5 Finger Formation Reflection

We returned last night from a four day trip to Mackinac in my home state of Michigan, retracing summer spots we went to for years when I was a child. It was such a privilege to share with my own children scenes that shaped my imagination and sense of self in a beautiful world. Now sunburned and sandy and tired at my childhood home, I’ve been reflecting on how our understanding of God, our selves, and our world can be traced like the lines on our five fingers. Here’s a simple way to reflect this summer on how you’ve been formed and perhaps, how you want to help in the formation of those you love.

I like to remember how we’re changed and shaped by the following:

Places Spaces Faces Graces Races

Places

I grew up surrounded by smooth stones and sand and shores and space. Though we lived more inland, our summers were spent at lakes and dunes and woods. Our winters were snowy and long and hushed with chickadees and white tailed deer slipping through icy branches. Before I had language for God and God’s glory and goodness, I knew it with the spaciousness in my chest when I stood looking over miles of lakeshore. As I learned about Jesus as a youth and young adult, gratuitous beauty and the welcoming arms of trees held my imagination and my tumultuous feelings.

Spaces

With the exception of bathrooms, every room in my childhood home has overstuffed bookshelves. For as long as I can remember, I could reach for books about mythology or mysteries, atlases or American history, often the stories I wasn’t hearing in my school textbooks. My mom’s taste in books has always been eclectic. Being surrounded by Portuguese poetry and accounts of Native American grief and pages about people in lands I’d never heard of shaped my view of the world and myself. The spaces we craft are part of bringing God’s kingdom on earth, especially whose stories are told and which wonders are beheld. Very few of these books were about faith explicitly, but my home prepared me to be curious, compassionate, and humble, ready to enter the unfolding story of God in the world as a learner and listener.

Faces

My father comes from Argentina, my mother from a German and English American family. He is a baby of ten children, she an only child. For as far back as I can recall, I was aware that not everyone looks like me, that families are messy and beautiful, that community means creating a home when you’re far from one. Our family hosted international graduate students for holidays and huge Labor Day barbecues: moms would openly nurse babies at the Thanksgiving table, over ninety people would spill over our backyard, my sister and I would interview friends with a video camera about their home countries. One of my great joys is raising my children in a city where we have neighbors from Eritrea, Honduras, Yemen, Mexico, Guatemala, Iraq, Dominican Republic, and more. The faces that surround us as we form our faith change how we view God’s story, who Jesus would center and who has wisdom because they have little worldly power.

Graces

From the time I was a little girl, I had an instinctual feel of how certain flowers could fit together. The same was true of words, the way I’d be able to remember and shape them, string them together like daisy chains. I think as Jesus followers we’ve focused long on dying to self and not “stealing God’s glory,” forgetting that also shining in our particular strengths is a testimony to God’s creativity and delight. Ireneaus’ famous line of “the glory of God is man fully alive” always stirred me. We’re shaped by our environments and our community, absolutely, but we’re also formed by God’s indiscriminate goodness and the “dancing hand” of the Holy Spirit. Some things will always come more easily to each person, and these are great gifts of grace that we can follow throughout our lives.

Races

Hebrews 12 tells us to “run with endurance the race set before us.” Each of us has a different journey of difficulty and defiance, deep pain and deep provision. I’ve personally had struggles with postpartum anxiety and depression and other seasons with intense insomnia, trauma, fear and overwhelming thoughts that took me deeper than I would have ever wanted. I would have not chosen the races I have had, but they have shaped me. They have been seasons where Jesus wept with me and now have made me ready to weep with others experiencing similar anguish.

Places Spaces Faces Graces Races

Which places have shaped your understanding of God, your self and God’s people? Which spaces stirred your interests and nurtured or challenged your identity? Which faces will always be before you when you think about God’s family and God’s hopes for this place? Which graces have you received for which you can give thanks and give generously? Which races have you survived that allow you to run alongside others? And how can you thoughtfully choose or experience these five with those you care for and love? May your five-fingered hands be open today to what God has done, is doing, and will do.