Do justice, love mercy...

Jess: Wes and I have both expressed frustration with the recent $40 billion cuts to SNAP.Personally, I have been disgusted with the way many of my friends and family are reacting to this—with joy. I am so sick of hearing/seeing comments like “Stop being lazy and get a job!” or “Why should I pay for someone else to eat just because they’re too lazy to work?”

Let’s get something straight. Most people do not choose to be poor, to be on food stamps, to be on welfare or any other form of assistance. It’sembarrassing. It can make adults feel useless and unproductive, and children feel excluded from “normal” life. Sure, there are probably—definitely—people taking advantage of the system, and we should work to eliminate that. I am perfectly okay with periodic drug testing and other such reforms. But simply cutting funding to human beings is not cool. And I am especially disappointed when I hear these things from my Christian friends, people who read or hear week in and week out about the God of justice, the God who cares for the poor and needy and requires that all God’s people do the same.

Wes and I are living proof that poor people are not lazy. We have been fortunate enough throughout our marriage that we have not had to be on any sort of public assistance. But just barely. When we first got married, we were digging into our savings each month just to pay for health insurance, a relatively small car payment, groceries, rent, and gas so that I could work. Either I had to get a second job (and we already barely saw each other due to my schedule) or Wes had to work part-time and go to school full-time. We were blessed that Wes was appointed to the churches and we even had a parsonage.

Although I would never call our financial situation for the next three years “comfortable,” it was much better. After Wes got his job, the laws changed and we were both able to go back on our parents’ insurance, leaving us responsible only for copays instead of monthly payments. Our car insurance went down as we remained safe drivers. We were able to go out to eat with friends on occasion and not wonder how we would pay my student loans that month if we did. We were able to build our savings back up again and save for a second car, which we needed when I started school.

Having James didn’t significantly change our financial situation, but only because we have wonderful friends and family who helped with the cost of furniture, diapers, clothes, and other necessities. Then we moved, and everything changed again. First came the moving costs themselves. Although both the Southwest Texas Methodist Conference and Triumphant helped with moving costs, we had to get a car, two adults, two cats, and a 6-month-old from New Jersey to Texas. Then we had a month where we had no home because we were waiting for Wes’ job to start. Then we waited another couple of weeks before he got paid. We went two months with no paycheck and we’re still hurting. While we are earning well above the poverty level (I can’t imagine living on that), we are in no way “stable.”

Our savings has suffered because of the long stretch without income. We had to buy a second car so I could commute to work—which also increased our gas expenditures. As when we bought Wes’ car, we found that the only way to save money buying used was to buy a car so old we would soon be spending tons of money to keep it running. So we took on another loan. Wes’ school loans came out of deferment in August. And about half of my paycheck each month goes to putting James in childcare—which is cheap, comparatively.

We are not lazy. We work hard. Both of us worked through college; both of us have worked at least part time through seminary. The cost of the education that is required for us to be in the vocation to which we are called is ridiculous. The cost of living in NJ was almost unbearable. If we didn’t have health insurance through Wes now, we wouldn’t be able to afford it for the family. If we didn’t have the parsonage through Wes, we wouldn’t be able to afford to live somewhere decent, either. If I lost my job for some reason, we might make it. But if Wes did, we would be in serious trouble.

And there are many, many people in this country who are way worse off than we are. Please don’t call them lazy. Please don’t assume they aren’t trying. Please recognize that there are MANY factors that go into this problem, and most of them are systemic, not individual. Please pray for those who cannot support themselves or their families. I can’t imagine how terrifying that must be. 

(Some interesting charts to see.)

Wes: Hey, friends. Something has been bothering me for a while, and I’ve been trying to figure out how best to broach the subject. I still haven’t decided if this is the right medium for it, but here goes:

I’m worried. I’m worried about America. I’m worried about the church. I’m worried about the world in which we live.

Two weeks ago, there was a mass shooting in the Naval yard just outside of Washington D.C. I found out about it because a parishioner was watching T.V. and called me to make sure I knew about it. I jumped on my computer and read story after story of the incident, my heart breaking as yet another community in our nation was hit with the onslaught of needless violence. People died. Others were seriously injured.

And no one said a thing about it on my Facebook feed all day.

Now, I’m not so attached to social media that I think that this is the only place people share their thoughts, reactions, and emotions. But it does serve as basically a data dump for everyone with whom I’m “friends”, so that I can see exactly what they thought was relevant and important enough at the time that they posted it on their walls. Here are a list of a few of the things that I did see:

·          Articles from The Onion

·          Pictures of food

·          Memes… so many memes…

·          Statuses about football

·          Religious quotes and Scripture references

·          A Boy Meets World video (Okay, I posted this one because I needed to smile)

Now, this tells me a few things about my friends (as well as the major political and religious figures that I “follow”)—mainly, that they either don’t watch the news, or the fact that innocent people were shot and killed so close to our nation’s capital was not considered important enough to beat out that link to a GIF of a cat dancing for prominence on my Newsfeed.

And it’s not only online that I was unpleasantly surprised by the lack of response to this. I spent a good deal of my office hours on the 16^th in Starbucks, working on stuff, but also listening to the people around me. There must have been over 200 people who came through that coffee shop while I was sitting inside, and not a single person said anything about the shooting.

Are we getting to a point in our culture where just don’t care anymore?

Have we reached a new level of apathy, where we think that if it’s not happening directly in front of us that is doesn’t actually impact us?

Why don’t we care more that innocent men, women, and children are dying around the world due to war, violence, starvation, and disease? Why are we splitting hairs over minor details in laws and governmental funding when parents who are working as hard as they can are unable to provide food for their children? Why aren’t more people worried about the fact that there aren’t more people worried?

Now, I don’t want to come across as high and mighty in this. I know I’m right in the middle of it. I have accepted the call upon my life to be God’s voice in the world, which includes saying the hard things at times. I have a soapbox in the form of a pulpit that I can utilize on a weekly basis to talk about these kinds of things. And you know what? For the most part, I don’t. I see the hurting, I see the pain, I hear of the horrendous things happening, and I think to myself “someone should care more”, or “someone should say or do something.”

To quote Relient K, “I’m part of the problem, I confess, but I gotta get this off my chest.”

On September 16^th, 2013, thirteen people were shot to death. We should care about this. We should hurt because of this. We should fall down in prayer to a God who has promised to make all things new, and pray for restoration in the midst of horrible brokenness.

And we should be worried if we are not doing these things. 

Metheran Struggles

Jess: I’m nearing the end of the first month of my internship, and the Metheran family is adjusting to our new life: two parents working full-time and a child in daycare.

This has been a pretty tough transition for me. As the weeks of the summer dwindled down, I began to question my desire to do an internship. I was having SO much fun with James every day, as well as getting to do some things I haven’t had time for since seminary started—like reading books because I want to or playing Lego Harry Potter. So some of my reasons were pretty selfish, but others were vocational.

I have no doubt that I have been called to serve God as an ordained pastor. It took me many years to be able to say that, and there are definitely days where I still question what that means. Probably most days. Yet I also have no doubt that I have been called to be a mother—a mother to James, a mother to his future biological sibling(s), and a mother to children in foster and potentially adoptive care. I have known of this calling for the majority of my life. Yet in all the years that I spent thinking about these dual callings, I never thought about how they would function in one life.

I never thought that leaving my child in someone else’s care for the majority of the week would be so hard on me. Throughout the last 6 months or so, Wes and I have debated every possibility for childcare. We talked about utilizing the Mother’s Day Out program at TLC, and the Baptist Church in Kyle. But these places didn’t offer late enough hours or flexibility. We talked about a nanny, but I knew we couldn’t afford the level or hours of care that we needed. We talked about regular daycare, but I had no desire to send James to daycare—and it is very difficult to separate the “good for James” daycares from the others.

So we searched high and low for home daycare, and finally one of Wes’ parishioners told us about her neighbor. We clicked automatically, she was willing to work with our crazy work schedule, cloth diapering, homemade food, and other random things, and we loved the setting. (It doesn’t hurt that Wes’ parishioner can pop in if we’re ever concerned). But I refused to take James on my first day, and I still have a hard time dropping him off. This is made even more difficult on days when James is obviously having a hard day—I feel like I’m doing something wrong by leaving him.

For now, I am reassuring myself by remembering that James will remember the general feelings of his younger years, if that. He will remember laughing with Mom and Dad, reading on the couch, hugs, encouragement, learning, and being loved. He will not remember the day, earlier this week, when I picked him up and he bawled. The point is quality, not quantity.

But I also wonder if this is what our life should look like for years to come. After my internship, I will be “going back” to school. I will take online and intensive courses, but, for the most part, I will be hanging out with James every day for another year. How will that affect my call into ordained ministry? Are there times when one or the other call will reign? Can I realistically balance these at all times until all of my children start their own lives? Being a part-time mom isn’t an option for me, and there have already been days where I feel like that’s what I am. This year is certainly filled with excitement already! 

Wes: I think that the past month of transitions has been a little easier on me, mainly because I never really stopped transitioning from one thing to another since we moved back down in May. First, there was the literal movement from New Jersey to Texas. Then there was the change from transience to permanence as we actually got to move into our new home almost exactly an entire month after moving down here. Then there was the shift from part-time ministry to vacation/Sabbath season to full-time ministry. Finally, we’ve not had the transition from one of us working full-time and the other staying home with James to both of us working and James in home care.

Does life ever take a break?

It helps that James is such a happy baby most of the time. Also that he seems to really enjoy being at Miss Jamie’s. We haven’t had to deal with a breakdown at drop-off or pick-up yet, thank the Lord. But it’s still hard. I loved and cherished every minute of my lunch breaks during my first month at KUMC, when I could come home and know I would be greeted by both my wife and the cutest baby to ever crawl over the earth.

Oh, also, James is crawling now.

But we deal. It’s all part of life, apparently, so you kinda have to deal with it. You do what you gotta do, and that’s that.

We’ve also discovered just how challenging the time-juggling is going to be for us Metherans. We don’t have the extra money to pay a babysitter, so when we both have meetings at our churches on the same night of the week, one of us has to take James to that meeting. Now, we’ve really lucked out a couple of times because James has some amazing grandparents and uncles who love to be around him. A few sticky situations were avoided when Mega-Me (My dad. Yeah, that’s right. His grandpa name is Mega-Me. Be jealous) came to play with James while Jess and I took care of church stuff. Next month, Grandma K (Jess’ mom. Not as awesome as Mega-Me) will play with James all week while I am out at a retreat and Jess is working. They’ve been life savers.

But it’s hard. It’s hard knowing that the precious little time of each day that we should be able to spend with James, we are instead stuck in finance or council or whatever other meetings. Not that those meetings are not important or not worth attending—I fully believe they are (for the most part) essential—but baby always trumps (potentially boring) meeting.

Hopefully, we’ll become better jugglers of time and better Tetris players of schedules. And, hopefully, we’ll find some way to remember that God’s going to see us through, even if we can’t spend as much time with James as either of us would like.

Well, that's all for now. You stay classy, World Wide Web. 

-jess and wes

I.I.W.K.O.T.W.

Jess: Here we are again, writing about something that is way more complicated than we probably understand, but it’s relevant and needs to be discussed.

Syria. One of those countries that a whole lot of Americans probably never heard of before the last few weeks. Now it’s all over the news. Admittedly, Wes and I don’t get the newspaper or watch the news, but we do keep up with things online. Honestly, I prefer the way things are presented online, and it’s easier to catch up on while I’m feeding James. 
Anyway, if you’re unsure of anything we’re talking about, go here. There are several links after the article that can give you even more information on Syria and the current situation.


I don’t like war. I don’t like knowing that there is war going on in countries all over the world as I’m writing this. I don’t like the idea of people killing other people. I don’t like that they do it to make a point, to punish someone, to get their way, or even out of seemingly protecting others. I really don’t like the idea that there are people who truly enjoy doing so. As someone who wants to believe that people have the capacity for good, it is very difficult for me to know that there are individuals and groups who will kills thousands of people just to get their way. 

For me, war seems like a macrocosm of a fight between two children. Each side knows what they want, and maybe they even tried to explain it rationally at some point. Eventually, however, they are just throwing things, calling names, taking what was not theirs to begin with, and justifying it all by thinking that the other person started the whole mess. No one is innocent in war. Rarely is anyone completely justified. And yet it seems to be a perpetual part of the human condition. 

I heard about President Obama’s leaning toward military action and immediately rejected the idea. Although military action seems to be unceasing in the US, we still think that we are called to be the worlds’ police force. And yet Martin Luther says that there is a time and place to take action on behalf of your brother or sister, even when it is inappropriate to take action on one’s own account. How do we know what is the right time? How do we know what is the right force? Even for someone who hates war, I kind of understand the idea of sending some missiles into hopefully unoccupied areas in retaliation for Assad using chemical weapons. But how do we know that these places will be empty? How do we know they won’t be full of something that will destroy people, animals, and land for miles? How do we know Assad won’t retaliate?


At some point, we have to say “enough!” We are called to care for the other, for the earth and all created things. We have done a terrible job of that, but this just shows our broken nature. I don’t have the answer to this, but I will continue praying for Syrians, our president, and other leaders around the world as yet another part of God’s creation is destroyed by human hands. 

Wes: Once again we find ourselves talking about something that we cannot solve. I don't know about y'all, but I often find myself daydreaming about "if I were king of the world." If I were king of the world, things would be a lot different. Healthcare would be completely funded by the government as a means of eradicating disease. I.I.W.K.O.T.W., education would be as well: as long as the student was maintaining a certain level of achievement, each person could earn up to a doctorate in whatever field they chose. That way, I.I.W.K.O.T.W., jobs would be secured based on an individual's merit and level of comprehension, not based on how much money they had or could obtain. I.I.W.K.O.T.W., everybody (even myself) would be by law expected to know or learn at least three languages.


And I.I.W.K.O.T.W., there would be no war. 


If all of that sounds good, someone should start working on installing me. I have a few other ideas as well. 


But Syria. 


Man it sucks, knowing that around the world, there are people killing other people. There are days when I cannot fathom this. It does not compute with my life experience (thanks be to God), and I just don't understand it. Other days, it seems to be almost common--as if I'm desensitized from it. Of course it happens; it's a fact of life. 


And with Syria, I gotta tell you, the more I read about it, the more and more I worry about how it will finally end. That first Washington Post article that Jess hyperlinked talks about Russia and Iran's part in all of this: that's scary! The idea that two countries have a stake in allowing this civil war to continue because of arms trade and bad feelings toward surrounding countries is ridiculous. Now China has stood up and said they will have no part in it, the UK has taken a hands-off stance, and everyone else is either joining them or staying quiet. 


Now, part of me says that even if everyone else turns their back on injustice, that doesn't mean we do the same. People are dying, and their government is supposedly (since it was never confirmed) using world-banned weapons. Someone needs to do something. 


But all of me shouts that trying to quell violence with more violence doesn't work, that escalation is not the answer. Not now. Not ever. 


My dad was sent overseas for three different tours of duty: two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. When it comes to government and the military, he is my personal go-to information person. We don't always agree on everything, but I value his thoughts and opinions more than any other on these sorts of topics. When I asked him what he would do with this conflict if he were king of the world, he said he'd take out Bashar al-Assad. No bombs. No civilian casualties. Just one strike team to go in and clean up this mess. 


Maybe that's the answer. I don't know. All I know is that I have been called to take the hard line on issues like this and preach peace. No exceptions. No rationalizing. Peace. Non-violent, self-sacrificing, even. In cases like this, maybe that means the U.S. showing its muscle by brow-beating everyone into a world-wide trade embargo against the Syrian government until al-Assad steps down. But you know, even that would most likely meant not only continued bloodshed for the foreseeable future, but also starvation and death due to lack of resources as well.


Which would mean, as always, the people who are going to lose the most in this war are the truly innocent, on neither the side of the government nor the rebels. The people who are going to lose the most are the least of these, those very people to whom Christ called us to minister. 


Damn. This is hard. If only I were king of the world...

Shabbat!

Jess: Wes gave a pretty decent sermon on the Sabbath this last Sunday. It really got me thinking about how we treat the Sabbath day. Then it got me thinking—what IS the Sabbath?

What is the day of rest that we have after seven days of work? I think for many people, this is Saturday. They work Monday-Friday and perhaps have had activities on Sunday. For others, maybe Sunday is the Sabbath. I know that for awhile, my mom and Chris were attending Saturday night services because that gave them all of Sunday to be in rest.

For Wes and I, at least for this coming year, Thursday will be our Sabbath. Although I firmly believe that the day in which we come together to worship can be Sabbath, that is just not the case for pastors. Sunday is a workday—perhaps the biggest workday of all. It is the day toward which the rest of the week looks, and the day on which much of the work done throughout that week culminates. So we will be observing our Sabbath on Thursdays.

What does Sabbath mean for us today, though? There are many, many laws and regulations regarding the Sabbath in Jewish law and history. We even have some perceived laws regarding Sundays in Christianity today. I know my family always went out to eat on Sunday afternoons. By the time we got out of church and into “regular” clothes, no one wanted to think about cooking. So part of our restfulness included not cooking for ourselves—we also usually had leftovers for dinner. Yet our Sabbath meant that someone else was not having a Sabbath. Part of God’s law says, “On [the Sabbath], you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.” God goes on to say that God rested, and so should we.

One of my biggest struggles with Sabbath is determining what constitutes Sabbath for myself and my family. If even the resident alien is not supposed to work, should I go to Starbucks, forcing this stranger to make coffee for me? Yet by not going to Starbucks, I don’t change the fact that it is open.  If my Sabbath day continues to be Thursday for years, but James needs help with homework, does that mean that  I cannot help him? Is that too much work?

It is easy to get bogged down by the rules of Sabbath—whether those that God clearly states or those we create for our own sake. But the purpose of Sabbath is clear: we are called to break from our routine of work as God did. Resting rejuvenates us, so Sabbath is about doing that which accomplishes this. For an introvert, that might mean reading a book alone. For Wes and I, who are apart all week, it might mean a date—or time spent with James. For the manual laborer, it means resting his or her hands. For the person who sits inside all day, maybe it means spending time in nature.

The point is, no matter what our routine, God calls us to take a break from it each week. This is for our own good, for the sake of our relationship with God, and for the sake of others. Wes and I will continue to wrestle with what Sabbath means for us throughout this year and beyond, and we invite you to share your struggles and joys as well!

Wes: Did everyone see that Jess said I gave a decent sermon? Let the record show. 

If anyone would like to see that sermon, it--along with all of my other sermons at KUMC!--can be found on my other blog, here. I don't actually know if anyone watches them. Since I started sharing the video clip, the few and far between comments that I used to get altogether disappeared. But, if you want to check it out, there it is. 

So Sabbath for me is a weird time. I feel like I have to work to rest, which doesn't make any sense. I totally get the idea that we have to prepare for a full day of rest--such as making sure meals are planned out (if you're into that) and all the work that might need to be done is done the day before--but that's different than having to actively work at not working or breaking out of your regular routine. 

One of the ways we've tried as a family to do this is to limit our electronics usage on our Sabbath day. This seems to be harder for me than it is for Jess. I honestly don't feel super attached to Facebook, and I don't feel the need to reply immediately every time I receive a text, but I do enjoy being connected with others and being able to be in constant dialogue with my friends. It's one of the ways that I maintain my extrovertivity. (Yes, I made up a word. Go with it). So it's harder for me to put my phone away and not think about it. This is the part of Sabbath that takes some work on my part. 

Other aspects of Sabbath are not as taxing. One of the things that has been rather nice about our Sabbaths this summer is that I've used many of them to complete projects around the house. Now, this might sound weird, as many (even myself) consider this to be working, but in a very real way, these projects--like building a bookshelf for James and fixing the backyard fence--allow me to spend some time working my hands and making something for the world to see, which is something that my day-to-day job rarely allows. 

My brother, Tomas, didn't really understand this when I told him about it. He works full-time for a re-modeling company, putting up sheet rock and wall paper. He works with his hands on a daily basis. So when I told him that this kind of activity is rewarding and rejuvenating for me, it didn't make sense. For him, taking a day to read a good book or spend around people doing nothing is a wonderful break from routine, whereas I spend most of my week reading in preparation for preaching/teaching and in community with others. This is time well spent for me, and I absolutely love it, but a Sabbath full of the same type of activity as any other day is not really a Sabbath. 

Well, Jess gave a wonderful little lesson on what the Sabbath is. I just spouted out words about it for a little while. I hope at least part of this is edifying for you and helps you in your own walk as you try to live out God's commandment to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. 

For now, though, you stay classy, World Wide Web!

-wes and jess