One

When things feel out of order or in any way chaotic, it becomes imperative for me to impose new structures.  As mentioned on numerous occasions, I come from a strong culture of achievement oriented living.  We achievers like measurable goals, proven metrics to evaluate success, constant assessment of progress and accomplishment…and if we can wear a t-shirt that tells everyone about our mission in two to three words, all the better.

Unfortunately for me, God does not seem as impressed by this framework for living.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.  In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.  Matt. 23:23-28

Writing a check, though certainly painful in one way, does not require me to genuinely feel merciful affection for the one to whom I give the money.  In fact, it often makes me feel smug, superior and like I’m pretty impressive.  Is it faithfulness to God’s provision that I disperse what He provides or is it faithfulness to my own reputation or score card?

Cleaning the outside of the cup and dish, like making my home ready for guests, can be to make my guests feel more restful and at ease.  But it can also be a self-indulgent monument to Self for others to be impressed by my home rather than lavished with undivided attention so that each guest feels my genuine interest in his or her story and life.

In our own neighborhood, it is so much easier to plan a cook-out for the whole neighborhood than to make time for one neighbor, celebrating any evidence of God’s activity and faithfulness in his or her heart.  The former appeases my achiever need to have something to show for my existence while the latter directs the spotlight onto God’s.

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’  Matt. 25:40

Ward Brehm, who I heard speak when he was the head of the Africa Fund which directed U.S. Federal money to AIDS work in Africa, highlighted the fact that Jesus says, “ONE” of the least of these.  How did I come to marry “go big or go home” with Jesus’ exhortation to serve rather than be served?  Maybe its that photo ops make me feel that I can do both service to others while serving my need for recognition and approval at the same time?  Jesus repeatedly told those He served, “Tell no one!”  Jesus poured Himself out of the Love He already had in the Father and Spirit.  I tend to pour myself out to attain that validation, affection or position.  The latter is self-serving while the former is Love.  I look at the outside, God looks at the heart.  I want fruit that impresses even if by waxy finishes and genetic modification, but He creates fruit that lasts.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.  John 15:16-17

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and the one who is wise saves lives. Proverbs 11:30

Shrinking

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.  So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For, “In just a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay.”  And, “But my righteous one will live by faith.  And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.”

 But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.  Hebrews 10:32-39

Often, when a new love is birthed, the greatness of that new experience minimizes any sense of shame or insecurity about the bold expressions of affection in that euphoric relationship.  The same can be said about being swept into a movement, whether political or social activism, as evidenced by passionate exhortations made on Facebook by people who may hardly speak in public.  The good and true aspect of these moments is that for their duration, they are bigger than the individual, interrupting self-focus just long enough to serve something greater or, at least, to step out from hiding behind the tree.  God is inviting us to live in that real focus on His Kingdom.

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said.  Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.  But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”  Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said,“why did you doubt?”  Matt. 14:28-31

At the sight of Jesus, Peter’s instinct was to climb out of a boat and walk on water.  WHAT!?  And then came the shrink back…the reality of the cost, the danger, the fear, his own limitations, his own weakness.  Maybe he realized his impulsiveness, not humongous faith, had urged him out of that boat.  Maybe he realized everyone was looking at him and he could never fool those who knew him best.  Only God knows the complexity of all that happened in those moments.

I, like Peter, have forgotten my first love.  I need to be reminded from Hebrews that it is “because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.  So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.”  My confidence is not in my personality, my strength, my balance, my perspective, my experience, my understanding, my buoyancy, my tough skin or soft heart, my correct theology, my anything.  My confidence is in the truth that His Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, that His Kingdom will swallow up the old and make all things new and that any loss now is no loss, ultimately, in His economy.  I have lost confidence in this.  I have lost sight of this.  I have stopped believing it.  And I have been sinking, shrinking back, with little faith and great doubt.

Enduring great conflict and suffering turned my eyes from His Kingdom onto protecting my own.  Rather than turning the other cheek with joy, I hunkered down and went diving for cover, while chucking a few rocks back at my attackers.  Bitterness, sorrow and defeat followed.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.  Mark 8:35  Too easily and with disappointing speed, the wind and waves have drawn my attention from Him.

And here is the final truth, where the Good News must be just that, unless Jesus reaches His hand out and catches me, fishes me out, and places me back in His boat, I remain among those with whom God takes no pleasure because I cannot clench my jaws for more faith, I cannot will myself to the top of the water and I cannot give sight to my darkened eyes.  But because with His Son He is well pleased, and because I am hidden in Him and clothed in Him, the reward of HIS faithfulness is mine.  He is faithful to complete the Good work that He has begun.  He will do it.

Your righteousness, God, reaches to the heavens, you who have done great things.  Who is like you, God?
Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. Psalm 71:19-20

Silence is Golden?

The silence of God can be a very loud, overpowering reality, particularly if you are an extrovert, fed by active engagement in relationships like a fire is fed by lighter fluid.  In the silence, one feels more like the wood that is too green to actually burn, hoping the quick bright flame of the balls of newspaper will be be contagious, though they don’t turn out to be.  The truth about green wood, however, is that just like a green banana, it isn’t thrown out for being premature, it just has to be set aside to season properly before it is ready to be consumed.

From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land.  About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).  Matt. 27:45-46

Darkness covered the land.  It must have been still and silent or perhaps there were cries of mourning or of fear in that unexpected mid-day darkness.  Jesus, for the first and only time, was indeed utterly alone, isolated, disenfranchised, a sheep without a shepherd, an orphan, an alien, rejected, despised, cut off and discarded.  He felt it between bone and marrow.  He was sweating blood.

But the Father had not actually discarded Him just as He never forsake Adam, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Job nor any in the family of Israel nor any grafted/adopted into the line.  The darkness, the silence, the seeming absence was the necessary time of seasoning, of dough rising, of fine wine aging.  For Jesus alone, the weight of sin and punishment crushed the very life out of Him.  Because He bore the weight, we simply move through it, like the valley of the shadow of death.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.                               1 Cor. 13:11-12

Some birthing labor and some mother’s must endure more than 24 hours of intense contractions, searing pain and wearying waiting.  At the end, though, new life is birthed.  On the other side of the valley of the shadow of death is the house of the Lord.  Before the darkness of death and all its symptoms, I know God only in part, dimly, in shadows.  Some of what I believe is more about my own reflection and image than an accurate knowledge of His.  The air bubbles of my rising dough have to be pressed out so that I am left with full bread and not just hot air.  In the meantime, I cannot speed the seasoning of my wood, the ripening of the green banana nor the rising of the dough.  I have no choice but to trust that silence really is golden, or at least produces gold by burning off the contaminants and making it pure.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

The Tolkien quote that is often seen on bumper stickers affixed to Jeep Wranglers is profound.  One views “a wandering soul” as unfocused, undisciplined and without purpose.  Biblically, I think of the Israelites spending far more time in the desert than they had to simply because that is how God arranged it.

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. Deut. 8:3-5

Edmund Clowney in his book, The Unfolding Mystery, commented on the desert wanderings of Israel observing that the Israelites did not realize that God’s purpose for leading them in what turned out to be a longer journey than required by a map, “was not rapid transportation.  It was education.”  In the desert, God wanted them to learn who He was and in response, who they were.  For the Master Teacher, it is not enough for His people to just have this information, it needs to become part of them.

I don’t tend to really learn something until I it becomes a necessity.  I was never a strong foreign language student in school, but I quickly grabbed hold of important phrases and expressions when immersed in settings where I needed the language to survive.  Until I see my urgent need, my motivation is not all that strong. And often it is in those times of dissonance, disorientation and disconnect that I feel that need.  It is then that I realize my former framework for understanding needs to be replaced or that the content of what I understand is anemic at best.  And this is what God reveals to me about my relationship with Him through my desert wandering.

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence:  If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.  1 John 3:19-20

The Israelites felt utterly abandoned and lost.  They actually pined for the days of slavery in Egypt because at least there they knew their identity and had some predictability about life.  But it was in the desert that God showed them they had been seen and found and that though they were in no way inherently “choice”, they were chosen.

For forty days Noah floated on endless water, never spotting land or a place to anchor.  For forty years his descendants,  the Israelites, wandered in the desert without permanent residence.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,  where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.  He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. Luke 4:1-2

The first wilderness was wild but not alienating because it was where God dwelled with man in the Garden.  Even so, man turned inward to make meaning of existence and to take control of his surroundings.  Noah turned inward as documented immediately upon his exiting the boat onto dry land.  The Israelites have a well chronicled 40 years of making idols, storing up manna and looking to themselves more faithfully than God.  It was only in the One who each of these sons of God merely shadowed that the wilderness perfectly revealed a whole-hearted trust and dependence on God the Father, Maker, Sustainer and Ruler of all creation.  Because His testing produced a fuller realization of God’s dwelling with man, our desert wanderings are guaranteed to do so.

You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.  Job 42:3-5

I think I have a grip on God, His ways and my role in His Body until I find myself drifting at sea or wandering in the desert.  But in His kindness, He sends me wandering to pull from my curled fingers the false images of Him to which I cling and the short-sighted hopes for myself in which I mistakenly trust.  He uses the desert wandering to convince my heart that it is not my grip on Him or anything else but rather His grip on me which guarantees that I am not lost.

 

Talitha Koum

What is it about William Wallace and his fight for Scotland that inspired me so when I first saw Braveheart and continues to energize me when brought to mind even today?  Perhaps its the same thing that makes the Tale of Despereaux or To Kill a Mockingbird so powerful.  The individual who willingly risks personal loss for a greater good, even if that good is not visible to the public opinion polls.  Those tales awaken in the reader (or viewer) a clarity of the Good, making it seem not as far out of reach as we convince ourselves it is.  It is the story of the person and work of Jesus, the ultimate hero, who took on death so that all may have life.

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.  1 Peter 4:12-13

The order of suffering and then glory, never the latter without the former, is the order of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  There is no resurrection without the cross, and so there really is no life of Jesus in me without the prerequisite death of Adam in me.  William Wallace, Atticus and many others who give us little samples of the larger narrative of Jesus, stir up courage and willingness in us to face death because we see the life that follows those sacrifices.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Rom. 8:18

The problem for me is that I don’t honestly want to walk the hill to Golgotha or linger there for much time.  Present sufferings are so life sucking and feeling dead inside is, well, lifeless.  Feeling dead inside might be compared to feeling like a used ash tray, full of putrid, burned cigarette butt which is not just filthy and smelly in itself but toxic to those around it.  I don’t want to be toxic to others, or even slightly burdensome.  Dead weight is heavy.  Yet it seems, if I could apply my faith to even this, that dead weight is to be expected with death and death is required for resurrection.  AND, no dead person can resurrect herself or himself.  I want to be fighting for Scotland, so to speak, and instead I am lying in the tomb of the defeated.  My story isn’t the hero’s story but that of a desperate need for one.

He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.”  But they laughed at him.  After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was.  He took her by the hand and said to her,“Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.  Mark 5:39-42

Yesterday morning, even beyond my virus ridden body, I was acutely aware of the death of my soul.  I felt the profound need for resurrection.  Yesterday, rather than resurrection, I was still in the darkness of Friday.  And I realized, that is ok.  He will come to my side when it is the right time and say, “Talitha koum!”   And the resurrected version of my heart will fight for Scotland (or better yet, God’s Kingdom) more gloriously and effectively than the one that climbed the hill to Golgotha and that currently lies in the darkness of the tomb.

Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  2 Cor. 1:9

Forsaken?

And Gideon said to him, “Please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”  Judges 6:13

“Walking with God” is very confusing.  Is He for us or against us?  Is He with us or standing off at a distance?  Sure, theologically He never leaves or forsakes us, but practically, “forsaken” has a lot more supporting evidence than “for us”.  Can the clay say to the potter why did you make me this way? Nope.  So we languish in Midian.

My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.  Even young children despise me;  when I rise they talk against me.   All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.  Job 19:17-19

How disorienting for Job, the man God called “blameless and upright” at the start of his story.

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. Is. 64:6

There are some times, more than others, where the reality of the impossibility to communicate, to think, to feel or even to interact well because of sin’s corruption of all our faculties is so evident that I begin to believe it futile even to try any more.  It shows up between brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, parents and children, and between long time friends.

For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!  Rom. 7:22-25a

I suppose God provided Job with such a tangible experience of his helplessness in the face of a fallen world to draw Him further into a hopefulness in the One Who is redeeming it.

And the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?”  And he said to him, “Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”  And theLord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.”  Judges 6:14-16

He has chosen to make His power perfect in our weakness and His light to shine in our darkness.  Jesus was forsaken so that we would never really know such darkness.  Not my will but Yours be done.

I Hope

Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope!  Hold me up, that I may be safe and have regard for your statutes continually!  Psalm 119:116-117

Hope is such a vulnerable act.  Hope exposes raw places in our hearts, fragile nerves easily wounded.  Not all of my hopes are noble and righteous, many are not.  But my hopes confess the most honest desires, beliefs and perspectives by which I live.  When my hopes are shamed, I am most easily attracted to dishonesty, self-protection, cynicism and hardness.  Dishonesty about what I value is easier than disappointment.  Self-protection is obviously more appealing than “offering the other cheek”.  Cynicism makes me untouchable, or so I can be persuaded.  And hardness of heart is the result of this cocktail of responses.

What the psalmist here is pleading is that God would not let him drown but instead, would uphold him.  I want God’s promises to be true and I want my trust in them to be proven right.

Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.  Psalm 33:22

My hope is supposed to be in God, in the surety of His redemptive and glorious plans being accomplished without any hiccups.  My hope ought to be founded on the certainty that God is good all the time and that His plans are to prosper and not to harm.  My hope is meant to be based upon trust in His knowledge of true prosperity of my soul rather than some anemic material version I may concoct.

But often, I place my hope in particular ways in which I want these things to be evidenced.  In reality, my hope is placed in the response of others, in communication, collaboration and the immediate rather than the slow cooker transformation that is making all things gloriously new, even me.

I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.  ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’  Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.  ‘Hear, and I will speak;  I will question you, and you make it known to me.’   I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,  but now my eye sees you;  Job 42:2-5

I lean too willingly on my own understanding and am slow to trust what I cannot see.  A phone call from a friend this morning brought this reality rushing into view.  As I heard of God’s lavish and nurturing answer to their long suffering, it was more than could have been asked or imagined.  God is faithful and kind, never forgetting the goal of the stories He is writing as He tells His Great Story to and through our lives.  He never forsakes and His love never fails.

Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.   For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name;  and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.  For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God.  For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you.  In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer.  Is. 54:4-8

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  I hope.

Perplexing Freedom

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.  But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?…What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me.  Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?  They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them.  It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you,  my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!  I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.  Gal. 4:8-19, 15-20

Paul got fiery sometimes.  His primary goal wasn’t to scratch itchy ears or stroke fragile egos.  When children start playing too close to traffic or approach an electric socket with a fork, our hollar often gets their attention more quickly than our legs can carry us to prevent catastrophe.   In any case, startling the child or hurting their feelings is not nearly as worrisome as what might happen to their lives if their direction toward harm isn’t interrupted.

They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?  Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”  Ex. 14:11-12

What wouldn’t the Israelites have given to be free from their brutal treatment as slaves in Egypt?  Like the believers in Galatia, they would have “gouged out their eyes and given them”, in response to their blessedness and freedom.  And the Galatians, just like the Israelites, did not remain in that state of celebratory freedom, faithful generosity and self-forgetfulness.  There is such a strong pull in all of us to settle for enslavement to the familiar rather than to run toward freedom in the wilderness.  It turns out, we just can’t believe God will be with us in the wilderness and our misery in captivity isn’t all that bad, after all.  At least the former in known.

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”  He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.  But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.”  Matt. 14:28-30

I will always be more like Peter, looking to my left and to my right, valuing the approval of everyone more than the One who has already said of me, in His Son, well done.  I will be reluctant like the Israelites and Galatians, more willing to believe my fears than the One who casts out all fear.  But He is slow to anger and abounding in love, faithful to complete the good work He has begun, and willing to keep calling me out of the boat and closer to Him.