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.

Lingering in beauty

Being a Type-A personality (that is, continually striving for perfection and efficiency), it can be hard for me to do anything slowly without becoming frustrated. Naturally, I don't sit back and enjoy the beauty and peace of a simple moment - I identify a task, complete the task as quickly and as well as I can, enjoy the sense of fulfillment at its completion, and then move on to the next task.

But those simple moments can hide some incredible beauty, and I think it is worthwhile for me to make the effort to slow down and linger in them while they last.

For example, on Friday afternoon I bought a bag of black beans in bulk, and needed to transfer them from the little plastic bag to a glass jar for pantry storage purposes. Now, these little plastic bags they use in the bulk sections of stores are really quite flimsy, and when I've tried to pour beans directly from the bag into a jar in the past beans have gone flying everywhere. Nevertheless, because it feels so much faster, I typically do it that way anyway, and just try to be especially careful. On Friday, however, for some reason, I decided to scoop the beans out and into the jar with my hands. It felt slower, because I could only pick up a certain amount at a time (not a full double handful, lest I risk dropping them) and then had to funnel them delicately into the jar (not too quickly, lest they bounce off the mouth of the jar). But as I let the beans fall from my cupped hands into the jar, I felt the smoothness of their skins and the firm curvature of their shape as they jostled against each other and against my hands. I saw the dull gleam of their black matte exteriors, and the ever-changing shadows between them. I heard the gentle rhythmic rain as they fell onto the glass and then onto each other. And for a moment, my shoulders relaxed and my mind quieted, and the simple beauty of the action filled the room with peace.

So, my goal for this week: to take more time to notice these moments of beauty that God has placed in even the most seemingly trivial aspects of our lives, and not just to notice them but to linger in them, to let their peace seep into my heart. It is true that these moments are purely of this life, completely temporal - but God created this world, and temporality, and He can use it to teach us about eternity and craft us in His image.

Beauty

Two Italian PhD students are visiting and working in our lab for a month, so on Friday they introduced themselves to the lab. What I found most interesting - what seemed to me to be the most different thing between what they said about the opportunity to be here and what the average full-time student says about the opportunity to be here - was that they both said this was a beautiful place. They implied that our lab was beautiful, that our building was beautiful, that even this whole unwieldy desert campus was beautiful. In contrast, most of the students I know on campus comment frequently about how drab and ugly our campus and most of the buildings on it are, and how they wish they could be studying in some more picturesque place. I have often done so myself, to be honest with you! (This is probably why I noticed their use of the word "beautiful" - because it is not at all how I normally think of ASU).

It convicted me.

How often, when I walk about campus, do I actually see all the beauty surrounding me? How often do I notice the broad expanse of blue sky streaked with the glory of the clouds in the sunlight, or the intricate delicacy of the yellow flowers burdening the palo verdes, or the smooth and elegant contours of the trunk and branches of those same trees? How often do I see and appreciate the rich texture of the bark of the mesquite tree, or the deep shiny green of the leaves of the orange trees, or the soft interplay of sun and shadow on the grass (or even the pavement)? And how often do I give thanks to God for creating all this beauty and letting me live in such a marvelous place? Not often enough, I think.

Instead of assuming that things are drab or dreary, dull or ugly, I think we should see it as a challenge (and maybe even an exercise in Christian faith and joy) to look for the beauty that is hidden everywhere in plain sight. It might lift up our eyes and our hearts to heaven, in gratitude and joy, and give us a bit of freedom from the burdens of weariness and sorrow we carry here on earth.

A beautiful thing

It is a beautiful thing to witness the glorious God of the universe faithfully fulfilling His promises in the small and seemingly insignificant life of one of His children.

"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars which You have ordained,

What is man that You are mindful of him,

And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels,

And You have crowned him with glory and honor." - Psalm 8:3-5

To enumerate all the wonderful promises He has made to us, His people, would take far more space than one little blog post could hold, and far more time than I have on a Sunday before church! But they are there in the Bible, holding forth hope for us to cling to through the pain and joy and craziness of life.

A beautiful work

Yesterday morning our pastor preached on the beginning of Matthew 26, including a little story that has long been one of my favorites. A woman (identified in John as Mary the sister of Lazarus) breaks a flask of expensive oil over Jesus' head, anointing Him with it, and the disciples (specifically Judas, as John again points out) become indignant because they feel like it was a waste, when it could have instead been sold and the money used to care for the poor. But I love Jesus' response:

"Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me." (v10)

That word "good" is translated as "beautiful" in other versions; I looked it up on Blue Letter Bible's handy online concordance and found the word can mean: beautiful, excellent, surpassing, precious, admirable, praiseworthy, or honorable (among other things). That concept of her act being a beautiful work really stands out to me, and I think maybe it could help me better understand what beauty is in God's eyes. So why was this particular act so beautiful and precious to Jesus? I think there are three primary reasons.

First, it was wholehearted and unreserved. She held nothing back from Him, and offered to Him what was probably the most valuable thing she owned. She didn't give grudgingly or out of compulsion, but freely and richly out of the depths of her love for Him.

Second, it was an act of worship. She knew who He was - the Son of God and the Messiah - and was honoring Him accordingly, submitting herself to Him and living for His glory. In addition, she wasn't doing it to gain the admiration or approval of the other people watching. She simply wanted to praise and glorify Jesus.

Finally, it was born out of knowledge of and submission to His plan. The disciples still didn't entirely understand that Jesus' plan was to suffer and die, but she did, and anointed Him for His burial. When they did begin to understand what He meant to do, they tried to change His plan, but she accepted it in trust and chose to follow and honor Him as He worked out His purpose. That is the attitude God wants us to have, I think - one of acceptance and trust, giving honor and worship to Him.

So we and our works are beautiful to God when we follow the pattern Mary set, regardless of what the world or even other Christians think of us. What matters is our heart before God - that we submit to His plan and worship Him without holding any part of us back from Him.