gives you some. How do we make space for this reflection? We do what Jesus did and get away with God.
This can be something huge — like a 24-hour silent retreat — or it can be small and chaotic — like Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley, who allegedly would throw her apron over her head to signal to her many kids that mom was seeking time before God.
Ideally, Retreating means a time of silence & solitude, but it doesn’t have to be fancy; it just needs to be intentional.
It could be at the foot of a tree in a city park.
It could be on the stoop of a church.
It could be in a friend’s house, in a spare room that you don’t have at home.
It could be in a car in a Walmart parking lot.
As long as it is intentionally seeking God’s face.
And then we take a deep breath and go back into community to love those around us. Especially those closest to us. Especially those God has called us to love deeply.
We Retreat …
… to Return.
May God grant you space to be refilled this week.
As The Deer
As the deer sits in the cool shade
So do I long to rest in you
As the deer snuggles and settles
So do I long to release this tension
As the deer pants in the fading light
So my breath comes in panic quickness
As the deer seems to understand
So do I long to know your rest
As the deer pants for you
So do I long for your presence
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