Tradition, Truth, and Advent

I understand why so many people have disliked tradition and ritual. It's so easy for people to become caught up in the actions and symbols, forgetting the truth that they represent, that one might easily think those actions and symbols are more of a danger and a distraction than they're worth. After all, one can pray genuinely without kneeling or lighting a candle, and one can rejoice in the coming of Christ without sharing gifts or decorating trees. But, despite all the potential dangers of symbol and ritual (and despite all the personality books that say I ought to dislike traditions in general), I find great meaning and significance in them.

You see, the human mind does not remain at a level. We fight to raise it by reminding it of the truths we believe and by dwelling on the beauties and wonders of the world; if we neglect these duties, we slip back downwards into mental confusion, apathy, ingratitude, and joylessness. Like the forces of Gondor ever watchful against the enemy in Mordor, in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, a failure in our vigilance could mean the loss of a bridge or the desolation of a beautiful land - and the fight to regain and restore what was lost will almost certainly be harder and more bitter than the original fight to preserve what was already there would have been. So, paraphrasing Lewis, it is incredibly important to set before ourselves everyday some reminder of the essential core truth of our faith - to give us the eyes to see clearly the spiritual realities around us, to inspire us to live in the beauty and joy whose fulfillment we hope for in Christ, and to strengthen us with grace for the daily and hourly fight.

I would argue that tradition - if the reason behind it is remembered - can be an excellent way of setting before ourselves those truths that we most need to hear. Because we did not create the traditions, they often remind of us of those aspects of our faith that make us most uncomfortable, or that we would be most apt to forget, as well as those that seem most natural and pleasant to us. Because they have endured through the years, they have (often, at any rate) been honed and improved by generations of people striving to obey and know Christ more fully. Because they are inextricably intertwined with the physical world, they help us engage our bodies in our worship and faith; because they repeat every day or every year as time passes on, they help link eternal truth and beauty with the temporal world in which we live.

I have to admit that, despite my theoretical interest in and appreciation for the traditions of the faith, I don't actually put that many of them into practice (the side effect of growing up Protestant, probably). Every Sunday I go to church and partake of Communion (can I say in passing how much I love that particular tradition? To have weekly such a tangible and powerful reminder of Christ's sacrifice and love is such a blessing), and every Christmas season I light the candles of Advent - but that's really all I do. I don't want to add in more traditions just for the sake of doing them, of course, but if there are others that will give me the same encouragement, redirection, and hope as the traditions of Advent, then I would like to make them traditions in my heart and home as well. We'll see how things go. But for now, Advent is here! The season of hope and expectation, of remembering that God Himself has come to dwell among us, of longing for His return and the restoration of all things, has begun! Lift up your eyes to the heavens and see, with the eyes of memory or with the eyes of hope, the Light coming to the world to cast away our darkness.

How to care about things (without being overwhelmed)

In one of the many film retellings of the classic story of Cinderella, Ever After, the formerly apathetic, self-centered, and purposeless prince says, "I used to think, if I cared about anything, I'd have to care about everything, and I'd go stark raving mad!" So he chose instead, for years, to care about nothing.

I wonder if that's how most Americans are today. We are constantly presented with so many causes and needs - with starving refugees in Africa, sex slavery in Southeast Asia, human rights abuses in China, environmentally destructive practices in the US, and countless natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Sandy in New York, not to mention the myriad of social and political issues on both sides of the worldview split. The sheer quantity and magnitude of the problems overwhelms us, and so we bury our heads in the sand and seek our own personal happiness while closing our eyes and ears to the needs all around us. Now, it makes sense that we feel overwhelmed. There really are more problems (and problems of larger scope) than we could ever hope to fully address with our limited time, skills, and resources - and how could we ever hope even to figure out which problem most deserves the time and resources we could give it? If we help to rehabilitate former prisoners in our local communities, do we need to feel guilty that we are not also helping to train and restore former sex slaves in Thailand? If we donate to food programs in refugee camps around the world, do we need to feel guilty that we are not donating to our local food banks? It's not difficult to picture ourselves suddenly snapping from the weight of it all and, in the words of the aforementioned prince, going "stark raving mad!"

But this madness is not by any means a necessary or unavoidable consequence of beginning to care about one problem or another. We just need to give ourselves the permission to accept our limitations and the command to work within them to best of our abilities. Acknowledging that we are fallible and limited simply by nature of being human allows us to truly care about one specific problem - and devote ourselves to its correction - without feeling guilty about all the other problems we don't have the time or skills to adequately handle. And once we truly care about something, it will be a joy, a source of meaning and purpose, to throw ourselves towards its resolution. I think all the half-hearted efforts we make in life stem from the absence of this genuine concern about the problem and the concomitant desire to see it resolved; that they are, in essence, the output of a guilty conscience prodding an apathetic will into temporary action. But if we let ourselves deeply and genuinely care about one or two problems (that we are capable of acting upon in tangible, relevant ways), and allow ourselves to dispense with guilt about all the other hundreds of problems in the world, we can start to act with our whole hearts, with a motivated will, and with real purpose.

And I have a suspicion that we just might find our capacity for caring and acting increased as we go about the process of living with purpose instead of apathy, until we have touched more lives and brought about more good than we ever imagined possible.

An Introvert Looks at Community

Community seems like a beautiful concept, when thought about in the abstract - having people to love and be loved by, to know and be known by, to be able to mourn together and rejoice together, to cut through the deadening fog of isolation we've constructed. Even the tensions, conflicts, and hurts that accompany community seem welcome, if only we can have - even for a single moment - true connection of minds and true fellowship between hearts. To be known and valued - to have a place where one belongs - that is the climax of community and the prize for which everyone strives.

But most experiences of community fall incredibly short of this ideal. It's not that people have issues and those issues can make relationships messy and difficult; rather, it's that we attempt to artificially induce community in various ways and rarely (if ever) succeed in re-creating the matrix of shared life necessary for the opening of doors and the tearing down of walls. We meet with a group of randomly selected people once or twice a week and call them our "community," but never feel comfortable enough to share our deepest fears and dreams or expose our genuine personality - or, worse, realize after we've made ourselves vulnerable that (because of their own fears or self-defenses or lack of support) no one really cares about our sorrows and our hopes. So we fall back into our silences or our postures and regret that we ever revealed our real selves; we go on participating in our "community" for the sake of appearances or because of fun activities without engaging or investing in a deep and meaningful way.

Our churches, which ought to resemble that most closely-knit community, the family, are not exempt from this sort of artificiality, with its corresponding hypocrisy and superficiality. People greet each other in a scripted way, when the pastor or worship leader directs them to do so, and sigh with relief when the awkward moment is past so they can retreat back to themselves and the few friends they already know. When the sermon is over, the church empties as fast as possible, except for a few cliques who've managed to stay connected internally while remaining separate from the rest of the church body. In small groups, people share carefully selected prayer requests - small specific needs or vague and generalized issues, neither of which leaves them vulnerable before the rest of the group - or discuss the activities of their weeks without a word for the passions, emotions, and ideas churning inside them or the beauty and darkness of God speaking and sin acting in their worlds. There is always a fear of judgment; there is always a suspicion that the group is not bound together by an authentic-enough love to handle such dialogue and revelation.

I am sure that the solution to all of this is not to further separate and isolate ourselves - to give up on community because it has failed us so many times. But what, then, is the solution? What steps can we take toward genuine love in community?

Coming back...

It's becoming cool for people to act as though words (or rhetoric, or books, etc.) don't matter - as though they are merely distractions from the all-important task of living in the now (or, in Christian circles, living out God's calling in the present moment). I have to admit that sometimes people can get lost in the sound of the words themselves, and stop striving to live them out, becoming merely a sponge to soak up information or a megaphone to blast it out at other people. But without time spent dwelling in words of truth and beauty, where is the challenge to godliness, the inspiration for greatness, or even one's sense of purpose and calling going to come from? From the changing winds of one's own emotions? From the shifting sand of circumstances, relationships, or politics? All too frequently, yes. So we live like weather-vanes and wonder why we accomplish nothing lasting and our communities and nations are going nowhere. We ignore the words passed down through the generations - words of wisdom gathered from the experience of the ages - so that we can be relevant in the moment, and wonder why our philosophies fail to satisfy us and why our future feels so hopeless or shallow. We think we can understand God without the words of knowledge and godly interpretation that the church has given us, and wonder why He feels so distant or why so many cults and extreme doctrines are rising up.

People, God chose to describe Himself as the Word. The Word of truth and beauty, the Word that was from before the beginning of time and will endure forever, and yet which is never irrelevant to the present moment. Maybe instead of abandoning words as so much noise and static, in favor of pure action, we should strive to make our words emulate the Word, and to fill our minds and hearts with other words that reflect Him and His purposes. And maybe then, when words of value and meaning have had the opportunity to strengthen, equip, and challenge us, our actions will also have more meaning and more lasting value, instead of floating wherever the waves suggest.

So yes, I'm back blogging, because I do believe that words have power and value, and because I want to use my words to express beauty and truth, just in case someone is listening and the one ultimate Word chooses to display Himself in my small, stained mirrors.

A brief blogging sabbatical

I do apologize for suddenly going silent on the blog this past week or so. Honestly, I had no desire to write for the first half of the time, and no desire to publicly share what I wrote for the second half. I've been wondering about why I write on this blog, what its purpose is in my life, and what its purpose ought to be, and I haven't arrived at conclusive answers to any of those queries. When I started the blog, I just wanted a way to share all the thoughts that were always bubbling up in my mind - but now I find that it's putting incredible pressure on me, and becoming less of a joy and outlet and more of a burden and obligation (the tipping point might have been trying to establish a schedule of future posts for myself with the whole Psalms project...). So for the time being I'm going to take a break, write in my journal instead of online for a while, and try to get back to the point where sharing my thoughts is a joy. I do love blogging - I just can't handle the pressure I allowed it to have over me, and now I need to do a kind of detox before I can really get back into it. I'm not thinking it'll take too long, so don't worry :) Thank you for reading all my random thoughts over the past year! Hopefully I'll see you here again soon!

He has not forsaken us

One of the deepest emotional pains that one can feel, I believe, is the fear or belief that God is not love, or that one is not loved by God, or that God's grace is not sufficient to cover one's sins, or that God is distant and displeased (they are all permutations of the same feeling, I think). When one has known and seen God, and experienced His love and mercy, He becomes the deepest desire of one's heart; He overwhelms us with the torrents of His love, and we respond with adoration. So at any point after that, if we begin to fear that we have lost that love through some sin we have committed or righteousness we have left undone, the pain of that fear will penetrate to the depths of our heart like a dagger that stabs and a club that crushes.

Unfortunately, the emotional nature of this fear makes it incredibly difficult to counter! Reminding ourselves of the truth of God's love, going back to the cross and remembering the pain He suffered on our behalf, and repeating the assurances of His grace to ourselves time and again are all good things to do, and they can help restore a soul to joy and confidence in Christ - but I think it is also good to cry to God in the midst of our fear, as the author of Psalm 6 does. For an emotional pain there must be an emotion outlet and an emotional healing.

"O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.
Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled;
But You, O Lord - how long?
Return, O Lord, deliver me!
Oh, save me for Your mercies' sake!
For in death there is no remembrance of You;
In the grave who will give You thanks?" - Psalm 6:1-5

The truth that he knows - God's mercy and deliverance of His people, His righteousness and healing power - is interspersed with what he feels and fears - that God is angry with him, and has forsaken him, and is abandoning him to death; the desperate plea of v3 captures it perfectly: "But You, O Lord - how long?" In his head, he knows that in God is deliverance and salvation; he knows that God will rescue him and not abandon him. But in his heart, he feels that God has already forsaken him - that the pain and the trials have continued longer than he can bear already, and that God is not with him in them. It's a place we've all been in, I think, particularly if a specific trial or struggle (read: external problem or internal sin issue) has lingered with us for any length of time. You said You would sanctify me, Lord! Why do I still struggle and fail so much with this one temptation? And You said You would be with me always and work all things for good, Lord! Why is my life such a wreck of circumstances, then? Why do my endeavors wither and die instead of prospering when I'm trying to follow You?

But there is beauty even in that emotional plea, twisted as it is by the lies the world has spun about the impermanence of love and the impossibility of grace, because he is trying desperately to feel and believe the truth that he knows - and because, at the end, there is hope. Our cries to God do not have to be perfect or sinless for Him to hear us; He hears our weeping and our supplication, no matter how weak and frail and faithless we are, and He will receive our prayers. He has not forsaken us, and He never will; His love has not failed us and His grace will endure through all eternity.

A God of mercy

If it is true that God takes no pleasure in wickedness - that He "hate[s] all workers of iniquity" and "abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man," as Psalm 5:4-6 says - than it is a problem of incredible concern and importance for each and every one of us. I wouldn't say I was bloodthirsty (far from it, in fact!), but when I see the bitterness, hatred, and resentment my heart holds on to and even takes pleasure in, I can't deny that there is wickedness and sin inside me. And the general consensus of the rest of humanity, and the doctrine of Christianity, is that I am not alone in this deep internal sinfulness: for "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Rom. 3:23)

What do we do, then? What is the next step to take, when we see the sin inside us, when the weight of it breaks our hearts and leads us to the edge of despair, because all our efforts cannot eradicate it completely from our lives? I think the same psalm that described the righteous position of a holy God towards wickedness describes equally well the only beneficial next step for us to take:

"But as for me, I will come into Your house in the multitude of Your mercy;
In fear of You I will worship toward Your holy temple." - Psalm 5:7-8

Continuing to try to perfect myself will never succeed; the only option that can bring life, joy, and contentment is to come to God riding the waves of His mercy, carried in the arms of His mercy, lifted on the wings of His mercy: forgiven and reconciled by His mercy. Striving to lift myself to heaven or to give myself worth and value, to earn the respect and adulation of others and even of God, can only lead to the empty and cold triumph of pride that is more failure than victory even in its highest moment; but coming to God with reverence and humility, to lift unto Him the worship and adoration of a heart in love to a God worthy of praise - that is the key to peace and fulfillment, the one thing necessary to find meaning and freedom.

It is indeed true that God takes no pleasure in wickedness, but it is also true that He is a God of mercy, and because He is a God of mercy we can be a people of hope. We can cry to our God in our trouble, even when our trouble is brought on by our own sin, and we can wait eagerly, watching as for the morning, for His answer to our prayer. Because we have put our trust in Him, we can rejoice in the surety of His faithfulness, and let the burdens and pains of this life and of our sin be carried for us by the God who defends us with strength unassailable.

You have put gladness in my heart

Sometimes it seems that we are alone in our pursuit of truth - or rather, because the plural "we" gives a different feel to the word "alone", sometimes it seems to each one of us that he or she as a single individual is alone in his or her pursuit of God, that there are no fellow-companions fighting the same battles, seeking the same good, or walking the same path. In Psalm 4, I think, we see someone feeling just that way: someone who is attempting to follow God and who desires to live in righteousness and truth, but who sees all around him people seeking after the lies of this world and setting their hearts' love on worthless and insignificant things. And it is discouraging, for the psalmist and for any of us, to feel that way. When the psalmist says in verse 5 to "offer the sacrifices of righteousness," I think that persevering through this kind of loneliness and discouragement by faith is one of the sacrifices that he might have had in mind (another one, from v4, would seem to be controlling our anger and frustration with those who are pursuing sinful or temporal things and perhaps scorning our pursuit of goodness and truth). For righteousness does require sacrifice, and the denial of our pride and self-centeredness, on at least a daily level.

But sacrifice is not the end of the story, and the psalmist, fittingly, doesn't end there. When temporal things fade or fail, as they invariably must, or when worldly expectations or human relationships disappoint, if we have made those things the goal of our life then we will be left asking, in hard times, "who will show us any good?" (v6) - but if our heart's desire is to know and follow God, then even in those hard times we will know His joy and be filled with His peace. The joy that comes from knowing God surpasses even the greatest happiness that temporal prosperity can bring. It can be hard to believe that sometimes - when the harvest is coming in with its abundance of riches and rejoicing, and it seems as if no joy could ever be more complete, or when the world is falling apart into tattered gray rags and it feels as though no happiness could ever break through into that dismal half-light. But the joy that God can put in our hearts - the gladness that comes from the Lord of eternity - can endure through the dark times and shine brighter in the good than even the sun himself at his zenith.

Appearances and realities

So many of the psalms are like Psalm 3 - a cry to God for help and a testimony to His love and faithfulness. But what stands out to me as unique in this psalm is the end of verse 2: "Many are they who say of me, 'There is no help for him in God.'" Despite all that the psalmist knows to be true of God, the thoughts and words of those around him still have an impact on his life; like Job's wife, they make it harder, by their lack of faith, for him to remain faithful.

God is our salvation and our shield, our glory and our comfort, through any and all circumstances, as the rest of Psalm 3 goes on to say with beauty and power, but it doesn't always appear that way on the outside, to other people. To them, when we are going through some sorrow or trial, it may seem as if God has forsaken us or does not hear our cries. And even though we know that God is faithful, and that He has some good purpose for what we're going through, the naysayers around us can make it even more difficult for us to endure with faith and hope than it would have been in any case. When that is the case (and hopefully, if one is in a good community of believers, it is not often the case!), I think the example of the psalmist here is a good one: he reminds himself of God's power and past faithfulness, holding onto God - clinging to God with all his might - when all the world around him is trying to tear him apart or to make it seem that God is not who He has declared Himself to be. He finds strength for the present trial in the memory of the love and goodness of God he has seen revealed time and time again, and he refuses to let the feelings of the moment defeat the eternal truth that he knows, no matter how many voices weigh in on the side of those feelings.

The power that underlies grace

In Psalm 2, the rule of God - rightful and almighty authority - is contrasted with the rule of man - proud and greedy grasping for power and autonomy. We see the kings and rulers of the earth attempting to free themselves from what they perceive to be the bonds and chains of God over their lives, and God responding with derision because their attempt is so incredibly futile and with wrath because it is idolatrous rebellion and sin. But to be honest, the way the psalm is written has always been confusing to me, because it seems to paint God in a very negative light: as a wrathful God who delights in carrying out judgment on rebellious creatures, who desires to rule with an iron fist as a complete dictator, and before whom we come as cowering, terror-stricken subjects hoping that He will not be angry with us this time.

And this picture is so utterly the opposite of God as He has revealed Himself in the rest of Scripture that for a long time I've skirted around this psalm, bracketing it off in my mind as one of those parts of the Bible and Christianity that I just don't understand yet (which I think is often a healthy and helpful thing to do, because after all we are limited by nature and our understanding is furthermore hampered by sin, and there are a lot of things we don't understand now and may never understand at all in this life.) What I think I'm coming to understand, however, is that the focus of this psalm isn't on God's anger so much as it is on God's rightful and legitimate power and authority - and in our culture, we tend not to dwell much on that power and authority. A God of enduring faithfulness and unending love, without earth-shattering power or the authority of a judge and king, is a comfortable God, a God we can safely ignore when we want to but who will be there for us when we need Him. But the God who created the universe, without whose sustaining power our lives would not last a second, and whose innate holiness defines a moral law we can't even come close to living up to, is not a comfortable God. The God who seeks to reconquer our rebellious hearts with His grace and lovingkindness is also the God who will utterly destroy us in His righteous judgment if we refuse to surrender. And I think, if we lose our understanding of God's power and authority in judgment - if we cease to see God as the rightful and righteous King and Judge - we will also lose our understanding of the depths of His love and the riches of His grace. He is indeed a terrible and powerful God; the whisper of His wrath would utterly destroy us. But we do not need to be afraid or cower before Him without hope, awaiting the inevitable judgment, because He is also a God of love, who extends salvation to His people, and "blessed are all those who put their trust in Him."

The Seat of the Scornful

In Psalm 1, the blessed man is described as one who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful; that last phrase is one that has often confused me and given me cause to think and ponder. What I'm coming to think is that the scornful, or the mockers, are those who practice the soul-destroying art of flippancy in the Screwtapian sense. They are those who look upon good, noble, and virtuous things with a cynical and contemptuous gaze, or with open disregard for what they would call the foolishness and futility of those things. And to sit in their seat is to look at life from their vantage point and through their eyes. In some way I feel that this attitude of scorn toward life is one of the most dangerous and destructive things in the world, both for the individual who holds it and for the society around that individual, but it is incredibly difficult for me to express this importance with words of enough meaning and strength.

There are things in this world that are of primary and utmost importance, things that characterize our humanity and serve as the rich soil for our roots or the sky which healthy growth strives to reach. Some of these things are the innocent and fundamental aspects of physical and temporal life in the midst of all God's creation - things like hard work, marriage, babies, beauty in a flower or a mountain or the face of a woman, strength in the arms of a man, and the fellowship of believers worshiping God together. Others are the good and glorious principles and virtues that stretch through eternity and underlie all that is worthwhile in temporality - things like the love and grace of God, justice, righteousness, honesty, compassion, holiness, and judgment; the high praises of God in the mouths of His saints as they wield the two-edged sword of His word; all that is lovely, pure, noble, praiseworthy, and of good report.

But the destroyers of civilization - no, let us call them the destroyers of humanity - attempt to cut away at the reverence and value we ascribe to these things, and they do so with mockery, scorn, contempt, and the overriding derision of elite and enlightened opinion, first, and then of public opinion more broadly. If we cast away those things, however - if we trade in laziness and entitlement for diligence and hard work, for instance, or falsehoods and manipulation for honesty and faithfulness - what will we have left? There will be nothing left worth living for; there will be nothing left that is characteristically human in the majestic and beautiful sense of humanity for which we were all created, which we may one day hope to see, and which we as of yet can still see occasional glimpses here and now. By making those good and virtuous things objects of mocker and scorn, we lose both the rich soil of a godly and honorable temporal life and the high and glorious heavens that soar in the eternal visions and aspirations of one who seeks to know and follow God. Stunted and weakened, we wither inwards in petty sins and quiet despair, having barred the door of our hearts to both life and joy.

A Few Days Late...

Monday was our first anniversary! If we can make it through the first year, we can make it through all the rest, right? Honestly, though, it has been an amazing year, being married to a man as wonderful as Paul :) It's had its share of tension, uncertainty, and conflict, but I've found that mutual love and commitment go a long, long way in setting those things right and providing endurance through them while they last.

I don't know where God will lead us from here, except that I know He will keep calling and drawing us nearer to Himself, deeper into the oceans of His love, higher onto the mountains of His righteousness. That's what He does for His children! And what matters most is not how much money we make, or where we work, or how many children we have, or where we live, or any of the other myriad uncertainties of our temporal life, but whether or not we choose to follow that one great, eternal call towards God. So I have cause to give thanks, every day, that I have a husband whose heart's desire is to follow that call, and thus one in whom my heart can safely rest.

Unbelonging

Psalm 107 is one of the most beautiful of all the psalms, and also one that illustrates God's love for and involvement in the lives of His people. Every time I read it, a different aspect or picture stands out to me. Today, what caught my attention was the first descriptive stanza, verses 4-9:

"They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way;
They found no city to dwell in.
Hungry and thirsty,
Their soul fainted in them.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He delivered them out of their distresses.
And He led them forth by the right way,
That they might go to a city for a dwelling place.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
For He satisfies the longing soul,
And fills the hungry soul with goodness."

It is a picture of loneliness and unbelonging, of souls who wander alone and unfruitful through barren desert places, trudging through the wilderness with empty hearts. To them, life must seem both meaningless and hopeless, as they long from the depths of their being for the joy and abundance they can neither find nor create. Yet though their sorrows lead them to the point of breaking, they do not stumble into the pit of Despair, for they remember in their desolation, despite the seeming futility of life, to cry to God who does not scorn the tears of a lost and broken soul.

When they so cry, out of the pain and the bitter empty ache of their hearts, He hears them not with condemnation or contempt, but with kindness and compassion. He hears them, and hearing them, He responds with action, entering their lives and changing its course. He leads them to a place where they can dwell: He gives them a home and a place to belong, and a community in which they can find both fellowship and purpose - where they can have their own needs met and also come to know joy and find meaning through serving and loving the people around them. In essence, He saves them from the barrenness of a life alone and loveless by restoring them to the human fellowship for which we were designed.

All too often, even here in an actual city, there is no community. Souls wander by in the wilderness of their isolation and loneliness, longing for love but unable to find it, looking for a place to belong, but turned away by the indifference of those who fail to even notice them. The deep, throbbing ache for a place and a people to belong to becomes the steady undercurrent of our existence, however we try to silence or ignore it. Oh, that God would bring the goodness of community and loving fellowship to our lives, here and now! Deliver us from the distress of our aloneness and unbelonging, Lord, and lead us by the right way, and satisfy this longing of our souls!

A flower in blossom

Sometimes I think we don't actually desire God quite as much as we think we do - or at least, I think co-existent with our desire to know Him and be near to Him is a desire to pull back, to withdraw, to refuse the vulnerability and surrender which necessarily come with knowing anyone intimately, but especially God. You can see the same push-and-pull of warring desires quite frequently in romantic relationships, to give a more accessible example: each person loves the other, and wants to trust and know (and be trusted and known by) the other, but there is an undercurrent of what can most simply be called fear that holds them back from fully letting go into mutual trust, vulnerability, knowing, and nearness. Each can be so desperate to earn and keep the other's love that they refuse to fully open themselves to the other (for fear of rejection), and as a result close themselves off to the love they most deeply crave. It is bitterly ironic that the direct consequence of the actions taken in search of love, in the striving to deserve love, is the construction of a barricade against the full force of that love when it finally comes.

And if it is such a bitter irony in the context of human relationships, is it not even more bitter when it occurs in the relationship between man and God? In a relationship with another person, the fallibility and imperfection of humanity can be used as a rationalization for the fear of vulnerability and genuine love, but with God that excuse falls short. The fear is exposed. Why do we hold back from the actions that would draw us nearer to God? Why is any flimsy excuse or distraction allowed to pull us away from our prayers or prevent us from meditating on Him throughout the day? It is not - it cannot be - that we fear He will reject us. If anything, our lack of devotion and piety would be greater reason for Him to reject us. More importantly, however, we know that His love is unfailing and enduring; we saw that He was willing even to suffer and die because of that love. No! - it is the love itself that we fear. It is too great, too high, too mighty; it is too far beyond our comprehension, and we fear it because its bounds are unknown - and, we have heard, unknowable.

A love without reason or end, a love that endures the scorn or indifference we show to it, a love that perseveres unchanging despite our fickle attention and attempts at returning it, a love that forgives, a love that knows us completely and does not let go, a love that is determined to hold on to us no matter how much we fight to be rid of it, a love that refuses to be angry no matter how we yell and storm and try to hurt it - that is the love God has for us, and that is the thing we fear most and yet most deeply desire and need. If we could but open ourselves up to it - open up our hearts not caring if it killed us with the strength and glory of its torrents - I think we would find that all the tense, angry, self-conscious, anxious striving in our hearts would be washed away, and that our souls would relax and unfold like the petals of a flower in blossom under the light of the sun.

Acknowledging need

"It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little - however little - native luminosity? Surely we can't be quite creatures?
"For this tangled absurdity of a Need, even a Need-love, which never fully acknowledges its own neediness, Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become 'jolly beggars.' The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. And he is not sorry at all for the innocent Need that is inherent in his creaturely condition. For all the time this illusion to which nature clings as her last treasure, this pretence that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet - or one foot - or one toe - on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf. The consequences of parting with our last claim to intrinsic freedom, power, or worth, are real freedom, power and worth, really ours just because God gives them and because we know them to be (in another sense) not 'ours.'" - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

This is not the way I naturally think, and I don't think it's the way most other people think either.We are ashamed of our Need, even our Need for God; we wish to be independent beings, possessing something utterly our own which we can then give to God and to other people. In fact, we don't want to admit that we are dependent on God, not just because of our sin, but because we are His creatures, the things He has made and whose life He sustains. I love the analogy in the first paragraph above: we want to have some light of our own, to shine bright with the goodness of our own being, instead of simply reflecting the light of God. But since we are His creatures, even if light did shine forth directly from us, it would still be His light that He put within us in the first place.There is nothing we can offer Him that He did not give to us, and because we are fallen we tend to need His help and encouragement even in that act of giving. And that is hard to accept, so I tend to fight it - I try to prove to myself, through continued efforts to be perfect, through the accumulated praises of people around me, through my own self-assessment in every situation, that I am a being who can live without Need and give freely of what is inherently my own to God and others: in other words, that I am a being like God in that I am my own self-sufficient person characterized by Gift-love rather than by Need-love.

But of course this is not true! So the fight becomes a lesson in failure and discouragement, or in self-righteousness and pride, depending on how the battles of the moment are progressing. In either case, there is no true delight, freedom, or consciousness of value. How could there be, when I am trying to live outside the constraints of reality? As Lewis wrote above, the false belief that we are self-sufficient, independent beings is what bars us from experiencing happiness. It imprisons us in continual striving for inherent personal perfection, in lies (believed in the heart if not spoken), in competition even with those we love the most, in the desperate fortress of pride faced with defeat. Having proclaimed to ourselves that we are Need-less - without Need of any sort, and particularly without that Need of God that infiltrates our whole being - we begin to feel that we are needless - meaningless beings without any greater purpose or worth. The One whom we need even to be truly ourselves is the same One who has made us able to meet the needs of people around us, given us a purpose and a meaning for our lives, and thus bestowed upon us greater worth than we could have ever made for ourselves. The One before whom we are utterly powerless, and upon whom we are dependent for life itself, gives to us His power, that we might live by His strength and do greater things that we could ever have imagined for ourselves. And the One who is a fountain of joy and love, apart from whom we are dark and hate-filled little creatures, will, if we will let Him, cause that fountain to spring up in glory within our very hearts, giving to us that which we could never earn or make for ourselves, but in the act of giving making it truly ours in Him.

Apologies

I'm sorry I've had another lull in posting! My mental state this week can be aptly illustrated by the fact that I completely forgot - until my mom called and reminded me last night - that a very good friend was getting married today and that I thus needed to leave work early (fortunately I have a very accommodating and flexible boss!) I've had a lot of thoughts, but most of them have been scattered and fleeting, and the ones I've dwelt on more deeply are rather too personal for a blog. So! I offer you my apologies, and also my promise that I am attempting to return to a more regular schedule soon.

Building love upon knowledge and joy upon truth

From The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence:

"That we ought to make a great difference between the acts of the understanding and those of the will: that the first were comparatively of little value, and the others, all. That our only business was to love and delight ourselves in God."

Note first that he does not say acts of the understanding are of no value. In attempting to correct one error, we have a tendency to swing to the other extreme - to say that, because we have previously strayed (or seen others stray) by valuing and seeking intellectual knowledge without the corresponding practice of virtue and devotion, we must completely abandon the pursuit of knowledge and simply attempt to live ethically and with love. But what we see taught here is that the acts of the understanding do still have value for the Christian. And when we think about it, we see that it must be so, for the acts of the understanding create for us a compass of truth, giving direction and guidance to the acts of the will. Without that compass, our will would be adrift in the chaos of ever-changing opinion, confused, "tossed to and fro and carried about by every wave of doctrine" (Eph. 4:14), without direction or purpose, never attaining to the great and glorious end for which God has created us.

However, it is equally clear that to stop here, having obtained a working compass, would be insufficient. Simply knowing the direction we ought to travel will not lead to the completion of the voyage! This is why the acts of the will are of such great value: it is by them, by choosing to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Mt. 22:37) and to find in Him our soul's true pleasure and delight, that the ship actually sails. By the acts of our will we show whether we are following the direction our understanding has established, or ignoring it in favor of some other course; by them also - and only by them - we advance towards the destination of our voyage: full holiness and true unity with God.

Treasure hunt

One of the dangers inherent in developing a skill, gaining experience, or having a talent is that one may come to consider it only in terms of the potential it holds for obtaining power and admiration. That is, self-centered ambition and the lust for power may reign in one's heart instead of a willingness to serve for the good of others without recognition. This is most clearly a problem in ministry settings. For example, someone who has served as a Sunday school teacher for 15 years might inwardly begin to crave recognition for her work, and to resent the chair of the Christian Education committee who hasn't served as long as she has but has more power and gets more attention; if she allows this desire for recognition to have its way, she will replace harmony and trust on that ministry team with conflict and bitterness. But it is not limited to ministry, and I'm sure you could come up with examples relevant to your own experience! In any situation where someone in a subordinate position believes themselves to have more skill or experience than the person over them, there is great temptation for this kind of resentment, and anyone who has not felt it in themselves is a far better person than I am.


In God's way of doing things, however, all of this is turned on its head. The One whose example we are supposed to follow, though He had the most complete and legitimate claim for authority and recognition of anyone in the universe (being all-powerful and all-knowing rather help with that claim!), chose to serve those who were by any objective standard lower than Himself, genuinely and simply, without complaining or boasting. So, likewise, the Apostle Paul tells us to consider the needs of other people as well as our own needs, and to think of other people better or more worthy of esteem than ourselves - because if we think of others in that way, instead of allowing ourselves to think we are superior, it is far easier to love and serve them with a willing heart. So, again, Jesus told His disciples that those who are greatest among His children are those who lay down their pride and lust for power to serve the least of those around them.

The goal, then - the great adventure of life - is to discover and act upon the opportunities we have to serve those around us. It is like a treasure hunt, where each act of service is a priceless jewel, and the lowliest and most ignored labors are the most beautiful gems of all.

Sin and sanctification

There's a part of me that values worldly prestige and esteem - part of me that wants to have a job that looks good to the people around me, and that wants my husband to also have such a job, so that people will look up to us and value us for our success in meeting these very worldly priorities. It was this part of me, a couple years ago, that was happy when Paul decided to pursue physical therapy instead of teaching, because medical professions carry quite a bit of esteem in this white-collar, upper-middle class system of rating. It is this part of me that wants a higher degree (particularly a PhD!), just so that I can be more respected according to those same rankings. And while I don't think this is a very large part of me, it is certainly there: a desire to build my life around temporal pursuits in the hope of winning the approval and esteem of people who generally don't even share my worldview and values, and a thirst for the acclaim and admiration of created beings rather than the Creator, over fleeting rather than eternal things. In essence, that part of me has fallen for the lies and temptations of the world, and wants to chase after that tantalizing golden apples it proffers instead of keeping to the course and running for "the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:14).

What concerns me is that I wasn't even aware of this desire until very recently, when a chance conversation brought it into glaring relief. Before then, if you had talked to me about the issue, I wouldn't have said that I valued that esteem or that I thought a white-collar job more worthy or meaningful than a blue-collar job (or that I ranked careers even within those categories); I would have told you that what mattered to me was honoring God with one's life and following Him on whatever path He chose, whether that included worldly riches and acclaim or material poverty and social scorn. But secretly, inside me, the desire for acclaim - the hidden pride, to give it its true name - was influencing my decisions, my thoughts about life, and my attitudes toward different options, while I remained largely ignorant of its existence and strength. It makes me wonder what other sinful attitudes, what other misaligned priorities, are hiding inside my heart!

What's encouraging, though, is that God did bring it to my attention eventually. If we knew all of our sinful traits and desires at once, it would probably be so overwhelming that we would despair of ever overcoming them! Instead, then, God works at our hearts slowly, gradually bringing our sins to light and conforming us to His image. He does want us to be perfect, with a great and terrible perfection mirroring His own unassailable holiness, but as He leads us to that place He guides and shapes us with loving, gentle hands. So a new realization of sin, or an increased awareness of the patterns and attitudes of our minds and hearts that are not in accordance with God, is not a reason for despair; rather, it is a reason for gratitude and increased trust in God's grace, because it is evidence of His Spirit's work of sanctification advancing forward into more areas of our life. As He brings the dark things in our hearts into the light of His truth, we can be assured that He will also bring them to defeat and destruction according to the same power by which He rose from the grave!

So it gives me hope that God is pointing out this hidden pride and desire for the world's esteem in my heart. It is not a good thing for it to be there; if left untouched and allowed to infiltrate into the foundations of my life and identity, it would center my heart on temporal and perishable things, draw me away from deeper knowledge, obedience and love of God, and disable much of my potential for serving and witnessing for God in this life. That is what any sin will do, given the opportunity, and this particular sin is one that attempts to attach one's love and vision to the world instead of to eternity. But it is a chance for me to experience and find joy in the grace and sanctifying power of God. By grace He brings sin to light; by grace He continues to love us despite that sin; by grace He enables us to find victory over that sin, even if it is only for moments at first; and by His great power He will someday present us to Himself fully perfect, completely purified from that sin and all other sins, blameless and holy before Him in love.

You will come again tomorrow, won't you?

In Kierkegaard's discourse To Be Contented with Being a Human Being, he has a lovely little illustration of the difference between an attitude colored by anxiety and an attitude of contentment and trust:

"If a girl in love said to her beloved when he came to visit her, 'You will come again tomorrow, won't you?' - there would still be some anxiety in her love. But if, without mentioning tomorrow, she threw her arms around his neck and said, 'Oh, thank you for coming today' - then she would indeed be altogether assured about tomorrow. Or if there were two girls, and the one said to her beloved, 'You will come again tomorrow, won't you?' and the other said, 'Oh, thank you for coming today' - which of the two would be more convinced that the beloved would come again tomorrow?"

Kierkegaard's point is that if we are worrying about something in the future, it shows that we do not have full trust and assurance in the person responsible for that something. If we are fully and completely trusting in that person, we need not even think about the future, much less worry and question about it. We can instead delight with gratitude in the present moment. So if someone trusts God to provide for him, then even when he has no money for the next day's needs he can thank God for supplying his needs for this day, and let the future rest in God's hands. This kind of genuine unshakeable faith can be seen in the life of George Mueller, a Prussian pastor in England during the mid 1800s, who opened orphanages in Bristol in response to the great need he saw there, eventually becoming able to care for 2000 children at a time in these homes. Because he carried out this work without asking anyone for money (and because he didn't even accept a salary for himself from his pastoral position!), choosing instead to rely completely on God, he was able to see God provide countless times, in countless ways. People would donate money just as it was needed, or in the exact amount required; once, when they had no food at all, he still gathered all the children together to give thanks for breakfast - and donated food arrived just as they finished their prayers.

For most of us today, Mueller's situation is far from the actual experience of our lives. But we still have needs, and we still have worries - in fact, it seems that worries do not decrease even when needs do! For my husband and I, right now, those worries tend to be about planning and decision-making as we're both at the beginning of career paths with a multitude of options in front of us for both those careers and the family we want to have someday. It would be easy to worry, for instance, that Paul won't be accepted to a PT school and our lives will remain in limbo, or that he will be accepted and I won't be able to get a job after the move, or that we would find ourselves unexpectedly pregnant. And I have worried about all those things, and I've poured out my anxiety and questions to God many times - but while it is good to take my anxieties to Him, I need to do so with an attitude of trust. Only when I truly trust Him can He actually calm the worries and fears in my heart. When my heart is content in Him, responding with joy and gratitude for the guidance and provision He has given me today, convinced that He will continue to lead and provide in the future - then, and only then, will I be able to find peace from my worries.

Living faith

Our faith is not a static, unchanging thing, an acceptance of truth that springs fully formed into existence and then remains at that state of being forever. Rather, because it involves a relationship as well as an intellectual acceptance, and because even that intellectual acceptance must be continually renewed and strengthened to survive the natural changes of our emotions, bodies, and environment, faith must be living and dynamic. If we do not feed it with truth, or support it against the weight of negative emotions, or encourage it with reminders of the work of God in our past, it will eventually wither and decrease, and in so doing will draw our hearts away from God. For faith is what pulls us toward Him; it is the tow-line reaching from our hearts to His. Thus, if we neglect that cable - if we fail to make it fast around our hearts, or if we allow the storm to fray it and choose not to repair the damage - our pull toward God will not be as strong, and we will find ourselves drifting in the seas. And without His guidance, our souls are very likely to run aground or capsize: in short, to shipwreck.

So, then, it is crucial for us to intentionally nurture and build up our faith. How do we do this? First, and most essentially, we choose to believe. Critical thinking does not injure faith, but dogmatic skepticism will. So having come already to the conclusion that Christianity is true (as we must have, if we've reached this point of strengthening and maintaining our faith), we need to approach the Bible, Christian teachings, sermons, songs, and so forth with an attitude of belief - of receiving all that is true and that we can understand into the depths of our hearts, of accepting those truths with willingness to change our attitudes and actions in response to them. All the outward signs of faith, the Bible studies and Scripture memorization, the regular attendance at church, will not strengthen our faith if we have hardened our hearts to their influence. But of course those things are also important! They are the means by which we take in the truth that will strengthen our faith.

When we have set our wills to believe, and are feeding our faith a steady diet of truth from the word of God, we are in a good position, but nothing in this world is secure. Our emotions may rise up in a storm too great for our will to resist, and threaten to sink our little ship of faith, or our circumstances may seem to belie God's promises of everlasting love and faithfulness and scatter secret doubts and falsehoods into the midst of our faith. This, I think, is when it is extremely important to have the support and encouragement of the church - the community of other faithful Christians willing to help us make it through the rough waters with our ship intact. Outside the emotions in our head or the situations in our lives, they can keep reminding us of the goal towards which we're sailing, and encourage us with their glimpses of the glory and beauty of the One we're following on this voyage even when we can't see Him ourselves.

Conversely, we have the privilege and responsibility of so encouraging our fellow Christians in their faith. As the book of Hebrews says, "exhort one another daily, while it is called 'Today'" (Heb 3:13). In other words, we should give encouragement at the moment we see it is needed, and even if we don't know that it is needed, instead of postponing it for some more convenient future time. Our encouragement of others should be a regular part of our lives - an outpouring of our love for them as our brothers and sisters in Christ, which desires to see the growth of their faith and their knowledge of God - not something we do sporadically or for special occasions. We must not take faith for granted, ours or anyone else's - it is something worth fighting for, and therefore something that must be fought for if it is to endure.

The fear of man

I think, as people, we have an innate desire for approval (love, respect, appreciation, etc.) and a complementary fear of condemnation (or of rejection, inadequacy, being ignored, etc.). While the fear is most likely a result of our fallen state, born out of feelings of shame and guilt that would have been completely unknown to Adam and Eve before they disobeyed God, I think the desire of which it is the negative manifestation may be a good and natural part of how we are created. Most of the virtues that apply to our daily interactions with others - things like love, compassion, gentleness, submission, encouragement, and so on - involve giving some positive form of acceptance, approval, love, or respect to others, and if we weren't made so as to desire and appreciate those things, giving them to others wouldn't be as important!

However, like all the other good things in us, this desire can also be twisted by sin. We can begin to want some sort of applause or recognition for ourselves, or we can become competitive in our desire - wanting more approval or love than anyone else. In short, we begin to make the gratification of this desire the source of our security and identity. And it was never meant to fill that role! Our desire for the approval and love of other people was always intended to come second to our desire to love and obey God, but ever since Adam chose to seek the approval and love of his wife when it came in conflict with his love and obedience to God, we have struggled putting the two in the right order. But when we are able to do so, we find that when God is first and our hearts are resting in and seeking Him more than the approval of other people, there is peace, security, and a new energy to positively impact other people instead of always seeking to take from them the praise or respect we needed to satisfy that other desire. Proverbs, as usual, says it the most succinctly:

"The fear of man brings a snare,
But whoever trusts in the Lord shall be secure." - Proverbs 29:25

Fighting for joy

Sometimes in the midst of life it is difficult to see the big picture. Life is often compared to a journey or a path, through which we are traveling, but it can frequently seem more like the endless futile circles of an eddy off the main course of a river: coming from nowhere, going to nowhere, and doing nothing meaningful in the interim. If it is a path, we don't seem able to see either the progress we've made so far or the goal ahead, and maybe even the direction the path is going.

When we feel this way - or at least, when I feel this way - it can be incredibly easy to lose hope. The past feels hopeless first because it is unchangeable, but also because it can seem to be a lost and straggling road, meandering through worthless endeavors in pursuit of meaningless goals, and because so often we feel that God has done nothing in our lives through all those years - that we have not grown, that we have not born fruit, that He has not accomplished any of that transformational change in which we find life, joy, and love. Burdened with the weight of past futility, it is hard to find reason for hope in the present; even when we do something well, when life is full of happiness and light, when the people we love have the same love for us in return, and when we feel close to God and excited by our deepening relationship with Him, the curse whispers in the back of our minds: "It is a passing dream; it is all an illusion; in the deepest core of reality, no one loves you and nothing you do will ever amount to anything." If we listen to that diabolical voice, it will veil the eyes of our heart to the goodness of God and murder the happiness and love we so deeply desire to know and to share. And it will begin to poison our hope for the future as well, by making us believe that in our truest being we are utter failures, worthless creatures incapable of ever achieving the great and beautiful visions we once had.

How can we, as Christians who are commanded to rejoice always, fight against this vision of the world and of ourselves, against these emotions that threaten to destroy whatever true hope there actually is for our lives? The first step, which seems too obvious to mention for those who have never been there, but which may appear almost impossible to those who are overwhelmed with this sense of futility and despair, is to desire joy. It is easy to say that we desire joy - after all, who wouldn't choose joy, light, and love over despair, darkness, and pain? But look at your heart and your mind in the middle of the black mood. When the little merry whispers come bringing you news of great joy, do you want to listen to them? Do you choose to listen to them, or do you push them aside so you can hold on to the darkness and the anger? I realized this week, for probably the first time in my life, that I am often doing just that - thrusting away the very light and love that my heart is crying out for, so that I can hold on to the blackness in my mind. And if we find ourselves choosing, my friends, to hold on to the hatred and the pain, then we have shown ourselves capable of choice in those moments of seemingly overwhelming despair. We are not thoroughly overwhelmed; we are not left without hope. For we still can choose.

After wanting joy, then, comes the desperately difficult task of choosing joy in every moment that the darkness tempts us. This is where we learn to be vigilant against sin (for despair is a sin, since it sets itself up against the true hope that is in Christ), to strengthen our wills and minds and bodies in fighting for the kingdom (for even these small battles in our minds, that seem to have no larger meaning or value, are battles waged for the kingdom of God against the power of sin and Satan), and to trust more deeply and completely in the grace and love of our Lord. This is where we discover the power of truth and the wonder of joy, the strength of hope and the might of faith, as we employ them in our service as weapons of war and see our foes defeated before us - and it is where we discover the riches of the grace of God as He forgives and restores every time we fall before them. He is the ultimate conqueror, after all, and will lead us in triumph; He will not forsake us, He will not stop loving us, and He does not consider us failures, no matter how purposeless our lives may seem. In Him, if we choose it, is joy unending, joy that is stronger than any pain or blackness. It was not idly, as an impossible ideal, that Paul wrote for us to rejoice always in Christ, and we can fight to grasp and keep that joy, vibrant and strong and beautiful, in our lives. And so we must fight, if we are to know and to follow God.

Hidden evils

None of the things that appealed to Eve about the forbidden fruit were bad. She saw, rightly, that it was an attractive fruit that would be good to the taste, and that beyond those normal qualities of a good fruit it would also increase her wisdom and knowledge, and make her more like God. Obviously it isn't bad to enjoy good food, nor on a higher level is it bad to desire and seek after wisdom and knowledge. Indeed, those are things that God gives us and wants us to enjoy; there are even hints in the Bible that we will become so much like God that we can be called gods (see Psalm 82 and John 10). So from a purely rational perspective - proceeding strictly from observable facts and ignoring direct revelation - it would be perfectly fine to eat that fruit. But the key part of that is ignoring direct revelation. All these things looked good, and were good, and were things God was prepared to give to Adam and Eve in His own good time and manner, but it was wrong for them to try to obtain them in their own way by eating the fruit.

I think we are tempted by many similar fruits today: things that logically seem good, that from every perspective except one make sense for us to pursue, but from that one perspective are strictly and clearly forbidden. There might be choices we have to make in which one path seems the best from financial, prudent, and personal angles, but involves sacrificing our conscience or shirking one of the responsibilities God has given us (such as a child's submission to his parents or a wife's to her husband, or of anyone to some duty or charity for which he or she is specifically and uniquely responsible). No matter how attractive that path may seem, if it requires some other disobedience, it is the wrong path; it is forbidden fruit, and no amount of rationalization can correct it. And that can be hard to accept, sometimes! Particularly if ambition or pride enters the game, it can be hard to turn away from something that seems so good, so right, so much like something God would want us to have. But it is essential. It is, at times, the cross we must carry as followers of Christ, through which we learn to deny ourselves as He denied Himself to carry out His Father's will.

Silently waiting

As the year advances and Paul and I are still waiting (endlessly, it seems) to know for sure where we'll be in the fall and what this next year will look like, it's been hard for me not to be anxious or impatient. So I found in this verse both encouragement and peace:

"Truly my soul silently waits for God;
From Him comes my salvation.
He only is my rock and my salvation;
He is my defense;
I shall not be greatly moved." - Psalm 62:1-2

That first line in particular stands out to me, and I think the word "silently" is especially important. What it implies is that in our waiting (for God's direction and timing), we ought to stop all the complains and questions that rise up in our minds, and to put an end to the anxiety and impatience that dwells in our hearts. Then, when we've cleared all that away, there is space and energy left to genuinely trust God with the peace and calm of a little child.

Honestly, it's rather liberating to trust in this way. The little moments I manage to actually trust, instead of just stuffing the worries deeper inside or pretending that everything will be work out exactly the way I want it, are really awesome, because it lets me out of the confinements of my own fears and uncertainties into the full breadth and depth of God's faithfulness and sovereignty. Instead of hearing only my own anxiety or impatience going around in my head over and over again, my heart in its quietness can hear the truth and love God speaks to me. He is my rock! When all else is unknown and uncertain, He is who He is, unchanging and eternal.

Freely suffering

Mentally, I'm still on Good Friday. I realized something this year, on Good Friday, about what Jesus endured for us, that I think had never really struck me before: that the suffering He faced, He walked through of His own volition. He says as much to His disciples: "do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide me with more than twelve legions of angels?" (Mt. 26:53). It is one thing to endure sufferings when one is forced into them and has no way of escape, but must simply persevere; it is another thing altogether to continue to embrace those sufferings when it is completely within one's power to avoid them - and that is precisely what Christ did.

(Tangentially, I think that the value of fasting may lie in this very truth - that Christ walked through every moment of His sufferings intentionally and deliberately - because in fasting we also choose to take up suffering and embrace it, even though at any time we could choose to step out of our suffering back into bodily comfort and pleasure. So in fasting our understanding of Christ's suffering for us can grow experientially, not just intellectually, even though the suffering is comparatively so small. The spiritual and physical discipline may also help us to be able to endure greater sufferings in the future, ones that we have not chosen and cannot escape, but I can't speak to that personally.)

Anyway, the fact that Jesus did indeed walk through that suffering freely - compelled only by His love for us and for His Father - demonstrates the incredible depth and greatness of that love. The verse that has lingered in my mind all through Holy Week is the one with which the apostle John begins his telling of the great story, as the disciples gather together to celebrate the Passover with Jesus for the last time:

"Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." - John 13:1 (emphasis added)

 His love truly is the love that does not fail. Even when faced with the cross, it did not fail, and He loved us to the end. And that, I think, is the most wonderful foundation on which to build the rest of my life: on the love of Jesus, that will never let me down, and which led Him to die that I might know God, and in knowing God find life.

Praying against temptation

After Jesus had the Passover dinner with His disciples (which we now remember as the Last Supper), He went to the Mount of Olives to pray, and told His disciples to pray also, that they might not succumb to temptation. But they didn't pray. He prayed in such agony of spirit that, according to the gospel of Luke, His sweat became like drops of blood; Matthew says He was deeply distressed and sorrowful. After all, He knew what was about to happen! Because He desired to obey His Father's will, however, even more than He wanted to avoid the suffering into which He was about to surrender Himself, He prayed, fervently and earnestly.

A little ways off, His disciples slept. They didn't sleep simply because they were tired and out late and didn't realize the distress that Jesus was in: Luke tells us that they slept from sorrow. He had just told them at dinner that He would be betrayed, and suffer, and die; that He would leave them; and that one of them, Peter, would deny Him at the moment of truth. And so although they didn't fully understand what Jesus was talking about - their responses to Him in the book of John make that clear! - they could certainly tell that something was wrong, and that something great and dreadfully sad and painful was forthcoming. So sleep offered them a welcome escape from the sorrow and the bewilderment. Instead of having to wrestle with their worries and fears, with all that they didn't understand, and with Jesus' obvious sorrow and ominous warnings, they could rest in peaceful oblivion. I'm sure it seemed like a good solution - the easiest choice, the most pleasant path.

But because they slept at that moment, they didn't pray. And because they didn't pray, then, in the empty moments before the Pharisees and priests came with their servants and guards to take Jesus away, their hearts and minds were not prepared, not fortified by faith, to endure the fear and sorrow to come. They did not pray, as Jesus had taught them, for God to keep them from temptation - and so when temptation came, they fell. What seemed like the easy road, the escape from pain, ended up leading them into even more sorrow and pain. Peter runs into the night alone, bitterly weeping, not just for the arrest and imminent death of his Lord, but for his own denial of his Lord and friend.

It made me wonder how often I've chosen to pursue an escape or distraction instead of praying - how frequently I simply try to avoid the worries and the sorrows of life by ignoring them, instead of facing them head on in prayer and seeking the strength and the grace of God to help me deal with them - as well as how often that choice not to pray has resulted in sin, as it did for Peter. For the world is full of paths that promise an escape, that offer peace and happiness without the unpleasant task of coping with and fighting the pains and sorrows and fears of reality. I know I've used Facebook, Pinterest, blog-surfing, and even programming to numb or ignore feelings I don't want to deal with, instead of taking them to God with prayer and supplication; lest you think technology is the prime foe, I can tell you that I've done the same with books, homework, and projects - anything that distracts the mind and heart from the real issue can work. It doesn't seem like a bad thing to find peace in these distractions, and it probably isn't always a bad thing. But when it takes us away from prayer, when it leads us to seek peace and comfort in anything other than God, when it leaves us in a happy drugged stupor at the moment the trial comes, instead of strengthened in faith and prepared to hold fast to God - then it is a bad thing, leading to increased sin and multiplied sorrow.

So let us pray! Let us learn from Jesus and His disciples (as positive and negative examples, respectively), and pray in the midst of the worries and sorrows of life, the bewilderment and the suffering, that we may not enter into temptation, but may be protected against sin and strengthened for righteousness.

Love beyond comprehension

"And when I think

That God His Son not sparing

Sent Him to die

I scarce can take it in,

That on the cross,

My burden gladly bearing,

He bled and died

To take away my sin."

This week we remember the primary reason why Jesus came to earth as a man at all: to suffer and die, that we might be freed from sin and restored to life in Him. He did not come to be merely a Teacher and an example for us to follow; the moral standards God desired His people to obey were already revealed and codified in the Mosaic Law, and in every culture there have been great philosophers and moral teachers who have given us the basic information we need about what is right and what is wrong. God did not need to come Himself in the flesh - to utterly humble Himself and live in poverty and die in agony and shame - to simply give us more teaching. No, He has come to make us new. He has come to give us new life, to reconcile us to God, to redeem us from the depths of sin, to release us from the burdens of fear and judgment and condemnation by taking those burdens on Himself. He chose to pass through incredible depths of suffering and humiliation that we might be raised to incredible heights of glory and joy. We see this week, as we remember the sacrifice Jesus made, that His love for us truly is beyond all our comprehension - but we are also reminded that we can know that love experientially, in Christ, even as it is revealed to be deeper and higher and wider than we can intellectually understand.

"Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee:
How great Thou art,
How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee:
How great Thou art,
How great Thou art!"

Small servants of a great God

In Christianity, the things we naturally value and prioritize are continually being upended and overturned by things we might consider weaker, lesser, or more simple. We see, for instance, that knowledge and intellectual standing, though it wins us approval and acclaim from both the church and the world, is incomplete and can even be a hindrance if not accompanied by good works of love and service. We find that power is not to be sought after, because in our weakness we learn our great need for the grace of God, humility and dependence are allowed to bear fruit, and our hearts grow near to Him. We read that

"God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are" - 1 Corinthians 1: 27-28

So I think the chance to write, or to say, or to do something undeniably great or profound - something that will attract attention and garner respect - is often a temptation from which we ought to flee. I don't mean that we shouldn't attempt to do great things for God, or share the insights He has given us about life or from His Word, but I do mean that we should often do these things in a sort of secrecy, not letting our right hand know what our left hand is doing: saying and doing what is right, because it is right, regardless of who or how many notice or how they respond. It is often easy to do something challenging and hard when we are winning praise and admiration for our effort; it is not so easy to do the same thing when no one notices we are even trying, and gives us only scorn and discouragement when they do notice. But in the second case, we learn to rely on the strength and approval of God instead of men, and we learn to swallow our pride and our ravenous hunger for attention and recognition.

And think about it. Do we really want to be the wise and the mighty in this world? Do we want to grow so great in the eyes of our fellow men (and often ourselves) that we forget how small we are in the presence of God, or begin to avoid His presence for the precise reason of avoiding that feeling of smallness? Do we want, in the end, to be put to shame by the weak and foolish things, by the people we have despised in our own self-absorption and upward climb? Wouldn't we rather humble ourselves now, and share in the glory of God later, when we will be free of the miserable burdensome urge to claim that glory as our own? He Himself, though by nature and by right the most glorious Being in all infinity, became small and weak and despised, that by descending into the lowest parts of the earth He might raise up us all to be with Him in glory. If we long to know Him more and to become more like Him, then it only makes sense that we too ought to descend into humility and lowliness, to serve when service is hard and inglorious, that we might be like our Lord and Savior. And as He who descended is also He who ascended into all the heavens, so only when we descend with Him into suffering and death - the death of our own pride and self-centeredness - can we truly ascend into liberty, beauty, and glory.

He Regards the Lowly

One of the things that interferes with our relationship with God is our own pride. Pride is what makes us resist or resent God's grace (or our need for that grace) and makes it difficult for us to accept God's love for us - we dislike the necessary admission of our weakness, imperfection and sin that accompanies grace, or we believe that our sin is too great for even His love and forgiveness to cover. Either we exalt ourselves or we make God less, when we walk the path of pride. And because we very much do need God's grace, because His forgiveness is far more than sufficient to cover our sins, and because His love is unfailing and unconditional, our pride puts us out of sync with reality. Eventually, keeping our heads and hearts in a dream world will result in colliding with something in the real world that we didn't see because it didn't exist in our delusions. That is, if we base our lives on perceptions and principles that don't align with reality, the disconnect and the tension will in the end lead us to pain and despair. After all, wherever God is not, despair takes root - and a proud heart has pushed God out.

For we have a great God who works in very different ways than a great king would. A great ruler in this world will usually seek out or allow into his presence those who have some special distinction or merit. A championship sports team, for instance, or the winners of a scholastic competition, or other heads of state or their ambassadors, might be allowed to meet the President. An average soccer mom from the Midwest would most likely be laughed at by the security guards if she tried to visit him at the White House! The greater the power and glory of the ruler, the less likely it is that the poor, normal, lowly people of his country will actually be allowed into his presence. It is an honor, after all, to see and meet someone so highly respected, and it is natural to expect that one ought to earn that kind of honor. And then, afterwards, one has every right to be proud of the achievement that merited the reward. But in the Psalms we read that,

"Though the Lord is on high,
Yet He regards the lowly;
But the proud He knows from afar." - Psalm 138:6

God is far greater than any earthly ruler, and yet He doesn't demand that we earn our way into His presence. He doesn't accept only those who have done great things or have some special distinction or notoriety to capture His attention. In fact, He does almost exactly the opposite! He gives grace to the humble, and lifts up those who do not exalt themselves. When He became a man, He lived among the poor and the oppressed, and rejected those who were mighty in this world. His desire for us is not that we should strive to win His favor by our own merits - first, it is impossible, and second, it centers our minds firmly on ourselves: we must always be thinking about what we are doing and how we are doing and whether or not we are good enough. He wants us to let go of our pride, of our need to earn His approval and make ourselves good enough, so that we can once more sing in tune with reality, and come to know Him deeply and genuinely in humility.

Walking in our faith

Sometimes I think we over-intellectualize our faith. Instead of learning from and applying the basic, simple, understandable meanings of the scriptures we read, we try to probe ever more deeply into the text - to see new insights that maybe no one else in our circle had seen before, or to build up theories and systems of doctrine. And sometimes it is good to search more deeply into the passages, to gain a fuller understanding of the words, their context, and their application: to use our minds to seek after the knowledge of God through His word. I think, however, that it is not always beneficial. C.S. Lewis once wrote about the dangers of theoretically and intellectually understanding a passage without equivalent practical and personal understanding - of having one's head filled with knowledge and ideas, but not having trained one's hands and feet and heart in the disciplines of obedience, service, and love. It can make us think we are farther along in our growth in the faith than we truly are, and it can begin to plant in us the seeds of spiritual pride. As Paul writes,

"Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing  yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him." - 1 Corinthians 8:1-3

It can be easy for certain types of people to acquire knowledge of the Bible and appear wise and mature in their faith, while in their heart drifting away from the foundational truths of the gospel, and in their life still needing to learn how to live out of the love and grace of God. I speak as one of these people, honestly. Acquisition of knowledge, in any sphere of my life, comes easily and is enjoyable, so it makes sense that I would delight in that part of the Christian life and begin to neglect other aspects of the faith! But God has redeemed and desires to transform our entire being, not just our minds. He wants to change our hearts, that they might learn compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and empathy. He wants to change our mouths, that they might learn to speak with truth and grace, to encourage and uplift and edify, to forego biting scorn and sarcasm. He wants to change our hands, that they might learn to give from love (of God and of others) rather than from duty, that they might labor not for our own good, but for the glory of God and in service (however menial or unpleasant) to others. He wants to change our feet, that they might not carry us to places of pleasure, comfort, and entertainment, but to places where the darkness of sin is powerful and the need and suffering of our fellow human beings is great. He wants to change our will, that it should no longer be bound by our stomachs, or our sexual desires, or any of our natural sinful tendencies, but instead be freely following Him. God wants us to grow in our knowledge - there is no doubt or argument about that - but this growth of knowledge should be informed by our love of God and of others, and it is only a part of the growth and change that He desires of us.

So as we read, let us also seek to apply - not in the typical Bible study meaning of that word, that rarely leads to true and lasting change, but in the sense of honestly striving to live in obedience to the commands of God, by His grace, and from a foundation of love. When we read, let us first seek to know and understand God more, and then seek to discover how we ought to be living with and for Him in our faith! And if we find that a certain path we have chosen does not honor Him, or if we find that we have been ignoring or neglecting certain aspects of our faith, then we should immediately step off that path or begin to cultivate those aspects of our faith. Our reading and studying should be for the purpose of following God more closely, not for the sake of being the one with the most knowledge and the deepest insights. The Christian faith is profoundly this-wordly, to use Bonhoeffer's language; it calls us to live completely in the world, even though we are not of the world - to genuinely love, to sacrificially serve, and to wholeheartedly obey - to walk in the truths of the gospel, not merely to know them in our minds.

Finding love

From Sherry Turkle, the author of the book Alone Together, about the effects of the rise of personal technology on human society and relationships (I found the quote at the Futurisms blog at New Atlantis, but the whole interview with Turkle at IASC is also worth reading):

"People are so vulnerable and so willing to accept substitutes for human companionship in very intimate ways. I hadn't seen that coming, and it really concerns me that we're willing to give up something that I think defines our humanness: our ability to empathize and be with each other and talk to each other and understand each other. And I report to you with great sadness that the more I continued to interview people about this, the more I realized the extent to which people are willing to put machines in this role. People feel that they are not being heard, that no one is listening. They have a fantasy that finally, in a machine, they will have a nonjudgmental companion."

Isn't that truly what people want? We want someone who will love us unconditionally, regardless of what we say or do - someone who will be there when we need a friend, listen when we need to talk, and make us feel as though we have some value and worth. In the hidden depths of our hearts, we're terrified of reaching the end of our lives only to realize that we have accomplished nothing meaningful and are going to die alone and unloved. If we can have some kind of affirmation and companionship as we go through life, it helps to assuage those fears, and if we look to some non-human source for that affirmation and companionship, whether it be animals or robots, we can satisfy our emotional needs (or at least dull their ache) without having to endure the risks, pains, and fears of human relationships and meaningful work.

Ultimately, of course, pursuing intimacy and meaning in that way is bankrupt; it may give us comfort for a time, but it stifles our emotional growth and prevents the deepening and maturing of our hearts, and in the end we are left unfulfilled and despairing. But as my brother wrote (in an unpublished document; you can read more of his writing here):

"We are a world devoid of love, a shadow land, hiding itself from the true light, and so we must cast open the windows - no, tear down the very roof. Love is the great irony, the caustic force that banishes the dark and drives out the meaningless. [...] The answer must be to love and love only. The answer must be to live from love, for all action to emanate from love."

What I see in the desperate terrified longing of so many people in our society, in the deep desire for intimacy coupled with the intense fear of pain and worthlessness, is an open invitation to live out the love of Christ in our world - to be the human being who listens to the sorrows and worries of our neighbors, who stands with them through their joys and their troubles, and who loves them unconditionally and without condemnation. In a world where everyone is withdrawing to the comfort and convenience of computer-mediated relationships and robotic companions, we can change lives and bring the gospel into our communities simply by loving, always loving, in all that we do, with genuine, face-to-face love.

Apologies and One Thought :)

I apologize for writing so infrequently these past two weeks! I have most certainly had thoughts and ideas, so that can't be my excuse this time; I have also had plenty of time, especially this past weekend, so business isn't a suitable reason for my absence either. But my thoughts have been the type that end up written in the margins of my Bible - short (only a sentence or two at most) and centered around a specific verse, and thus requiring much expansion before becoming suitable for the blog. And my time has been spent with people, in large part, and creating things with my hands for the other smaller part. In essence, I've been more immersed in the real world around me, more connected to the people in my life and more in touch with the physical realities and rhythms of the created order - and I think this is a good thing, although I still think I should have spent a bit more time writing down some of my thoughts for the blog!

Anyway, here is one slightly longer thought that has been slowly taking form in my mind. It seems to me that one of the dangers inherent in Christianity is losing one's balance spiritually - prioritizing the spiritual and intellectual aspects of the faith over the physical, or vice versa. For someone like me, raised in very Bible-centered churches, and naturally intellectual, it can be easy to neglect or forget about the more physical qualities of my life and faith: to think, imagine, theorize, read, and meditate, without serving, giving, loving, and shaping the world around me. We have spirits and minds, to be sure, and we must use them to the best of our ability for God, but we also have bodies, and we have an equal duty to use them in service to and worship of God. If we think otherwise, and consider those bodies a mere hindrance and source of evil, we have left the path of Christianity and taken up Gnostic doctrine! God created matter and gave us physical bodies - hands and eyes, dexterity and strength - and He desires us to make good use of those bodies: to use the talents and skills within them to shape and tend and labor, as Adam and Eve were intended to do in the garden. So it is not a waste of time to make things that are beautiful and useful and good, even though that making might not in itself necessarily seem to be very important in terms of faith. It is not a waste of time to love one's family in a very physical way, by doing their laundry, keeping the house clean, and making good food for them to eat. It is not a waste of time to build or sew or craft, as God has given you time and skill, if the work is done as a labor of love, to make something beautiful for a good end (where good does not necessarily equal grand or noteworthy, but is very often simple and small though filled with virtue, purity, and loveliness, as in Phil. 4:8).

The Pursuit of Happiness

God wants us to be happy. As the psalmist says,

"in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

And again,

"be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!" 

 He provides for us here on earth:

"You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered with grain; they shout for joy, they also sing."

And He has given us incredible spiritual blessings - His grace, His love, forgiveness of sins, knowledge of Himself, the promise of glory, and so on:

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."

But the happiness He has intended for us, and which He desires and delights to give us, is not the same happiness that we want for ourselves or that our culture values - the hedonistic self-centered happiness of pursuing and obtaining one's own wishes in this world, or the proud self-righteous happiness of succeeding or making a difference in this life by one's own merit. To paraphrase Lewis (since I don't have the book at hand, nor would I be able to find the passage quickly if I did), God has intended us for infinite and eternal happiness, centered in Himself - the strong and beautiful spring of all true happiness and joy - and if we so desire we can begin to prepare ourselves for that happiness right now, by learning to trust and know God more. If we have to sacrifice some of our more readily obtained and plainly visible happinesses along the way, if we must suffer and be miserable for times in this life, I believe it is worth it, if those sacrifices and sufferings are God's tools for making us into being capable of truly knowing Him and delighting in the great happinesses and indescribable pleasures He has treasured up for us in Him.

Worldliness

"...the most insidious temptations to 'worldliness' today do not necessarily come in the form of enticements to sexual dissipation, or even to complicity in socio-political oppression, but rather in the form of the suggestion that it is possible - and indeed 'normal' and expedient - to go about our daily business in the world without giving much thought to God." - Craig M. Gay, The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It's Tempting to Live As If God Doesn't Exist

This quote makes me want to read the whole book! I might need to make a special trip to the Phoenix Seminary Library to find it, but I think it would be worth it. However, the quote on its own holds a lot of truth and provides much to think about. Rather than defining worldliness (the state of being of the world as well as in the world, to borrow from the famous Scriptural passage) by a set of actions or some behavioral standard, the author defines it in terms of the attitude and perspective of our hearts and minds - and since those things are what inform and motivate our actions, I think they provide a good foundation for an understanding of what exactly worldliness is.

As I've been reading through some of Paul's letters, I've noticed this perspective on the meaning of worldliness as well. While he does give the churches practical lists of actions that reflect godliness, he also lays heavy emphasis on the importance of having our hearts and minds set on other-worldly things, on matters of eternal consequence and origin. As he wrote to the Colossians,

"Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." - Col. 3:2

In the entire previous chapter, Paul had warned the Colossian church to be vigilant lest the traditions and philosophies of the world affect their faith and walk with God - to make sure that the basic beliefs and patterns of thinking common to the world (that is, to sinful man in himself) were not allowed to crowd out the truth of the gospel and the entirely different perspective that must accompany it. How were they to stand guard and do battle with those influences? By setting their minds on things above - by focusing their thoughts and the meditations of their hearts on the things of God, on eternal and heavenly matters, by gazing on Him and seeking to know Him. And if they did not? Well, in Philippians, we are given an illustration of what it means to choose to set our minds on things on the earth, instead of striving toward God:

"For there are many who walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame - who set their minds on earthly things." - Phil. 3:18-19

To become of the world - to let our thoughts and fears and aspirations be centered around earthly things - is to become an enemy of the cross of Christ. He died that we might die to the world in Him; He was raised that we might be raised with Him to new life, to a citizenship in heaven, to an inheritance imperishable. When we choose to go through life not thinking about God, not living by the principles of the gospel, not concerned about how our new life and new identity ought to affect us here and now, we are choosing to ally ourselves with the world, and to set ourselves up in opposition to Christ. And if that is the posture of our heart towards God, then it ultimately doesn't matter whether or not we follow His moral standards flawlessly or work tirelessly for the creation of a better world. We will still have chosen this world - temporal, created things, that fail and pass away - over the uncreated, timeless Lord who gave His life that we might know Him and dwell with Him in glory and love for all eternity.