Being seen by God

I get kind of scared when I think about God always watching me, always seeing me even down to the depths of my heart and the hidden places inside me. I mean, He is good and holy and just, and there is so much in me that is bad, and so much in addition that is just weak and useless and cluttering. Sigh. I don't know why He would want to see down into those places! Doesn't it disgust Him, to see what lies inside my heart? Does He ever regret redeeming me and adopting me into His family, when the price was so high and I am so worthless even after all He has done for me and in me?

But look at how Nicholas of Cusa writes about it:
"... Thou never ceasest most lovingly to behold me, yea, even the secret places of my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life; 'tis unceasingly to impart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee by love's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindle my yearnings, and by kindling to make me drink of the dew of gladness, and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing to make it increase and endure." - The Vision of God

How do I change my way of thinking so that it is more like his? How do I consistently cause myself to perceive God as loving, regarding me with care rather than in judgment? How do I find joy and gladness in the knowledge that He beholds me? Sometimes I do have that gladness in the assurance of His love, but other times I just get scared or afraid or feel like a failure, falling short of what He desires from me. So what distinguishes those two times? In the first, I am choosing to trust Him, to lean upon Him, to look on Him in faith; in the second, I don't trust Him, I want to be perfect in my own power, and I am focused on myself and my shortcomings rather than on Him in His glory and goodness. So I should spend more time in the first mindset, if I want to spend more time in that incredible joy which comes from feeling the presence and love of our Lord! Even when it is emotionally hard for me, I should do my best to cultivate faith and practice trust in the God whose love is far greater than I can comprehend.

Enter into suffering

"Pray without ceasing" - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

"...praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints" - Ephesians 6:18

"I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ" - Colossians 1:24

"...that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death" - Philippians 3:10

When I watch movies, I like them to be an escape from the world around me - I like them to be fun, lighthearted, a distraction from the pain and wickedness I see or hear about every day. A lot of the books I read are the same way. It is too much of a burden for me to always have my mind involved in those things. Yes, they are problems, yes, there might be something I could do about it, yes, I could pray for these people - but no, no, no, it hurts too much, it is too much to carry, I am too weak

But I am not any weaker than a lot of people who are directly suffering evil things. At the very least I am not weaker than the children who are abused or who watch their siblings being abused and are powerless to do anything about it. Can I set aside my life of comfort on their behalf? Can I bear at least some small grain of their suffering, that they might have a moment of happiness and peace? Can I enter into their sorrow, that through me they might come to joy and rest? That is what Jesus did for me; can I do the same for my brothers and sisters, my fellow sojourners through this life? If I am too timid or ignorant or insecure to know how to directly enter their lives and avert an evil, let me not be too weak or lazy or selfish to pray on their behalf. If I may never be a mighty warrior for the gospel on the front lines of the kingdom, doing great things like preaching the word, changing hearts, relieving oppression, and righting wrongs, Lord, at least help me to be a humble servant whose struggles are unseen, who intercedes for those in need at the foot of Your throne. Please let me seek their good rather than my glory - the hidden but unceasing vigil of the spirit rather than the bold and dramatic action that wins acclaim and admiration.

The Kingdom comes

I am filled with sadness over the way the world goes, and where it goes, and how it hastens toward evil in the name of good. It's hard to write when there seems to be so little hope.

The problem doesn't lie in a single law, or even in the multiplicity of laws and policies that have accumulated through the years. At one moment the government is regulating adoption in a way that has caused several faith-based agencies to close down rather than go against their consciences; at another they are mandating "free" contraception (including morning-after pills) in a way that will similarly affect those Christian hospitals that desire to serve and provide health-care in accordance with their moral standards. The root of the problem is not in those policies, but rather in the worldview that birthed them, in the ideas and beliefs held by so many people in our nation. Those ideas - that children are an inconvenience rather than a gift; that marriage is a convenient manmade institution rather than a sacrament designed by God; that personal pleasure and convenience are higher goals than self-sacrifice, submission, humility, and love - those ideas have consequences, and we are beginning to see and understand what those consequences will be.

So what ought we to do? Well, first of all, we pray. We pray without ceasing for the hearts and minds and souls of the people of our nation, our city, and our community. More mundanely, we continue to pay the taxes that are required of us, because we are to render to Caesar what is Caesar's, even if those taxes are used for something we disagree with. No one supports the use of their taxes 100% (one could argue that this was particularly true for the people to whom Jesus was speaking). And finally, because we are in a country where we can lift our voices to try to change things, we should not be silent, and because we have a free will and a conscience we ought to make the choice to do what we believe is right, no matter the cost. Just as someone could be a conscientious objector to a war, so we can object on conscience to abortion and contraception. If we are mocked and misunderstood, so be it. Many through history have suffered ridicule and mistreatment for causes far less worthy.

On those issues and on others which have come up before and will arise again, it so often seems that there is nothing that can be done but quietly resist, and suffer in the resistance for the sake of Christ, if God so deems us worthy. It may not seem like things will ever change, or that the world will ever get better. But still we can endure because we know that the victory is already won, hidden though it may be by the fogs and black mists of this world of sin. We cannot often see clearly here, but we can trust with a faith that goes beyond sight. In that faith lies the hope that we will need to cling to when all seems dark and desperate.

In the words of an old children's book, Tales of the Kingdom (as best as I can remember them):

"How goes the world?"

"The world goes not well. But the Kingdom comes!"

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.

Weary ears in a multiplicity of words

"If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God.
Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears are weary with the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them. Give me the spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to Thee, "Speak, for thy servant heareth." Let me hear Thee speaking in my heart. Let me get used to the sound of Thy Voice, that its tones may be familiar when the sounds of earth die away and the only sound will be the music of Thy speaking Voice. Amen." - A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

My ears are weary indeed.

There are so many words constantly flying towards them - the words spoken by friends and family, the words read in books and articles, the deep and thought-provoking words of great authors and the light-hearted everyday words on Facebook and cooking blogs. They all demand my attention, attracting me in diverse ways, calling to my mind. And somewhere in the midst of all those words, all those myriad voices clamoring for my listening ear, the Voice of God is lost. It is hard enough to still my mind enough to focus on any of the other, lighter, easier voices for a significant amount of time, let alone to devote my mind and heart to listening to the most significant, life-changing, earth-shattering Voice of all. That requires a lot of concentration! And my ears are too weary to set themselves to so great and difficult a work.

Will I listen to Him speaking? Will I set my heart and my mind and my soul to the task of being still before Him and hearing His Words? Only He can fill the emptiness of my heart and relieve the bitter anxious sorrow of my soul; why then do I give up on listening to Him before I even fully begin? Dear Lord, please open my ears to hear You, that Your words may sink to the depths of my heart and take root there, that I may know You in Your glory and grace. Amen.

The fixed points of human life

A very old but very insightful thought:

"I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious assumption that life and sex must live by the laws of 'business' or industrialism, and not vice versa [...] a man writes to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to sign his letter "Hopeful." [...] the hopeful one concludes by saying, 'When people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage-market. [...] Motherhood, they feel [they being men like the hopeful man], and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good things in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the mutilation of womanhood, and the massacre of men unborn, he signs himself 'Hopeful.' He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human annihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself 'Hopeless.'" - G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

At Chesterton's time, abortion was just beginning to be more widely advocated, so he could see the philosophical and social problems that gave it a foothold: how the laws of business and industry (which at the time involved a few business men becoming quite rich on the backs of many others who were quite poor), being elevated above the good that is marriage and family, became a justification for the evil of abortion. The elite, not wanting to change their way of life, came up with a solution that allowed them to believe they were improving the lives of the poor, and cared not that it was abominable. Abortion may make people more well-off financially, but it makes them morally poorer and robs them of the riches of loving that unborn child.