Made in the Image of God

Before having a baby, I didn't think that much about my body. I wasn't particularly bothered by any aspect of it but I didn't really love it either... I just kind of used it and tried to keep it healthy and otherwise ignored it. After having a baby, my body jumped up on center stage and started screaming for my attention in a way it never had before, even during the tumultuous changes of adolescence. Suddenly my belly looked different, my breasts were bigger, I was producing milk, another human being (albeit a tiny one) was visibly and tangibly depending on my body for his very life, I hurt in unexpected places, and a line across my abdomen was raised and numb. Every time I changed, or took a shower, or went to the bathroom, or nursed my baby (so essentially all the time), the changes in my body stood out to me, and I didn't like them.

At first it was really hard. I wanted my old body back, and I wanted to have it to myself again. No more stretch marks, loose muscles, or scars; no more semi-continuous physical touch; no more worrying about "overdoing it" in the simple everyday activities of life; no more struggling to balance my baby's and my husband's needs for physical closeness. I would try on my old pre-pregnancy jeans and get depressed, or catch a glimpse of myself wandering the house in pajamas and feel ugly and inadequate.

But as time went by, something surprising began to happen. The negative feelings were born of the difficulty of the transition from a pre-pregnant body, through pregnancy, to a post-pregnant body, and they were natural. Change can be hard, and it takes time to adjust. And because those feelings were simply a product of the transition, they didn't stick around forever.

One day I looked at the dark web of lines on my abdomen and thought, I am a life-giver.

I looked at my lopsided, leaking breasts and thought, I am a life-sustainer.

I looked at my weary arms after rocking my baby to sleep and thought, I am a comforter.

I looked at the curves of my body curled around my baby as he nursed away his tears and thought, I am a safe haven and a place of rest.

In the blurred-together days and endless nights of those first few weeks, my body had somehow, in all its raw and rough reality, began to take on the image of God as it never had before, and in so doing, reminded me how God is all those things to me: the giver and sustainer of my life, my comforter when I am sorrowful or discouraged, my refuge from the fears and toils of life. How can I look at my body and think it is ugly, when it is a witness to me of the goodness and faithfulness of God? It is beautiful, when it shows me His image, because He is beautiful. We read in Genesis that we are made in the image of God, but I think we forget that this includes our physical bodies just as much as our spiritual, emotional and rational capacities. I know I had never thought of it that way before, anyway. God has left testimonies of Himself in the smallest, most physical and material details of our lives, so that we don't need to be deep and profound thinkers to see His presence and be reminded of His character, and if we open our eyes to those glimpses of Him, I think, our lives will be more beautiful. The things we take for granted, the things we hardly think about, even the things that we dislike - they are worth looking at a second time, with new eyes, to see if we can find a picture of God within them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Secondhand Lions

I've decided that it's much harder for me to write when I'm feeling sick. My mind gets foggy, and complete and coherent sentences run circles around my feebly grasping mind, making the formation of understandable thoughts and arguments considerably more difficult. Also, my spare time tends to be spent sleeping instead of thinking, so there are fewer thoughts to write about in the first place. However, one thing I do manage to accomplish with great regularity when sick is to watch Secondhand Lions. It's by no means what I would classify as a great movie, but it is definitely a good one, and its unique and innocent blend of reality and fantasy is perfect for those days when I want a relatively peaceful fun movie to occupy the time not spent in sleep.

One aspect of the movie, though, has always bothered me (if you haven't watched the movie, don't read further; I don't want to accidentally give anything away). At the relational climax of the movie, one of the older men tells his nephew, the main character, that things like goodness, justice, honesty and love are worth everything, while power and money are worth nothing. So far so good, right? But then he goes on to say that a man should believe in those good things, and believe that they are worth more than power and money, even if it isn't true, and that bothers me! Those things are worth believing in because they are true, because they come from the God of truth; their value is not independent of their truth status. So every time I come to that part of the movie I cringe a little, and wish they had written that part of the script differently.

Tonight as I watched the movie, however, I realized something. The uncle is wrong when he says that truth doesn't matter, but there is a grain of truth in his error, and it shows in how his advice is applied in the movie. The nephew is faced with a situation in which two opposing stories have been presented to him about his uncles: the story that they told him about their past, in which they lived with courage, justice, and love; and the story that several other characters throughout the movie have suggested, in which the uncles were thieves and ultimately cowards. The nephew has no way to determine which of these stories is true, but he is forced into a position where he has to make a choice. In that situation, would it be better for him to believe in the goodness and honesty of these two men (since their purported deceit and criminal actions have not been proven), or to believe that they lived for the pursuit of power and money (since, after all, they have quite a lot of money from some unknown source)? More generally, is it better to believe that a person acted with good intentions and can respond to a given situation with justice, honesty, and compassion, or is it better to believe that they acted with the intention to hurt and would respond to confrontation or rebuke with deceit, malice, and self-centeredness?

Let's look at the question from another perspective. When you or I make a mistake, say something that unintentionally hurts someone else, or do something sinful, do we automatically assume that we are full of spite and that our every action and word is deliberately hurtful or malicious? Do we assume that the worst possibility is, in fact, the reality about ourselves? Usually, unless we know without a doubt that the worst possibility is truly the reality (and sometimes even then), we do not. We give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, so to speak, because we want to believe that our actions are motivated by goodness and integrity even when they may not appear that way. And why do we want to believe this, when the evidence could be taken in a negative direction as easily as a positive? Simply, it is because we love ourselves. Because we love ourselves, we don't want to believe that we are as bad and nasty and small as we appear, and we want to become better.

Well, we are commanded to love each other as ourselves. If in loving ourselves we find ourselves wanting to believe in our own courage, justice, and honesty whenever reasonable evidence arises, then we should be doing the same for other people. We shouldn't desire to discover that their actions are motivated by malice, or interpret their words in a way that portrays them in the worst possible light. Instead of assuming that someone is intending to hurt or offend, when that is not the only plausible assumption, we should assume that they misunderstood, or didn't hear, or some other explanation of a more innocent sort.

One advantage of looking at other people in this way is that it encourages those good things in our own souls. When we are actively looking for goodness, love, honesty, and justice in other people, it motivates us to cultivate them in ourselves, and helps us to mentally dwell on those positive and praiseworthy qualities. Another advantage is that it helps keep us from unjust anger towards others, because we are not assuming that they intended to hurt us, and are thus far less tempted to bitterness, grudge-holding, and revenge-seeking. So while it is sometimes very necessary to acknowledge the sinfulness of another person's intentions, it is in most circumstances much more helpful to assume, when such an assumption is possible, that they are not so evil and miserable as they might seem - to believe, even though you cannot know that it is true, that they are acting with justice, goodness, and honesty.

Alright, hopefully that made some sense :P Like I said, I'm sick and I'm having a lot of trouble putting thoughts and words together. If I said anything that seems totally wrong, please allow me to claim the mental fog of sickness as my excuse :)

Sharing happiness

Last night, the church in whose kids' program I volunteer had a pine car derby race for the kids - they buy kits a few weeks in advance and get to carve and paint the cars, and everyone has a great time. Anyway, I was watching one of the first-graders who happened to be sitting near me, who had a decently fast car. When his car sped down the track for a win, he would burst with happiness - fist in the air, big grin, etc. - and his brother would congratulate him and his mom would cheer. It was really sweet! But what really struck me was that a little later, when the older kids raced and his brother's car won a race, he responded with the same incredible expression of happiness. There was no difference; whether the joy of the win belonged to him or to his brother, he exploded with excitement and delight. His brother and mom were the same way, cheering with equal enthusiasm no matter who in their family happened to be racing and doing well.

And as I watched them I thought, this is how we're supposed to be. As members of the family of God, this is how we're supposed to act and feel towards one another: to be genuinely happy and delighted when someone else does well and is excited, just as we are happy when we ourselves do well. We don't need to quench our joy at our own successes - we need to expand and increase our joy at the successes of our brothers (and sisters!) in Christ, so that whenever one of them finds victory or success or answered prayer, we can burst with the shared happiness on their behalf.

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.

The precarious heady happiness of temporality

There are so many wonderful things in this life, to enjoy and to delight in! Yesterday afternoon I was able to go to a bridal shower for a friend from college, to spend time celebrating her and rejoicing in the beautiful relationship God is building in the lives of her and her husband-to-be; in the evening, I was able to visit friends who have just had their third son, and got to spend time enjoying their company, catching up with them, and even holding their not-quite-two-week-old son. Driving home from their house, I was practically overflowing with happiness, from all the love which I had witnessed and been able to be a part of all throughout the day. These relationships that God gives us, in which we can be loved and learn to love others, which force us to take our minds off of ourselves and think about, care for, and value the people around us, are such an incredible blessing, and it is right and good to be happy because of them!

But as I was driving home, I realized that this happiness isn't a stable, steadfast, lasting thing. It is an emotion, and it can come or leave at the drop of a hat, and as quickly as a butterfly takes wing. And because it takes you soaring so high, the fall can take your breath away when it comes. At least, that how it works for me; I do know quite a few people whose emotions seem to never fly so high or fall so low, so they never have to deal with the crazy contrast, with the unstoppable fear-inducing plummet when the peak of happiness is surmounted and passed. But for those of us whose emotions swing through the wide range of human feeling more easily and often, that happiness - even though it comes from good and wonderful things - can be dangerous, like walking on a tightrope. Though intoxicating, it is hazardous: the precarious heady happiness of temporality.

When happiness comes from Christ, as a result of being in Him and resting in the knowledge that all things are through Him and for Him, it can endure through the fickle whims of human emotion. The joys of fellowship and community can then deepen that happiness in the moment, without exciting the fear of instantly falling into a pit without so much as a warning sign, because the happiness we have in Christ can create a stable, solid ground to walk on, a place of emotional security in which to operate. Being in Him will not deaden or dampen our emotions, but it should give them a foundation to rest upon, and truth to inform them, so that we can use them - just as we use our minds and our bodies - for His glory.

My little dream and what it taught me

I had a rather amusing dream last night. It was around Thanksgiving, I presume, because we were baking pies. These pies were glorious! There were three pumpkin pies and one pecan pie, and I was so proud of them and so excited to serve them the next day at Thanksgiving dinner. But there were guests staying at the house (or maybe just family - I'm not sure how it went exactly) and they started eating those pies right then! And by the time they were done there was only one pumpkin and half the pecan left, and I was so upset because they had ruined everything for the next day, and hadn't shown any restraint or self-control or consideration. So in my dream, my mom was trying to calm me down and say that everything was ok, and the tension built up inside me so much that I let out this awful scream. At least, in my dream I did (which is impressive in itself, because usually my dreams don't have any kind of sound at all). Hopefully I didn't actually scream in my sleep and wake Paul up :P

Anyway, I think the dream illustrates rather nicely my desire for all things in life to be beautiful and perfect and well-ordered, as well as my inability to cope when it all goes wrong! I've been doing all this meditating on grace, but maybe I need to start learning to give grace to others when they don't follow my rules of order for a given situation - to live by grace rather than by law in the little trivial things like my dream presented as well as in the big matters of identity and life purpose. It could make life a lot more enjoyable, because it would allow the focus to be on relationships rather than on successful completion of a task or maintenance of an appearance :)

His strength in my weakness

In a letter to the Corinthian church, the Apostle Paul wrote the following well-known passage:

"And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

That first phrase - "My grace is sufficient for you" - is the one my mind usually lingers on (it's the one I have hanging on a wall in my house, too, which is probably why it comes to mind first!), but I want to set it aside and move past it today. Instead, I want to focus on the whole idea of God's strength being made perfect in our weaknesses - of our weakness being the opportunities for God's power to rest upon us and be made manifest in our lives.

When I think of my weaknesses, it is usually with shame, guilt, anxiety, and self-condemnation. I want to be cured of them, essentially: to be strong and perfect so that I can then give, love, sacrifice, and obey as God desires me to; to be righteous and above reproach in everything so that I can accomplish great and glorious things for God; to have my testimony be that He has made me perfect. At the center of this whirlwind is the desire to be something in myself so that I, myself, can please God. And I think most of us can relate to this desire to be able to offer something to Him, instead of always being needy and dependent!

But this is ultimately a self-focused desire, founded on pride (which is why our perceived failures and weaknesses, even about trivial things, matter so much to us, and why the slightest criticism has the potential to wound us deeply). While we do want to honor God, we also very much want it to be seen and known that we specifically are the ones honoring Him; we want Him to be glorified, but we specifically want Him to be glorified by our actions, and to share in His glory. Brothers and sisters, what I am slowly coming to know is that to truly honor Him our own honor must be utterly forsaken. In order to truly glorify Him with our lives we must learn not to desire our own glory in any way - to obey, and love, and seek God, and not care whether or not we are noticed, respected, or admired for our actions.

So our weaknesses really do become wonderful gifts, because they are precisely the areas where our obedience and love come from Christ's power rather than our own strength, and are thus the areas where we can most easily seek to glorify Him self-forgetfully. If we have nothing to offer, nothing to give, than we can give (but really it is God giving through us) without expecting glory or admiration in response. How could we expect those things, when the power to accomplish what we have done is not our own, but is God's power given to us, resting on us, and working through us?

Francois de Fenelon, a French priest and author from the late 1600s, wrote the following thoughts along these lines, which have been very convicting to me:

"Strength is made perfect in weakness. You are only strong in God when you are weak in yourself. Your weakness will be your strength if you accept it with a lowly heart.You will be tempted to believe that weakness and lowliness are not part of trusting God. It is commonly believed that to trust God you generously give God everything because you love Him so much. Heroic sacrifices are held up as true examples of trusting God. To truly trust God is not so glamorous." - The Seeking Heart

Isn't it true? We desire the glamor, the glory - we want to do great things for God and be the heroes whose stories are told throughout the church. But that is not truly trusting God, and it is not true strength in our faith either; true strength, perfect strength, is that which comes upon us from God in the midst of our weaknesses.

So I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses. My power is insufficient, but there is this great hope that Christ's power will rest upon me and work through me - and in this work it will be Christ Himself who receives the praise and the glory for whatever is accomplished, not me. And that is how it should be. It is His power, after all, that created me, sustains me, and gave me new life in Him through His death and resurrection. As I was unable to accomplish my own salvation, so I am unable in my own strength to continue in righteousness now that I have been saved. But in my weaknesses, His strength can be made manifest in my life, and I can begin to learn to set myself aside so that He may receive the glory, for it is His to receive.

Apologies...

I apologize for my silence this past week! Work (typically where I mull over ideas and even write if there is down time) has been particularly busy, I've been trying to think of how to write out an answer to a question left on the previous post by an anonymous commenter, and when I have had time to write I've spent it on a letter of recommendation I'm writing for a former teacher. I've started five or so posts and not had the time to finish them - or really, to be honest, the mental togetherness to conclude them in a coherent way. So I thought I'd let you all know (however few of you there are!) that I am still here and still writing, or at least trying to write. If all goes well I'll post something more substantial by tomorrow; the post I mentioned above that has been claiming what mental energy I do have will most likely come later, as it is threatening to become lengthy and involved :)

Alright, I wish you all well! As the Apostle Paul would say, grace be with you :)

Another meditation on God's grace

When you begin to understand God's grace, it changes everything. How you perceive God, how you perceive yourself, how you perceive other people, how you deal with sins and shortcomings in yourself and others, how you deal with successes and recognition (both yours and others'), and how you handle all kinds of situations - all these things start to change. At least, this is what I am starting to see in myself as God has seemingly been coming at me on every side with this concept of grace, and interestingly enough, I'm seeing this change even in the midst of my sin. I don't mean that I'm suddenly sinning less, unfortunately, but that my response to my own sin is qualitatively different, at least a little bit. Sin does not automatically lead to despair, when grace is present; one failure does not mean that we need fear losing God's acceptance and love, when His grace has covered all our sins already and has reconciled us to Him.

The wonder of God's grace is that even as we mourn over and despise our own sin we can find peace for the past, strength for the present, and encouragement for the future through our hope in Jesus Christ. Do you know that wonder, of finding the strength in Him to forget the failures of the past and to try again to follow Him? The liberty of God's grace is that our lives are no longer bound by a list of "oughts" - a book of duties supplying an correct course of action for every situation - but rather by His love. Do you know that liberty, that breathtaking freedom of learning to live by grace rather than by law, of stepping outside the rigid walls of earthly duty and walking in the love and light of heaven? Outwardly, your actions may not change much, but the heart behind them will be altogether new. The burden of God's grace - and yet it is not a burden at all, but a gift whose value is beyond measure - is that He desires us to become channels, to pour out to others in every trivial daily event of our lives the great grace which He constantly pours upon us. To be able to give that grace to others, not as yet another thing we ought to do for God, to please Him with our law-keeping; nor yet with condescension, as if we were so great that we could certainly spare some grace for those lowly people around us; but with humility of heart, knowing we need grace at least as much as they do, and with gratitude of spirit that God has given us this chance to imitate Him in this most beautiful of His works toward us - that is a gift beyond description.

Successes and failures and grace

I tend to see life in terms of successes and failures (to the point where it can be hard for me to understand how life can be seen in any other way). For example, if I haven't read my Bible for a week, let's say, I'll think of that as a failure in my walk with Christ, and then think of myself as a failure as a follower of Christ. Conversely, if I have been praying and reading and serving and witnessing, I think of each of those things as a success, and then maybe of myself as a success because I've accomplished those things (although I can almost always find some failure to focus on). It extends down to the most trivial things, too - if I have the house looking nice and dinner on the table when Paul comes home from work on Friday, I get so happy inside because my self-evaluation tells me that I am a "good wife", but if dinner is running late or something is off, I feel like a failure because my self-evaluation tells me that I am a "bad wife". Similarly, I'll feel like a failure for showing up late to an event, or for being unclear in a conversation, or for not doing my laundry over the weekend. Everything that happens becomes a tally mark in either the column of successes or the column of failures, and then I base my feelings of self-worth on which column seems to be winning.

But you know what? This way of looking at life and of judging myself is, at its heart and in its very essence, opposed to the concept of grace. And I'm a Christian, right? And that means that at the center of my faith is the belief that I am a hopeless sinner saved by the undeserved love of a great God - in other words, the doctrine of grace, right? So how have I allowed my primary mode of operation - my dominant means of perceiving and evaluating the world around me - to set itself up in the enemy camp? My paradigm for understanding life is a bit of a traitor, apparently... it has chosen the old ways of judgment and law over the new covenant of grace in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So what does it mean to live with a worldview of grace rather than one of judgment? 

Obviously I'm not too sure, since I don't do it very well! But I think it means that instead of trying to make myself perfect to earn God's love and approval, I choose instead to rely on Him to change me and rest in the assurance of the love and acceptance He has already given me and will never take away from me. That instead of trying to overcome every obstacle with the grit of my will and the strength of my mind, I admit my need and take refuge in the One who is my shield and strong tower. That instead of basing my self-worth on what I can do for God and others, I ground my identity in what God has done for me and in who God has declared me to be.

I'm thinking this is one of those things that is easier to say than to do, but most good things are, you know? And this time at least I can start off by admitting how hard it will be for me, and by asking God for His grace and strength to make it possible :)

A hurt and a healing (or, a sin and a repentance)

For the past week, I thought I was pregnant. I had all the right signs (which might be TMI given the regular tone of my writing here), and I was just waiting until Monday morning to take the pregnancy test (7-9 days after I would have expected to have natural evidence of no pregnancy) to make sure that I wouldn't have a false negative. By yesterday evening I was starting to let myself be really excited - I'd never been that late in my life, even when I was young and more irregular, or when I was hypothyroid and had longer cycles, and I hadn't even been close to being that late since I got married and started tracking my cycles more diligently. But this morning when I woke up, my body told me most definitely that I was not pregnant. So either I was just abnormally very late for some unknown reason, or I had an early pregnancy loss. 

Emotionally, it doesn't really make a difference. As logistically difficult as having a child would be right now, it hurt so much to have those hopes dashed when I had begun to think a child was actually already here. Honestly, I was angry at God. It felt like He was teasing me, or mocking me - like He was blowing up my bubble of happiness and expectation so big just so He could shatter it. Because He is in control of all these things, you know? He knows that my cycle is like clockwork, and He knew how excited I would get at the thought of having a baby with Paul (like a living overflow of our love), and yet He still caused it to happen. It just didn't seem very fair or nice of Him to do something like that. So I simmered away all day, trying not to be angry at God but still feeling hurt when I thought about it.

Before we went to our church service at 5, while Paul was showering, I listened to an Adventures in Odyssey program that just so happened to be about Job. The part that has always confused me the most about Job was God's response to Job at the end of the book, because it doesn't really address any of the things that Job had been suffering or discussing throughout the rest of the book. God simply reveals Himself in His glory, wisdom, power, and love. In the Adventures in Odyssey, they point out that Job's primary sin is one of self-righteousness - he perceives himself as being righteous and thus perceives his circumstances as unfair, implying that God is unjust. And it struck me that maybe I was doing that same thing - thinking that I didn't deserve to have my hopes raised and then crushed, that God was unjust or unloving to allow that to happen. I was taking my belief about what should happen in my life and using that to judge God's character and actions - and at the end of Job, the question left hanging is "who am I, a man, that I should judge the God who made and sustains me?" So, ever so gently, through a humorous children's program, God began to point out my self-righteous and presumptuous attitude about the whole situation.

Then, when we got to church, the assistant pastor opened the service with a scripture reading (as is usual) from the book of Job (which is not) - and it was from chapter 38, where God is showing Job His power and asking him who he thinks he is. Okay God, obviously this is something You really want me to understand, and something that You want me to repent of. God doesn't do things flippantly or carelessly, as if He were playing games with our lives, nor does He take joy in our sorrows or cause us pain for no reason. Whatever happened, I ought to trust Him to have a good and holy purpose as He is a good and holy God, you know? And as we were singing the final song of the night, I realized that even though God did not give me this good gift now (like I had thought He was for a few days there) - and even if He never does, as hard and disappointing as that would be! - He has already given me the greatest gift He could ever give: His redeeming grace, through His own Son Jesus Christ. In that alone is undeniable proof of His goodness and His love towards me! A hurt like my situation this morning shouldn't make me doubt His goodness when I know that He has given His Son for my eternal salvation, blessing, and glory :) So as we sang (and as I sang with tears in the sorrow of repentance and the joy of being loved), "it is well, it is well, with my soul."

Reading the Bible in 2012

Our church recently put a very helpful post up on their website encouraging us to read the Bible this year and giving us some practical guidelines and plans for doing so, at various levels of intensity (you should go check it out if you are in need of a Bible reading plan - they have a lot of good ideas over there). One in particular stood out to me because it seemed a little different from any other reading plan I've seen in the past and because it claimed to be a way to "master" the Bible - which is a rather extravagant claim, I would think! Basically, the idea is to choose one book of the Bible at a time and read it all in one sitting, continuing to do so until you've read the book twenty times. I think of a book like Genesis and I quail at the thought of reading it in one sitting... but the purpose is to grasp the primary messages and principles of each book as a whole, instead of getting lost in the details and the depth and never coming to a full, complete, and coherent understanding of the whole book.

So I thought, well, there's really no loss in trying this even if it doesn't turn out to be that doable, and I'm starting with the smaller books and working my way up to the more intimidating and lengthy ones. 2 John, at only 13 verses, took the prize for first, so I've been reading it repetitively for the past few days (I'm at 15 times through right now). And I do feel like I'm finally beginning to understand the point of the book. Each time I read through it, it's like I'm putting a piece into a puzzle, and the themes begin to emerge from the text, becoming clearer and more beautiful as I go. Maybe I'll write about it when I've made it through all twenty reads :) I'm finding treasures in that little book that I never knew were there, which really encourages me to do my best to follow through with the rest of this crazy plan to read the Bible! The beauty of the wisdom of God's word is breathtaking.

Resolutions

With the New Year come New Year's resolutions, and despite being relatively busy and rather knocked down by this head cold, I have done some thinking about taking on a few of my own. There are a lot of things I'd like to improve upon during this next year, you know? I'd like to exercise more and eat healthier (the two most typical resolutions here in the US, I would wager), and I'd like to keep my house cleaner. Oh, and I'd like to finally decide upon some future plans for my life! But since God is involved in making that one happen, and since He seems to like me to proceed one step at a time, I probably shouldn't resolve on solidifying plans unless I'm looking for a resolution to break...

This morning, though, I started thinking that while all these resolutions are good, they are purely temporal. They exist in time, only touching eternity tangentially or indirectly, and they will pass away with time. But I, a human being and a child of God, will not pass away with time; eternity awaits me. If I am going to make New Year's resolutions (an idea very much rooted in the cyclical passage of time), maybe I should make them such that they draw my mind and my heart towards eternity and towards God. Maybe I should use this celebration of time itself to endeavor to remember specifically those things in time which are eternal in essence: the Lord God in whom I place my faith, the future glory and restoration for which I hope, and my fellow eternal souls with whom I walk through time and whom I desire to love as God has loved me.

So what do I resolve? First, to seek the Lord my God - to make knowing Him my highest priority and my greatest joy - and to do so in the strength of His grace, remembering that He always loves me and always desires me to try again to follow Him, no matter how often or how spectacularly I have failed. Second, I resolve to live with hope, resisting the temptation to despair that is for me so strong and attacks such a weak place in my armor, remembering that God has made His dwelling place within me - that He is always with me, will never forsake me, and has prepared a place for me with Him for all eternity, in the glory of His presence. Finally, I resolve to better love the people with whom I interact every day of this new year, to replace my irritations and criticisms with patience, compassion, and thankfulness, remembering that the God who died for my salvation died for them also and loves them with an unfailing love - that they too are eternal beings in need of Him, with their own deep sorrows and high joys.

In the end it all comes down to faith, hope, and love. Like the apostle urged the church of Corinth, I desire to let these three abide within me, that they might through the work of the Spirit transform my heart and come to characterize my life, that my life (though existing now, in time) might take on the aroma of eternity.

Merry Christmas!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I last posted! The week before Christmas was very busy for me, as most of my gifts were food-related and thus required an investment of time in the last few days before the holiday. And honestly I've been a bit exhausted at the thought of writing - I've been tired of the words, tired of trying to write something worth reading, tired of trying to be interesting or original or deep or meaningful. So I didn't write.

But I hope you all had a marvelous Christmas! Mine was wonderful (and delightfully spread over two full days, with my in-laws on Christmas Eve and my family on Christmas), full of the beauty and joy that seem particularly present on this day out of all the year. And I will endeavor to write more this week! :)

Fear-fighting

Here's my dilemma: my pastor told me (well, told the whole church during the sermon on Sunday) that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world and in my heart and that the choice lies with me to either quench the fire He is building (by not doing what He commands or prompts me to do) or actively work with Him to make it burn more fiercely. That is, if I ask the Spirit to lead me and transform me, He will; I just need to actually follow the leading He gives instead of closing my eyes and my ears and going my own way. But you know what? It is far easier to ask the Spirit to do those things in my life than to change the way I live and the choices I make in response to the work He is doing.

There are two fears fighting against my desire to submit to the will and work of the Spirit in my life, I think. The first, which is lesser, is the fear of coming up short - the fear that, after asking the Spirit to lead me, I will fail at following Him, and in so doing disappoint God and render my witness ineffectual. "Why ask at all," this fear whispers, "when the result could be more humiliating than if you had never tried in the first place?" But this fear is feeding me lies, because our approval from God, as Christians, comes from the righteousness of Christ, not our own ability (or lack thereof) to follow God as He desires. So my failure would not cause me to lose God's love, and I believe that He would rather have me try to follow Him than have me simply give up in despair before beginning. As Screwtape said (and I paraphrase), the sin of despair is worse than the sins that lead to it.

The second fear, which is stronger, is the fear of having my life turned upside down - of being called to do crazy things, and having to deal with the reactions of my family and friends and acquaintances, and having to give up the comforts I enjoy or my little happy dreams or the cozy small plans I've made for my life. If I honestly and wholeheartedly followed the Spirit as He led me, I guarantee you that things in my life would have to change. Many of these changes would be small, but I think some might border on the extreme, especially if I begin by obeying those small leadings rather than quenching the Spirit in those areas. And I'm afraid of what might happen, because it is so unknown and because God gives no promise of safety or comfort (He never does, you know). My heart wants to hold on to the small things that don't matter, and so it is afraid of following a God who emphasizes the temporal nature and insignificance of those things. This fear isn't feeding me lies, but it is hiding the truth. All these things might indeed happen if I began to truly follow God, and there very probably would be some degree of emotional pain involved, but what this fear conceals is the depth of joy and the fulfillment of being that is only found in trust in and obedience to God. Am I not willing to trade in the (at least relatively) shallow happiness that I can make for myself by going my own way for the unfathomable joy that I could find by knowing God and going His way?

These fears have to be addressed head-on, I think - to expose the underlying deceit, and to combat them with the strength of truth. Maybe I can ask the Spirit for His guidance and transformation... maybe I can seek to obey His leading with a heart that chooses to trust rather than to fear.