The Good Master, Again

Yesterday morning I sat at the kitchen table with the Bible at one hand and some cookbooks at the other. I was actually more interested in the cookbooks at the time, until in my flipping through the New Testament between recipes I was snagged by a certain prayer in the book of Jude. Picture the double take, the record scratch, the dropping of the toast in my left hand, the whole deal. Thar she blows:

Jude 1: 24-25
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Able to keep me from stumbling? Makes me stand before God, in spite of all my numerous weaknesses and failings, not just blameless but with great joy? Praise to the One who is filled with all majesty, authority, and glory? AMEN!!

But wait, I kept on flipping, and there was more:

1 Thess 5: 23-24
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.

God's making us stand before him without blame. There's no space for shame, did you hear that? He makes us holy, whole and integrated, spirit, soul, and body. He is the one who called us to him and caused us to respond, and He is the one who makes it happen. I place myself in his hands. That's my part. He does all the rest. That's his part. A masterful God indeed.

The staggering nature of these promises left me staring at the pages. I'm not working on my own. He's here, and with me, and for me, in ways so deep I have trouble wrapping my mind around it. Thank God.

Be Good

That's what E.T. told Elliot.

I talked to my pastor this past weekend and mentioned how sick and tired I was of trying to be good. He responded, "Don't strive to be good- strive to love." I'm pretty sure that's the best advice I've heard this year: it's one of those simple, true comments that work their way into your head and heart.
It got me thinking about the difference between the two, and here's what I came up with.

Striving to be good vs. striving to love -

Striving to be good is when I'm following this moral and ethical gridwork I have mapped out in my head, developed from years of observing people, making judgment calls, reading the Bible, listening to sermons, and talking with Christians. So when I'm trying to be good I'm checking to make sure I'm going according to all these lines and angles I've got worked out in my head of what a Christian is supposed to be like, and I'm trying to be successful and right by staying within the lines, and putting my energy into it, and things are supposed to work when I do that. But when stuff doesn't go the way I think it's supposed to when I follow the gridwork, I end up angry and frustrated and exhausted. Also, this whole framework is about me, how I can look good to myself and others and God, checking my cliff notes of the Christian life to pass the test, to manipulate God by obeying what I've got written down as his rules so he has to respond a certain way, to shape people the way I think they should be by acting in certain ways around them and toward them.

When I'm striving to love someone, however, the focus is totally different. I'm looking out at them instead of consulting my inner gridwork and painting by number. I'm looking out at them, seeing them for who they are, and acting for their deepest good because they are a creation of God or one of His children. It feels totally different, it requires an active and living connection with the living God yet requires less energy and work, and it probably blesses the people around me a lot more.

Thoughts?

How To Sing Hope

Sometimes life is about as bland as boiled potatoes.

What is to be done on those long dreary afternoons or featureless months when things aren’t precisely bad or difficult, just… the same old thing? The now but definitely not yet, when Jesus seems to be the Once and, to be certain, also the Future King, but in the meantime – well... this is no bridegroom’s feast before us today, only the lukewarm pot roast the housekeeper left in the oven before she went home for the night.

What is to be done? Do we trill with the eternal optimism of Little Orphan Annie, “The sun’ll come out tomorrow – bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun! Just thinkin’ about tomorrow clears away the cobwebs and the sorrows till there’s none.”

But what next, when the tomorrows come and the dusty cobwebs and faint sorrows are still there in the corners and the shadows?

Shall we take a more dramatic pose and cry out, “On and on – does anybody know what we are looking for? Inside my heart is breaking; my makeup may be flaking, but my smile still stays on. The show must go on!”

Lest we become sick at heart, we need a bright star of hope to set our hearts on -- true hope, hope that will not disappoint – something tangible this side of eternity to sustain us on our journey of the soul. I would despair unless I believed I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living (Ps. 27:13).

I find (however) that when I hit these dull seasons I mistake good things for the goodness of God in the land of the living. Hoping in people, events, and circumstances is inevitable. The problem is that each of these things can crumble. A certain dream seems within reach, and then suddenly I'm exactly where I started. Or almost worse, I’m somewhere different but it’s no more exciting or interesting than the last place. It's depressing.

Or again, sometimes the stories we tell to interpret our lives become too small, too restrictive, and we have managed our expectations down to the ground and in the process lost sight of that one hope that cannot disappoint: “Instead of a love affair with God, your life begins to feel more like a series of repetitive behaviors… The orthodoxy we try to live out, defined as ‘believe and behave accordingly’ is not sufficient to satisfy whatever turmoil and longing our heart is trying to tell us about. Our outer story becomes the theater of the should and our inner story the theater of needs, the place where we quench the thirst of our heart with whatever ‘water’ is available” (John Eldredge).

I cannot sustain hope for the sake of being hopeful, and I cannot drink hope at the well of the next good meal, the next phone chat with a girlfriend, a healed body, the right relationship, a comfortable home. I need hope in something that endures and will never fail. I need to understand again the hope of my salvation so that it can break into my life.

Titus 2: 13-14 says “We wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own.” He HAS given himself – he HAS redeemed us – he IS purifying us and making us his own! We can see and hear and taste and touch that in our lives, and that is why we can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Where then does this hope of God break into my life? As He enlightens the eyes of my heart, I see it again and again, all around – thank God! His Kingdom IS here now, even though not yet displaying the fullness of its splendor: it is in the way he has brought me (O miracle!) from darkness and bondage to sin into the Kingdom of light with the grace not to sin. It is in in the loving Spirit-enabled fellowship I have with believers, it’s in prayer, in answers to prayer, in the liturgy, in communion, in my praise to Him at the beauty of a sky-streaked dawn, in the very change He works in me as He makes himself known to me over time. He has rescued me from the dominion of darkness and brought me into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:13–14). This kingdom shines out through little rips and rents in this present darkness, salting my everyday life with flecks of light.

I am finding that as I hope in God’s promise to break in amidst the ordinariness of life, and when I see glimpses of the Kingdom manifested as the Spirit works in me and the world, I am not only seeing His grace of the moment, but I can be confident in the fullness of what it means for the world to come – and THAT sturdy hope will never be put to shame.

He came that we might have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)

After The Feast

Now that Christmas is past and the long January yet to be gotten through, what are we to do?

"The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon."

Well, so that is that.
Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes -
Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week -
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted – quite unsuccessfully -
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

from "For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio" by W. H. Auden

So in the meantime, let us stretch out our hands to the Redeemer of the time being, that through Him we might redeem the time, spend our love well, and scrub even the kitchen table to the glory of God.

Ripening Anticipation

It was miserably hot again this past weekend, and I sat on my floor drinking an icy club soda with lime while listening to Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas albums, featuring such classics as “Did I Make You Cry On Christmas? (Well, You Deserved It!)”, “Sister Winter”, and “Come On! Let’s Boogey To The Elf Dance!”.

Today the weather was worthy of fall, being properly cool and overcast at last. Time for Christmas music again - I listened to Over The Rhine’s Christmas album, Snow Angels, dreamily lost in the blue jazz and Karin’s vocals. I began to think about the Christmas season, about seasons of feasting and fasting and the anticipation we feel in having to wait or look forward to something, and the deep sweet taste of fulfillment.

I think that sometimes when we have been waiting and waiting for something, when it’s at long last ripe, if bitterness has not overtaken you from the inside, you bite into it with such relish and release that the taste is sweeter by far than if you had been able to have it the minute you wanted it. Moreover, that period of looking forward to whatever the delight may be not only enlarges, but is a major part of, the experience of fulfillment. The Christmas season when we anticipate celebrating Christ’s incarnation is amazing in large part because of that anticipation and preparation. For a more mundane but no less happy example, I’ve just started a savings account for a trip to Greece next year with a dear friend and every two weeks when I put in a few more dollars I get to imagine how lovely that trip will be. I am becoming an advocate of the power and sweetness of anticipation, which is pretty wonderful considering that patience is not my strongest suit. I find I like this part of growing up! Change can be hard, the dry seasons are not fun, but I am just starting to see the pleasure that comes in alongside the pain of waiting.

Synchronicity

Have you ever noticed that sometimes a whole bunch of churches and people you know are suddenly talking about the same theme, for no apparent external reason? It makes me sit up and take notice of what's going on around me on the spiritual plane.

Case in point:

- I subscribe to a couple different church podcasts. Andy Stanley Ministries in Georgia is doing a series on Decisions

- Tim Keller at Redeemer in NYC is doing a series on Decision Making

- One member of my small group is reading Andy Stanley's book on how decisions determine destination

- Another member of my small group just posted about how it seems every decision he is making right now is a consequential one that has the potential to affect his whole life

- my own church's topic last week was how the "slow fade" into sin or away from church or into a mess or what have you is just the final result of a series of one building-block decision at a time.

- finally, Covenant Life Church in Maryland, which I don't get the podcasts for but which some of my regularly-viewed bloggers attend, is also doing a series in which a key point is "You are only as wise as your next decision. You prove your wisdom in what you choose today."

Hmmm.

It's got me thinking about whether the decisions I'm making connect with where I want to be heading in all the various areas of life. I've never been one to freak out about whether my decisions are in the parameters of a small teetery knife-edge sliver of "right choices" that some people seem to think is God's will - decision-making is something he gave us to do, and I think as far as options for directions we can go, it's very broad.

But how good is it to realize direction - not intention - determines destination! It's not that we are not smart enough to understand, but that there is a huge disconnect. We understand that truth as far as picking which highway to take when we go somewhere in our car, but there's often a disconnect between where we want to end up and what decisions (path) we're making in our lives. It's a lot easier to see in other people, like with my acquaintance who just wants to settle down, have kids, and bake cookies but is choosing to date lots of men who lack the character qualities that would give her the future she genuinely desires.

Now to think and pray about where I hope to end up in light of what I have seen God doing with my life, and am I actually on paths that are gonna get me there...

In the Tumble Cycle: Fathers and Mentors

One of my favorite movies is Moonstruck, and the main character's mother, who knows her husband is seeing another woman, spends most of the movie periodically polling people with the question, "Why would a man need more than one woman?" She shakes off answer after answer until she hears the one she's looking for.

Rose: [frustrated] But why would a man need more than one woman?
Johnny: I don't know. Maybe because he fears death.
Rose: That's it! That's the reason!
Johnny: I don't know...
Rose: No! That's it! Thank you! Thank you for answering my question!

Last night some of us watched Rebel Without A Cause and discussed it afterward, and it got the question of fatherlessness tumbling restlessly around in my mind. Three characters in that movie all have different father wounds from ineffective or absent fathers. And like Rose in Moonstruck, I've been polling people with my question, looking for the answer that feels like it fits.
My question is, What can we, as individuals and as the church, do to heal the men who in one way or another grew up without being fathered? Brandon thinks they're generally doomed, as we learn much more from absorbing than being taught, and such men will always be missing a huge piece of manhood, especially when it comes to leading a marriage, simply from lacking the model. Jennifer thinks it's a huge opportunity for the people of the church, those well-fathered men further along the road, to see the need and step up to be that stable, experienced person speaking into a young husband's life, or a teenager's life, over a long span of time. I think the Holy Spirit can give you the power to draw the line in the sand and break with your past, but it is hard and takes a lot of work and determination and drawing on God the Father to teach you what you don't even know you don't know.

What do you think?