Of course I've thought it myself, but others have let the word form on their lips, in their raised eyebrows, in their silence. Craziness.
To sell the home that hands and hearts hinged together nail by nail, surely that's madness. To walk away from that place you built together with friends and planned on remaining forever, surely that's insane.
There's no other place like that in the county. In the country, for that matter.
Crazy.
But the moments are few, and this home, she drinks them like there has been a drought insisting on having more than her fair share. Insists on sending a Father to work over 85 hours a week to quench her thirst for months and long, long months. Insists on demanding this homeschooling momma work two other part time jobs. She's gotten greedy, this home.
And we've walked many miles in these shoes. Our souls are thinning.
Just because we can afford, does that mean we should afford? And maybe the 2.2 children and one lovely white picket fence thing is a little overrated when there is a world beyond that fence and millions of children with no fence, and no bed, hearts and bellies hungry for real food, real love. And really? They're out there, and I'm cutting my kentucky blue grass, clinging to an American dream? Who's clinging to them?
And where is God in homes and finances and godly people just trying to make their ends come together? Godly people obeying the directions their Father gave. Where is God's heart when Daddy is working another double and Momma's back is to her children, working again? Where is God when we cling to bricks and mortar, and our children's frames stretch for the sky, and the number of years they will remain with us is now fewer than the number of years we've already shared?
Because they do grow up.
And we don't have them forever.
And when all is said and done, what is truly the important thing in life?
What truly matters?
What is the best thing we can give to our children?
Are not these children the first stewardship we have?
And who can have a marriage who doesn't have time to share with their beloved?
And is home really this moon-yellow colonial farm house, or is it the place where we four gather?
And is the view from living room windows that I love best really the dusty-red dogwoods in early October or the dyed red hair of a 12 year old and the nappy long locks of a 10 year old while they conquer an invisible world when school's done? And if home and view are the latter, then don't they exist wherever we are?
Don't they?
And wouldn't it be crazier to stay? To eek it out when we could have taken less of this world to gain more of the things that truly matter?
What message do we send, when we hold to the temporary, insisting to our children that it is of some great value?
Because what they value is our eye contact, our heart contact, our time. Us with them. Daddy home. Mommy undistracted. Daddy and Mommy together, hands tangled, hearts twined, mouths laughing. Football in the backyard, full contact solitaire in the loft, Little Men on rain soaked afternoons.
Do we confuse them when we quote, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal . . . " (Matthew 9:16) and then turn around and continue to work at storing up, holding on, clinging to these earthly treasures?
And what did He say about the man who wants to serve two masters?
No man can serve two masters.
And what did He say about the church that tried to have it both ways?
Luke warm.
And what did He say about the man who asks God for wisdom, but doesn't take that wisdom and live by it?
Double minded. Tossed about like a wave of the sea.
And sometimes it is just dadgum hard not to have it both ways, if you want to know the truth. That's the truth.
The truth of how I feel, but feelings change, and if my truth is based on my feelings, than my truth is not constant. But then, I know The Truth.
And He--The Truth--says, "I am the way . . . I am the life. What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Yet I know how those disciples felt, the ones that said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" I know how they felt when they turned and walked the other way. The broad way.
A path well trod is easy on feeble feet, but it takes faith to place feet in foamy waves and trust that, keeping your eyes fixed on Him, you will not falter.
Could less really be more?
Could we live that out and see it to fruition?
Could we look the Jones Family square in the face and tell them, you win. We're not racing anymore. We're satisfied with loving each other and our children instead.
Could we lead the charge that insists status quo is not good enough, and picket fences may mean cages, and freedom may be found in letting go of them and clinging to Christ.
Is faith really the substance of things hoped for, the evidence not seen?
Because our forever home is sold, and we are two weeks away from a closing with no other sure thing on the horizon.
Evidence NOT seen.
Faith.
When you step into the water, leaving the safety of the boat--the safety of a home you know and love, a life you're comfortable with--you better believe He is good. Better have that Truth to place timid, tentative toes upon.
And I do.
Believe He is good.
Believe He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Believe He is able to keep us from falling.
Believe He never leaves, never forsakes.
Believe He is a strong tower.
Believe He knows the plans He has for us, that they are good, hope-filled.
Believe He will keep in perfect peace him--little me--whose mind is steadfast on Him.
Believe He will give peace that passes understanding as a sentinel to guard this frightened heart.
Believe He has never, not one single time, let me down.
Believe me,
I do.
Pray with me: Father, you are the one who is able to keep us from falling. You are the God who promised that 'in our hearts we would plan our course, but YOU would determine our steps.' You are the substance of our faith. Determine our steps, Father. May we have your heart, your priorities. May you be our gain. May you be our home. May you be our forever. Amen.
Showing posts with label simplify. Show all posts
Showing posts with label simplify. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Great Gain
The wind sucked and swished my hair around like a vacuum first then a twister. "35 miles per hour winds, Sarah," my neighbor admonished. "Should we cover our plants? The temperature's gonna drop." It did drop. And soccer practice went long on the one night when the temperature plummeted, and the wind raged her fury. I was cold. We walked--my son, his friend and I--to keep warm. Nate shared his too-small-for-me black fuzzy gloves, and I gladly accepted the woolen warmth of his giving heart.
Still chilled in our bones with the kind of cold that doesn't give you goose bumps, but leaves you stiff, corpsish even, we elbowed our way through the entrance to our home. Our 70 degree home. The temperature was set. I had keyed in 70 degrees earlier in the day thinking what was the use in freezing to death when I didn't have to. I have that choice.
I thought of pouring a steaming bubble bath and using some of my 9 year old green-tea bath salts my sister gave me after Cort was born. I hoard them for special moments because they smell like spring and heaven and grass and rivers, and I want to have them for as long as I live. We keep our thermostat for hot water set HOT. I like hot water. Tepid water doesn't clean, doesn't warm, doesn't refresh. I have that choice.
Taking the red kettle mom gave me for my birthday, I filled it with a steady stream of water from our tap. I turned the storm-grey knob on our gas stove and watched as flames licked the belly of the kettle. A mug of clear, hot water blanketed me from the inside out. I had that choice.
Dinner hour had long since slipped away. Suppertime too had slipped beyond the grasp of our busy Monday schedule. We were all hungry. We'd agreed ahead of time on the menu for the week. All of us had said we were in, but when the moment came . . . we may have regretted our zeal. Beans and rice. One small scoop of each at supper. For the week. It's true, chicken, sausage, beef roast, ground chuck, fish, hot dogs, pork chops, bacon, and a myriad of other choices clogged my cavernous freezer. We had that choice.
I told the boys to chew slowly. Don't rush, there are no seconds tonight. And I looked in my eldest's eyes. Disappointment. He knew he wouldn't be full. I knew he wouldn't be full. You don't have to do this; you know I know your heart. I don't expect this from you. He wanted to. But his face showed what his lips refused to speak: shock at the reality of hunger. The first night in his life he will have gone to bed hungry. He had that choice.
But not everyone does. Have that choice. Have a home with temperature set just so. Have clean water to drink much less pour lavishly into an antique claw-foot tub. Even have beans. Even have rice. Not everyone has that choice.
My first month of SEVEN is winding down. I've chosen to focus this month on food in an attempt to wrap my senses around world hunger, around the reality that 18,000 people die every day just from hunger, and that's not including those who die from lack of clean drinking water. Some will call me crazy, and I'm okay with that. What I can't seem to be okay with, though, is the reality that while I've cushioned my backside with a pantry three feet deep and then gone out and bought bigger pants to contain my greed, children were dying every five seconds. I needed a radical realignment. This month has been a good beginning. A good beginning.
Not having my usual comfortable foods has forced me to remember the faces of children I've never met--children who have never had a single comfort. It's caused me to think of the anguish that must swallow their mothers' and fathers' hearts in single gulps when they look into hungry, pained eyes and can do nothing to help them. I want to be a part of their hope.
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in . . .I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' " Matthew 25:3,40
Did it for Him. The nameless children of hundreds of destitute regions are not just someones children. They're God's creation, His masterpieces. He formed them in their mother's wombs, knows the number of hairs on their sweet heads, and you know what? Forget the number of hairs on their heads. He numbers the ones that flitter and flutter to the ground as their scalps bald from malnourishment. They're His babies, and he planned for them to be a part of this wonderful world He worded into existence. When I withhold, hoard, keep for myself, I keep from Him. And when I open palms and purse, release plans and purpose, I do it unto Him. And wasn't it He who specifically said, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (II Corinthians 10:31) All of it. For His glory?
And while Marie Antoinette cries out, "Let them have cake . . ." am I just the same as she? A Christian bellowing in holy tones, "Let them have Jesus." Let me not insist all they need is Jesus and ignore their bellies bulging with starvation and mud cookies made with oil and water. Jesus himself did not ignore the physical needs of the people He loved. What of manna, and fish and loaves multiplied? He made us physical beings. Dare I ignore His sacred creation's needs under the shiny-cellophane packaging of "purely sharing the gospel and leaving their physical needs to some other organization?" We are that organization. We. The Church. Me. I'm broken, undone by that reality. I'm just one person; we're just one small family. Could we actually make any difference? A dent in all this suffering?
In the early moments of day's breaking, before school lessons and ringing phones, emails and music lessons, I read from I Timothy 6. "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. "
If we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. With just that?
Are you, Sarah?
Am I, God?
Because godliness with contentment is great gain, and the Greek meaning of this word gain is the best thing you can procure for yourself. It must be important.
I hear of people's investments yielding great gains, but what if we have missed it? What if while we build our fortunes and pad our retirement funds we have missed The Great Gain? Is it possible in our haste to be financially responsible citizens, in our hurry to build comfortable, seeker friendly churches with pleasing, paved parking lots, in our fervor to give our children every opportunity, we have somehow missed our purpose? What if our comfort costs someone else's life?
What if The Great Gain is discovering the sufficient nature of a God who promised to supply all our NEEDS according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus, and realizing He Is Enough?
And if the best thing I can get in this life is godliness with contentment, then this, THIS is The Great Gain: That we cease to search for the next best high and realize The High lives within us. We have all we need pertaining to life, to godliness. We have HIM. In HIM is life. In HIM is satisfaction. In HIM is contentment. "And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." (II Corinthians 9:8)
And when we gain this contentment it is for a purpose--so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. We are not blessed to spend on ourselves but to abound in every good work. Every. In all things. At all times.
I can't help but think about Timothy's words again. Content with food and clothing. Is that how you define Paul's words, having all that you need?
Just food? Just clothing?
Which food? Rice and beans? Every day? Surely not. We've been given all things to enjoy. Haven't we? Where is the cap? Where do we stop? When do we say we have given enough? Can we really ever say, "This much is for you God, and no more. The rest is for me."? Can we? Do we all go out and buy 1990's-hunter-green-water-proof-Ozark-Trail tents from Walmart, sell our homes and find a field to squat in, giving the rest to Haiti or Africa? Is this what we do?
These are the questions that wash ashore in my mind like waves on the Atlantic coastline. They've repeated themselves a thousand times a day this month, and I don't yet have answers. This I know, Jesus said the path is narrow and few will choose it. Speaking of sacrifice doesn't sit well with me. I'd like to cut a check for ten percent and call it a day. The rest I can find plenty of good uses for. I've got a bucket list, plans for a fifteenth wedding anniversary romantic getaway. And could I say, if I dared, that perhaps we who call ourselves Christians have created some form of Jesus-following that doesn't really follow Him at all? Are we not really just white-washed, sweet-speaking selfish hearts? Some of us? Me? (I don't dare say it. Sorry I mentioned it.)
Too though, I know this. Jesus came to freely give us that thing we lost in Eden--that abundant life. That walking in the garden with God in the cool of the evenings. That unlimited access to all the splendor of His creation without fear, without sickness, without pain. In Him we get that abundance. I haven't suffered this month. Not once. Giving up coffee had to be like losing my right arm--maybe even both arms. And sugar? On dear Lord, please restore to my the joy of my sugar . . . I mean salvation. (Ps. 51. It's in there.) What I have seen is that I miss the abundance of God because I'm too busy feeding myself. And not just with food do I fill. It's television, computer, people, activities, events, projects, things . . . oh dear things. So many possessions. And this filling creates a numbness. I don't feel my great need of God, nor do I feel my great blessings of God. I miss The Abundance. The Great Gain.
It is a beautiful journey--this walking with God--and I'm too distracted by the choices I have to notice it.
Tonight at bedtime, my eldest prayed, "Lord, thank you that we can feel what it is like for the starving children. Please help the ones in Haiti and Africa . . ." Thank you for hunger? Yes, I too am thankful. Somehow the hunger awakens my sleeping senses to the heart of God. I'm still searching for answers. We're ambling, embarking, seeking, learning, and stumbling through. But for now, at least we are glimpsing some of The Great Gain.
Pray with me: Jesus, you are life. YOU are life. Teach me to seek fullness in YOU. Align me to your heart. I'm sorry I miss the way when it is YOU who IS the way. Help me to see YOU are the GAIN. Help me to hunger not for more stuff, more food, more places to go, more mountains to conquer, but for the person of YOU. Fill me. Amen.
Still chilled in our bones with the kind of cold that doesn't give you goose bumps, but leaves you stiff, corpsish even, we elbowed our way through the entrance to our home. Our 70 degree home. The temperature was set. I had keyed in 70 degrees earlier in the day thinking what was the use in freezing to death when I didn't have to. I have that choice.
I thought of pouring a steaming bubble bath and using some of my 9 year old green-tea bath salts my sister gave me after Cort was born. I hoard them for special moments because they smell like spring and heaven and grass and rivers, and I want to have them for as long as I live. We keep our thermostat for hot water set HOT. I like hot water. Tepid water doesn't clean, doesn't warm, doesn't refresh. I have that choice.
Taking the red kettle mom gave me for my birthday, I filled it with a steady stream of water from our tap. I turned the storm-grey knob on our gas stove and watched as flames licked the belly of the kettle. A mug of clear, hot water blanketed me from the inside out. I had that choice.
Dinner hour had long since slipped away. Suppertime too had slipped beyond the grasp of our busy Monday schedule. We were all hungry. We'd agreed ahead of time on the menu for the week. All of us had said we were in, but when the moment came . . . we may have regretted our zeal. Beans and rice. One small scoop of each at supper. For the week. It's true, chicken, sausage, beef roast, ground chuck, fish, hot dogs, pork chops, bacon, and a myriad of other choices clogged my cavernous freezer. We had that choice.
I told the boys to chew slowly. Don't rush, there are no seconds tonight. And I looked in my eldest's eyes. Disappointment. He knew he wouldn't be full. I knew he wouldn't be full. You don't have to do this; you know I know your heart. I don't expect this from you. He wanted to. But his face showed what his lips refused to speak: shock at the reality of hunger. The first night in his life he will have gone to bed hungry. He had that choice.
But not everyone does. Have that choice. Have a home with temperature set just so. Have clean water to drink much less pour lavishly into an antique claw-foot tub. Even have beans. Even have rice. Not everyone has that choice.
My first month of SEVEN is winding down. I've chosen to focus this month on food in an attempt to wrap my senses around world hunger, around the reality that 18,000 people die every day just from hunger, and that's not including those who die from lack of clean drinking water. Some will call me crazy, and I'm okay with that. What I can't seem to be okay with, though, is the reality that while I've cushioned my backside with a pantry three feet deep and then gone out and bought bigger pants to contain my greed, children were dying every five seconds. I needed a radical realignment. This month has been a good beginning. A good beginning.Not having my usual comfortable foods has forced me to remember the faces of children I've never met--children who have never had a single comfort. It's caused me to think of the anguish that must swallow their mothers' and fathers' hearts in single gulps when they look into hungry, pained eyes and can do nothing to help them. I want to be a part of their hope.
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in . . .I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' " Matthew 25:3,40
Did it for Him. The nameless children of hundreds of destitute regions are not just someones children. They're God's creation, His masterpieces. He formed them in their mother's wombs, knows the number of hairs on their sweet heads, and you know what? Forget the number of hairs on their heads. He numbers the ones that flitter and flutter to the ground as their scalps bald from malnourishment. They're His babies, and he planned for them to be a part of this wonderful world He worded into existence. When I withhold, hoard, keep for myself, I keep from Him. And when I open palms and purse, release plans and purpose, I do it unto Him. And wasn't it He who specifically said, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (II Corinthians 10:31) All of it. For His glory?
And while Marie Antoinette cries out, "Let them have cake . . ." am I just the same as she? A Christian bellowing in holy tones, "Let them have Jesus." Let me not insist all they need is Jesus and ignore their bellies bulging with starvation and mud cookies made with oil and water. Jesus himself did not ignore the physical needs of the people He loved. What of manna, and fish and loaves multiplied? He made us physical beings. Dare I ignore His sacred creation's needs under the shiny-cellophane packaging of "purely sharing the gospel and leaving their physical needs to some other organization?" We are that organization. We. The Church. Me. I'm broken, undone by that reality. I'm just one person; we're just one small family. Could we actually make any difference? A dent in all this suffering?
In the early moments of day's breaking, before school lessons and ringing phones, emails and music lessons, I read from I Timothy 6. "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. "
If we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. With just that?
Are you, Sarah?
Am I, God?
Because godliness with contentment is great gain, and the Greek meaning of this word gain is the best thing you can procure for yourself. It must be important.
I hear of people's investments yielding great gains, but what if we have missed it? What if while we build our fortunes and pad our retirement funds we have missed The Great Gain? Is it possible in our haste to be financially responsible citizens, in our hurry to build comfortable, seeker friendly churches with pleasing, paved parking lots, in our fervor to give our children every opportunity, we have somehow missed our purpose? What if our comfort costs someone else's life?
What if The Great Gain is discovering the sufficient nature of a God who promised to supply all our NEEDS according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus, and realizing He Is Enough?
And if the best thing I can get in this life is godliness with contentment, then this, THIS is The Great Gain: That we cease to search for the next best high and realize The High lives within us. We have all we need pertaining to life, to godliness. We have HIM. In HIM is life. In HIM is satisfaction. In HIM is contentment. "And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." (II Corinthians 9:8)
And when we gain this contentment it is for a purpose--so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. We are not blessed to spend on ourselves but to abound in every good work. Every. In all things. At all times.
I can't help but think about Timothy's words again. Content with food and clothing. Is that how you define Paul's words, having all that you need?
Just food? Just clothing?
Which food? Rice and beans? Every day? Surely not. We've been given all things to enjoy. Haven't we? Where is the cap? Where do we stop? When do we say we have given enough? Can we really ever say, "This much is for you God, and no more. The rest is for me."? Can we? Do we all go out and buy 1990's-hunter-green-water-proof-Ozark-Trail tents from Walmart, sell our homes and find a field to squat in, giving the rest to Haiti or Africa? Is this what we do?
These are the questions that wash ashore in my mind like waves on the Atlantic coastline. They've repeated themselves a thousand times a day this month, and I don't yet have answers. This I know, Jesus said the path is narrow and few will choose it. Speaking of sacrifice doesn't sit well with me. I'd like to cut a check for ten percent and call it a day. The rest I can find plenty of good uses for. I've got a bucket list, plans for a fifteenth wedding anniversary romantic getaway. And could I say, if I dared, that perhaps we who call ourselves Christians have created some form of Jesus-following that doesn't really follow Him at all? Are we not really just white-washed, sweet-speaking selfish hearts? Some of us? Me? (I don't dare say it. Sorry I mentioned it.)
Too though, I know this. Jesus came to freely give us that thing we lost in Eden--that abundant life. That walking in the garden with God in the cool of the evenings. That unlimited access to all the splendor of His creation without fear, without sickness, without pain. In Him we get that abundance. I haven't suffered this month. Not once. Giving up coffee had to be like losing my right arm--maybe even both arms. And sugar? On dear Lord, please restore to my the joy of my sugar . . . I mean salvation. (Ps. 51. It's in there.) What I have seen is that I miss the abundance of God because I'm too busy feeding myself. And not just with food do I fill. It's television, computer, people, activities, events, projects, things . . . oh dear things. So many possessions. And this filling creates a numbness. I don't feel my great need of God, nor do I feel my great blessings of God. I miss The Abundance. The Great Gain.
It is a beautiful journey--this walking with God--and I'm too distracted by the choices I have to notice it.
Tonight at bedtime, my eldest prayed, "Lord, thank you that we can feel what it is like for the starving children. Please help the ones in Haiti and Africa . . ." Thank you for hunger? Yes, I too am thankful. Somehow the hunger awakens my sleeping senses to the heart of God. I'm still searching for answers. We're ambling, embarking, seeking, learning, and stumbling through. But for now, at least we are glimpsing some of The Great Gain.
Pray with me: Jesus, you are life. YOU are life. Teach me to seek fullness in YOU. Align me to your heart. I'm sorry I miss the way when it is YOU who IS the way. Help me to see YOU are the GAIN. Help me to hunger not for more stuff, more food, more places to go, more mountains to conquer, but for the person of YOU. Fill me. Amen.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Easter All Year: The Yielded Journey
If we could have been there, sandaled toes sifting dusty paths, with Him that week, I wonder if we would have noticed. I wonder if we would have realized something was up, not right. I wonder if we could have sensed an intensity about Jesus in the days that preceded his arrest. Would his hair have shown a stray grey strand or two that certainly weren't there the week before? (Like the presidents who enter office auburn, black, and blond, shades, but leave dyed the same shade--stressed grey.) Would one eye have sagged slightly, like my grandfather's, under the emotional weight? Though the sky was blue, barometric pressure fine, and the pollen count low would he have complained just once of a headache--an ache only death would alleviate? And I wonder how it must have been for him in that hushed upper room as he sat side by side, surrounded by twelve and yet entirely, utterly alone?
Sometimes I suspect it wasn't the fear of physical pain that caused capillaries to burst, a face to sweat blood. Don't you think that just maybe it was the relational pain of knowing he would be betrayed by the very man he had poured years of ministry into? The only way I can relate to Christ this weekend is to imagine something similar. What if, when their bones have reached the extent of breadth and height and their shoulders are broad, one of my sweet boys-slivers of my heart, chose to walk from our family? Turn their back on me? Believe they could do better elsewhere? Sold out for some silver? What if it was my son? Because though Jesus bore none biological, weren't the disciples really like his children? He poured his life into them, teaching them, feeding them, guiding them, preparing them. Isn't it probable that he could bare the wicked strap he knew they'd use to punish Him for His deity, but what caused him to go back and pray three times in one night was the suffocating sadness of surrendering his relationships with those twelve who would scatter when soldiers came? Oh, Jesus, if my own children scattered at the moment I needed them, how I would crumble, disintegrate. Yet you stood.
"My Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me!"
That was his plea, and I'll never fully grasp its depth. As though he said, "God, I can't fathom baring this plan You have asked of me. I want to run in the other direction. I want to hide, go to another city, keep a low profile for a while. I want to live." What if he really did want to live? What if he knew that he would conquer death, conquer hell, conquer the grave, and get the prize of a return trip to the heavenly presence of God in the end, but somehow still . . . he wanted to live? Because it is hard to understand the reality that this temporary life is only the casing of eternal souls in mortals frames. The everlasting living? The real party? That begins when we shed these frames and enter the realm where moth and rust no longer destroy. But that's all heady knowledge--fills me with understanding. To live out that knowledge. That is hard. Was it hard for him too? He had a mother. A father. Twelve disciples. He had people he loved.
If those were his feelings--even a teensy weensy little bit--then I understand that God/Man. I do. Because I know the end of the story. I know in the end, I get the prize of the presence of God, the streets of gold, the gate of pearl, the face of Creator God. I mean can you even begin to fathom what the face of God will be like? He speaks and mountains literally melt. He utters words and birds of a thousand colors stretch wings, fill air. So I get it. I do. And yet I long to linger here a little while. Long to keep loving those I call mine--sweet, sweaty, summer-freckled boys with dirt glued beneath their fingernails and a man whose square jutted jaw still makes my tummy somersault.
He himself said these words: "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me . . ." (Matthew 10:37) And being God, he had to know when he spoke them it would be he that would have to walk away from his mother and father. It was him who would never have the chance for a son or a daughter. Surely when he "threw himself down with his face to the ground and prayed . . . " (Matthew 26:39) he recalled the very words he had uttered about loving fathers, loving mothers. Are we to assume that because he was a man filled with God-head deity, he was exempt from the very things culture dictates, temps us with throughout all time? Was he exempt from the longings of earthly things? Scripture tells us he was tempted in every way. Surely, he was tempted just to live an ordinary life, like all the other people. Just to live.
Father if it be possible, let this cup pass . . .
Yet not what I will, but what you will.
(Matthew26:39b)
And sometimes I wonder if, though he had no biological children of his own, Jesus isn't the best model of parenting we could follow. He lived with one singular purpose--to accomplish God's will. God's will. That was it. What if, as we coaxed the growing up in our children, we followed this singular mantra: You were made for God's purpose; yield to it.
alive, they were like helium balloons and time was the gas that filled them. Once time ceased, they would deflate and sink to the ground. They were not HIS LIFE. His life was a narrow path that carried him through the hungry, the thirsty, the diseased, the crippled, the destitute, the sinful tax collectors, the pharisees, the Sadducees, Pilate, Golgotha's hill, and a cross. All things that appeared like death but in the end meant life. He yielded every single time to God's will. And I wonder how often yielding might seem like death to us too; I wonder how often the very thing that would truly fill us, elevate us, is clothed in a road so narrow few will truly travel it.
Jesus himself said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me." (John 4:34) The very thing that sustained him was actually doing the very things God sent him to do. That sustained him like food. And I think of SEVEN, and how right in this moment, I'm hungry. Hungry because I've chosen to change a few things for just thirty days, an emptying of myself so that there is room to be fed by the purposes of God. And Jesus ate the will of His Father. Hungry and yet full. Full because when we live out God's purposes we enter the realm of spiritual food--a manna of the heart. When in John 10:10 Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full," did he mean this kind of eternal fullness of yielding?
Because knowing that we are made for a purpose isn't completely enough. Knowing is not a substitute for yielding. Jesus knew the cup--even wished it away--and yet he accepted that He must drink it. If my purpose is to glorify God (Is. 43:7) then am I yielding to His glory? Am I living to make him famous? Am I buying things that will reflect him? Am I treating my neighbors, my family, my children in such a way that they want that great God? Am I?
Gosh I get torn. Do you? I want so many things sometimes my life must resemble a refrigerator turned on it's side, rolled down a hill, and then opened. Pick up where I left off with piano lessons when I was ten years old. Mozart is still throbbing behind my finger tips, isn't he? (Okay, probably not.) And what about learning water color? And a bed and breakfast? What about an organic orchard? I drove by one--dilapidated, trees untended--and longed to make a career out of it. Apple Juice. Apple Pies. Apple turnovers. Apple Butter. And traveling to every continent? Where is the line, the boundary?
Sarah, I made you for my plans. Seek me. Yield.
But what about our goals? Our ambitions? What about finding more work to make more money to give my kids more opportunities? What about amassing more? Just yesterday I squawked to Jeff, with if-I-am-being-honest-tears-clogging-my-vision, "Do you know how long it has been since I got to spend an entire day in Atlanta shopping without interruption? I can't even remember!" Jeff is clothed. The boys are clothed. I am clothed. We need nothing. What in the world would I even spend an entire day in Atlanta shopping for? Yet I long for it because somehow it has become a Grizzly that growls in the face of my heart.
What about ME?
God, I want to have fun too. It can't all be serious and straight as an arrow, can it?
"He who loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matthew10:38)
Will find it?
Will find it.
And there, my friends is the crux of this thing. Somehow, we think if we choose a narrow path we will lose out, miss out, have no fun. There's no wrong in abundance of life here--in the thrill of new pursuits, new learning, new hobbies, new things. We are blessed with all things. But if we wish to find our life, then the choosing needs to be sifted through the purposes of God--the keeping of our eyes fixed on Jesus.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. (Matthew 6:22,23)
We are a nation of parents with unhealthy eyes, aren't we? We try to stuff the balloons of our children's lives with year round sports for our children, music lessons, gymnastics, art lessons, Iphones, pods, and pads, with bigger homes, summer camps, programs, opportunities, and . . . more opportunities. And in the end, they don't fly. They're not filled with life. They . . . WE . . .all sink under the weight of it. We don't keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
We are a people with unhealthy eyes too. I am. I focus on the things and people in this world when Jesus whispers Seek me first. Nope. I don't always fix my eyes on him.
And if I did, would he remove all the things and people? I think that's what we're really afraid of, isn't it? Missing out? Losing relationships? Surely, it was this loss that caused Jesus to resist the cup His Father offered.
What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
What.Does.It.Profit?
And I came to give you life to the full. If you lose your life--what you see as life--you will gain the great Life, the abundant Life. Unless a kernel of wheat cracks open and dies, there is no fruit, no life.
Isn't this what Easter is really about? Whether or not you celebrate this holiday, isn't commemorating the resurrection--whenever it occurred--about gratitude for the Man who lost his life? Offering thanks for the man who cracked open?
On Good Friday, we circled around the restored elm table we rescued from an Ontario barn and shared the communion of Jesus' death together. In church, when we take communion, there are these little wafers (they taste like sawdust and wood glue) and we pick them out of a silver platter. We don't break them. But, as a family, we broke the bread we shared. It was significant to me. I broke Jesus. My choices. That was part of his purpose--paying once and for all time for every single one of the times I would choose not to yield.
We say we want to live life to the fullest, but how can it be full if it is apart from God's purposes? Apart from me, you can do nothing.
This narrow path, this keeping the eye healthy by fixing it on Jesus, this yielding to the Creator's way, it is life.
It.Is.Life.
It.Is.Abundant.
It.Is.Joy.
It.Is.Hope.
Taking the cup, the cup offered of God, and drinking it, slowly, one day at a time, one decision at a time, one moment at a time, is the way we celebrate Easter year round. Measuring my decisions based on their return value in eternity despite the roaring grizzly in front of me--it may in the end, make all the difference. It may.
It will.
May I yield to Life.
Pray with me:
Jesus, thank you for breaking open for me, for mankind. Thank you for showing me the way to parent. Thank you for yielding. Thank you for staying the course though the loss was great. Thank you for gaining LIFE for all mankind, for me, through your brokenness. Help me, Jesus, to yield. Amen.
Sometimes I suspect it wasn't the fear of physical pain that caused capillaries to burst, a face to sweat blood. Don't you think that just maybe it was the relational pain of knowing he would be betrayed by the very man he had poured years of ministry into? The only way I can relate to Christ this weekend is to imagine something similar. What if, when their bones have reached the extent of breadth and height and their shoulders are broad, one of my sweet boys-slivers of my heart, chose to walk from our family? Turn their back on me? Believe they could do better elsewhere? Sold out for some silver? What if it was my son? Because though Jesus bore none biological, weren't the disciples really like his children? He poured his life into them, teaching them, feeding them, guiding them, preparing them. Isn't it probable that he could bare the wicked strap he knew they'd use to punish Him for His deity, but what caused him to go back and pray three times in one night was the suffocating sadness of surrendering his relationships with those twelve who would scatter when soldiers came? Oh, Jesus, if my own children scattered at the moment I needed them, how I would crumble, disintegrate. Yet you stood.
"My Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me!"
That was his plea, and I'll never fully grasp its depth. As though he said, "God, I can't fathom baring this plan You have asked of me. I want to run in the other direction. I want to hide, go to another city, keep a low profile for a while. I want to live." What if he really did want to live? What if he knew that he would conquer death, conquer hell, conquer the grave, and get the prize of a return trip to the heavenly presence of God in the end, but somehow still . . . he wanted to live? Because it is hard to understand the reality that this temporary life is only the casing of eternal souls in mortals frames. The everlasting living? The real party? That begins when we shed these frames and enter the realm where moth and rust no longer destroy. But that's all heady knowledge--fills me with understanding. To live out that knowledge. That is hard. Was it hard for him too? He had a mother. A father. Twelve disciples. He had people he loved.
If those were his feelings--even a teensy weensy little bit--then I understand that God/Man. I do. Because I know the end of the story. I know in the end, I get the prize of the presence of God, the streets of gold, the gate of pearl, the face of Creator God. I mean can you even begin to fathom what the face of God will be like? He speaks and mountains literally melt. He utters words and birds of a thousand colors stretch wings, fill air. So I get it. I do. And yet I long to linger here a little while. Long to keep loving those I call mine--sweet, sweaty, summer-freckled boys with dirt glued beneath their fingernails and a man whose square jutted jaw still makes my tummy somersault.
He himself said these words: "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me . . ." (Matthew 10:37) And being God, he had to know when he spoke them it would be he that would have to walk away from his mother and father. It was him who would never have the chance for a son or a daughter. Surely when he "threw himself down with his face to the ground and prayed . . . " (Matthew 26:39) he recalled the very words he had uttered about loving fathers, loving mothers. Are we to assume that because he was a man filled with God-head deity, he was exempt from the very things culture dictates, temps us with throughout all time? Was he exempt from the longings of earthly things? Scripture tells us he was tempted in every way. Surely, he was tempted just to live an ordinary life, like all the other people. Just to live.
Father if it be possible, let this cup pass . . .
Yet not what I will, but what you will.
(Matthew26:39b)
And sometimes I wonder if, though he had no biological children of his own, Jesus isn't the best model of parenting we could follow. He lived with one singular purpose--to accomplish God's will. God's will. That was it. What if, as we coaxed the growing up in our children, we followed this singular mantra: You were made for God's purpose; yield to it.
alive, they were like helium balloons and time was the gas that filled them. Once time ceased, they would deflate and sink to the ground. They were not HIS LIFE. His life was a narrow path that carried him through the hungry, the thirsty, the diseased, the crippled, the destitute, the sinful tax collectors, the pharisees, the Sadducees, Pilate, Golgotha's hill, and a cross. All things that appeared like death but in the end meant life. He yielded every single time to God's will. And I wonder how often yielding might seem like death to us too; I wonder how often the very thing that would truly fill us, elevate us, is clothed in a road so narrow few will truly travel it.
Jesus himself said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me." (John 4:34) The very thing that sustained him was actually doing the very things God sent him to do. That sustained him like food. And I think of SEVEN, and how right in this moment, I'm hungry. Hungry because I've chosen to change a few things for just thirty days, an emptying of myself so that there is room to be fed by the purposes of God. And Jesus ate the will of His Father. Hungry and yet full. Full because when we live out God's purposes we enter the realm of spiritual food--a manna of the heart. When in John 10:10 Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full," did he mean this kind of eternal fullness of yielding?
Because knowing that we are made for a purpose isn't completely enough. Knowing is not a substitute for yielding. Jesus knew the cup--even wished it away--and yet he accepted that He must drink it. If my purpose is to glorify God (Is. 43:7) then am I yielding to His glory? Am I living to make him famous? Am I buying things that will reflect him? Am I treating my neighbors, my family, my children in such a way that they want that great God? Am I?
Gosh I get torn. Do you? I want so many things sometimes my life must resemble a refrigerator turned on it's side, rolled down a hill, and then opened. Pick up where I left off with piano lessons when I was ten years old. Mozart is still throbbing behind my finger tips, isn't he? (Okay, probably not.) And what about learning water color? And a bed and breakfast? What about an organic orchard? I drove by one--dilapidated, trees untended--and longed to make a career out of it. Apple Juice. Apple Pies. Apple turnovers. Apple Butter. And traveling to every continent? Where is the line, the boundary?
Sarah, I made you for my plans. Seek me. Yield.
But what about our goals? Our ambitions? What about finding more work to make more money to give my kids more opportunities? What about amassing more? Just yesterday I squawked to Jeff, with if-I-am-being-honest-tears-clogging-my-vision, "Do you know how long it has been since I got to spend an entire day in Atlanta shopping without interruption? I can't even remember!" Jeff is clothed. The boys are clothed. I am clothed. We need nothing. What in the world would I even spend an entire day in Atlanta shopping for? Yet I long for it because somehow it has become a Grizzly that growls in the face of my heart.
What about ME?
God, I want to have fun too. It can't all be serious and straight as an arrow, can it?
"He who loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matthew10:38)
Will find it?
Will find it.
And there, my friends is the crux of this thing. Somehow, we think if we choose a narrow path we will lose out, miss out, have no fun. There's no wrong in abundance of life here--in the thrill of new pursuits, new learning, new hobbies, new things. We are blessed with all things. But if we wish to find our life, then the choosing needs to be sifted through the purposes of God--the keeping of our eyes fixed on Jesus.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. (Matthew 6:22,23)
We are a nation of parents with unhealthy eyes, aren't we? We try to stuff the balloons of our children's lives with year round sports for our children, music lessons, gymnastics, art lessons, Iphones, pods, and pads, with bigger homes, summer camps, programs, opportunities, and . . . more opportunities. And in the end, they don't fly. They're not filled with life. They . . . WE . . .all sink under the weight of it. We don't keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
We are a people with unhealthy eyes too. I am. I focus on the things and people in this world when Jesus whispers Seek me first. Nope. I don't always fix my eyes on him.
And if I did, would he remove all the things and people? I think that's what we're really afraid of, isn't it? Missing out? Losing relationships? Surely, it was this loss that caused Jesus to resist the cup His Father offered.
What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
What.Does.It.Profit?
And I came to give you life to the full. If you lose your life--what you see as life--you will gain the great Life, the abundant Life. Unless a kernel of wheat cracks open and dies, there is no fruit, no life.
Isn't this what Easter is really about? Whether or not you celebrate this holiday, isn't commemorating the resurrection--whenever it occurred--about gratitude for the Man who lost his life? Offering thanks for the man who cracked open?
On Good Friday, we circled around the restored elm table we rescued from an Ontario barn and shared the communion of Jesus' death together. In church, when we take communion, there are these little wafers (they taste like sawdust and wood glue) and we pick them out of a silver platter. We don't break them. But, as a family, we broke the bread we shared. It was significant to me. I broke Jesus. My choices. That was part of his purpose--paying once and for all time for every single one of the times I would choose not to yield.
We say we want to live life to the fullest, but how can it be full if it is apart from God's purposes? Apart from me, you can do nothing.
This narrow path, this keeping the eye healthy by fixing it on Jesus, this yielding to the Creator's way, it is life.
It.Is.Life.
It.Is.Abundant.
It.Is.Joy.
It.Is.Hope.
Taking the cup, the cup offered of God, and drinking it, slowly, one day at a time, one decision at a time, one moment at a time, is the way we celebrate Easter year round. Measuring my decisions based on their return value in eternity despite the roaring grizzly in front of me--it may in the end, make all the difference. It may.
It will.
May I yield to Life.
Pray with me:
Jesus, thank you for breaking open for me, for mankind. Thank you for showing me the way to parent. Thank you for yielding. Thank you for staying the course though the loss was great. Thank you for gaining LIFE for all mankind, for me, through your brokenness. Help me, Jesus, to yield. Amen.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
A Mug of Boiled Water
I can promise you, I'm not happy. I have only two habits--one of which is extremely annoying--that have stuck throughout the years. Playing with my hair (that's the annoying one which leaves both my husband and my brother-in-law cringing and renders my hair perpetually uneven in length due to the breakage caused by said habit) and drinking coffee first thing in the morning. Rain, shine, spring, fall, 100 degrees or twenty, I.drink.coffee. Preferably two mugs. Supersized ones. Period. I have exchanged vanity for coffee stained teeth, and frankly (because I'm sure you'd like to know this) it prevents me from ever needing to buy Metamucil. So, that's the redemptive thing behind the habit.
When spring climbs her way into the north Georgia mountains sprinkling her colors, her drops of green and blackberry-foam purple on violets, her salmon and sangria on the tulips, I like to be present. I do not want to miss one millimeter of growth, of new life exploding as she passes by. I have a routine.
Wake up.
Look out the window and thank God for another day.
Acknowledge Nathan. (who is already awake no matter how early I rise)
Make coffee. (I'm not telling you how many cups. I already told you about the Metamucil)
Get the dog leash. (By now, Jango is shoving me out the door)
Pour coffee.
Walk Jango . . . while sipping coffee.
View Spring as she drips and drops about the hills . . . while sipping coffee.
Examine her work closely in my garden . . . while sipping coffee.
That's it. The rest of the day may not commence until I've done this routine.
So I am sure you will understand my dilemma when I tell you that the first month of my personal SEVEN is food. (If you're wondering what in the world I'm talking about, read my blog post from a couple days ago.) And guess what God just insisted I give up first? Yeah, redundant, I know. Coffee.
Hence the first sentence of this little post. I'm in an extremely agitated-would-bite-someones-head-off-if-I-wasn't-also-in-deep-brain-fog-due-to-caffeine-withdrawal state. Did I mention I have a headache?
For seven months I will commit to seven different themes. The purpose will be in essence a fast with the chief aim being to empty myself that Christ might fill me with His thoughts, His desires, His plans, His goals. Because I really feel strongly about being characterized by what I do and not what I don't do, I've phrased my list for this first month--The Food Month--in this slant. These are things that, after some prayer and good old fashioned honesty with myself, (Yes, self, you are indeed a greedy glutton.) I want to commit a month to pursuing.
1. Do eat organic/unprocessed foods (With a budget that lacks wiggle room, the organic part is going to have to be a little flexible, but I will give it a hearty attempt. Does anyone know if Ramen Noodles come unprocessed and organic?)
4. Do walk away from caffeine. (I’m going to die, starting now.)
5. Do walk away from all sweeteners. (This month has nothing to do with dieting for me. There have been times--like when Cort left a few of his infant pounds in my stomach after he was born--when I needed to kick sugar to the curb from a calorie standpoint. This is different. I'm leaving sweetness, period. I think to live in hunger must be a very bitter thing, and I don't want to sweeten this month artificially, organically, or any other way. I love sweets. Have you ever seen my pictures? My profile picture on facebook was a cake for 2 months for crying out loud! Ignoring that box of Krispy Kremes, the homemade sour cream coffee cake, and the two logs of double chocolate cookie dough in my freezer will be a very...VERY constant reminder of the blessings I have, and the hunger of over 85% of the world.)
6. Do eat before 7PM (I chose 7 PM for obvious reasons—seven. Also, because it gives us time to get late dinners in. We aren't much of a schedule family so I’m not going to be legalistic about supper. The real reason I'm choosing to do this is because I want to cull the savory snacks I treat myself to when the boys have finally settled under their IKEA comforters for the night. I hesitated on this particular one because I didn't want it to be about not eating after seven. You always hear you shouldn't do that if you are dieting. But this is NOT a diet. The bottom line is this is a snack I don't need--a luxury--and there are children in the world who don't get snacks period. I want to feel that. I want to go to bed a little bit hungry. I want, somehow, in some small, microscopic, way to understand what it means to go without something I want.)
7. Do read either In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto or Animal Vegetable Miracle: A year of Food Life (I did the Omnivore's Dilemma thing and it was great for about the first three chapters. Then I started falling asleep. He made his point . . . more than once. I'm hoping these books will give me a little more understanding of the reality of what we eat and its impact on the world as a whole and on my family's bodies too.)
I also hope to visit or view online a processing plant for meat. And I intend to take one day each week and attempt to eat like the poor of Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala and Ecuador. These are four countries that pinch at my heart. This part I will do with the boys; we'll go online to learn more about the conditions of these particular nations. And speaking of the boys, so far, they've been very kind. I had anticipated them giving me the mom, you are going to slowly torture us for an entire month? look, but they haven't. Already, they're willing to quit the processed/fast food stuff for the month, though one of them is begging for the remaining Dr. Bob (I know, I'm cheap) that's been sitting on the counter over a week.
I do live in North America ,and I have so many choices that I no longer understand what it means to live without any choices. Here we are in what some call Holy Week . . . those sacred days that we've placed on the calendar to remind us of the brokenness of Christ. Surely Jesus ached with thoughts of what He would face, what He would endure that we might have life.
"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich." (II Cor. 8:9)
He became poor. Gave up. Sacrificed. Relinquished.
When spring climbs her way into the north Georgia mountains sprinkling her colors, her drops of green and blackberry-foam purple on violets, her salmon and sangria on the tulips, I like to be present. I do not want to miss one millimeter of growth, of new life exploding as she passes by. I have a routine.
Wake up.
Look out the window and thank God for another day.
Acknowledge Nathan. (who is already awake no matter how early I rise)
Make coffee. (I'm not telling you how many cups. I already told you about the Metamucil)
Get the dog leash. (By now, Jango is shoving me out the door)
Pour coffee.
Walk Jango . . . while sipping coffee.
View Spring as she drips and drops about the hills . . . while sipping coffee.
Examine her work closely in my garden . . . while sipping coffee.
That's it. The rest of the day may not commence until I've done this routine.
So I am sure you will understand my dilemma when I tell you that the first month of my personal SEVEN is food. (If you're wondering what in the world I'm talking about, read my blog post from a couple days ago.) And guess what God just insisted I give up first? Yeah, redundant, I know. Coffee.
Hence the first sentence of this little post. I'm in an extremely agitated-would-bite-someones-head-off-if-I-wasn't-also-in-deep-brain-fog-due-to-caffeine-withdrawal state. Did I mention I have a headache?
For seven months I will commit to seven different themes. The purpose will be in essence a fast with the chief aim being to empty myself that Christ might fill me with His thoughts, His desires, His plans, His goals. Because I really feel strongly about being characterized by what I do and not what I don't do, I've phrased my list for this first month--The Food Month--in this slant. These are things that, after some prayer and good old fashioned honesty with myself, (Yes, self, you are indeed a greedy glutton.) I want to commit a month to pursuing.
1. Do eat organic/unprocessed foods (With a budget that lacks wiggle room, the organic part is going to have to be a little flexible, but I will give it a hearty attempt. Does anyone know if Ramen Noodles come unprocessed and organic?)
2. Do eat only whole grains. (Sadness. I'm baking fresh WHITE bread tomorrow for a friend's birthday, and I would normally double the batch and keep a loaf for us.)
3. Do eat fruit/veggie with every meal, and only fruits and veggies for snacks. (Here I will try to use things from my garden every day. We are in salad season, so this will help offset some of the organic cost since I keep my garden pretty much organic.)
4. Do walk away from caffeine. (I’m going to die, starting now.)
5. Do walk away from all sweeteners. (This month has nothing to do with dieting for me. There have been times--like when Cort left a few of his infant pounds in my stomach after he was born--when I needed to kick sugar to the curb from a calorie standpoint. This is different. I'm leaving sweetness, period. I think to live in hunger must be a very bitter thing, and I don't want to sweeten this month artificially, organically, or any other way. I love sweets. Have you ever seen my pictures? My profile picture on facebook was a cake for 2 months for crying out loud! Ignoring that box of Krispy Kremes, the homemade sour cream coffee cake, and the two logs of double chocolate cookie dough in my freezer will be a very...VERY constant reminder of the blessings I have, and the hunger of over 85% of the world.)
6. Do eat before 7PM (I chose 7 PM for obvious reasons—seven. Also, because it gives us time to get late dinners in. We aren't much of a schedule family so I’m not going to be legalistic about supper. The real reason I'm choosing to do this is because I want to cull the savory snacks I treat myself to when the boys have finally settled under their IKEA comforters for the night. I hesitated on this particular one because I didn't want it to be about not eating after seven. You always hear you shouldn't do that if you are dieting. But this is NOT a diet. The bottom line is this is a snack I don't need--a luxury--and there are children in the world who don't get snacks period. I want to feel that. I want to go to bed a little bit hungry. I want, somehow, in some small, microscopic, way to understand what it means to go without something I want.)
7. Do read either In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto or Animal Vegetable Miracle: A year of Food Life (I did the Omnivore's Dilemma thing and it was great for about the first three chapters. Then I started falling asleep. He made his point . . . more than once. I'm hoping these books will give me a little more understanding of the reality of what we eat and its impact on the world as a whole and on my family's bodies too.)
I also hope to visit or view online a processing plant for meat. And I intend to take one day each week and attempt to eat like the poor of Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala and Ecuador. These are four countries that pinch at my heart. This part I will do with the boys; we'll go online to learn more about the conditions of these particular nations. And speaking of the boys, so far, they've been very kind. I had anticipated them giving me the mom, you are going to slowly torture us for an entire month? look, but they haven't. Already, they're willing to quit the processed/fast food stuff for the month, though one of them is begging for the remaining Dr. Bob (I know, I'm cheap) that's been sitting on the counter over a week.
Basically, I've chosen to do food for a few reasons. One--I'm a glutton, and I know it. Two--every five seconds a child dies from hunger or preventable disease. I need to get my head wrapped around that from a compassion standpoint. I also need to process that fact in light of the fact that I just might be able to sponsor a child from Compassion if I am willing to eliminate/drastically reduce consumption of things like coffee. Three--Jen Hatmaker says in her book Seven that we get to vote every day with our fork. And we do. I do. I'm guilty of supporting some not so great, definitely not ethical (But who cares about animals and the environment...right? Apparently God.) practices when it comes to growing and butchering meat. When I eat foods laden with high fructose corn syrup, again, I'm voting. And I need to explore that from a stewardship of my body and the earth standpoint.
I have no idea where I will land, and I'm not making any granola'ish promises that I will become a wild mushroom, poke salad eating vegan. That's pretty unlikely. Some of you may think I'm a little off my rocker and others of you may be thinking my SEVEN are pretty lame. No matter--you don't have to read :-) I really debated even posting any of this. Do they even care about this sort of thing? Do they want to read about my addiction to coffee and sweets? Does anyone read the blog at all?Probably not. But, maybe, just maybe there are a few of you out there who understand where I'm coming from. See for me, food can be my life, and my only concern is that I don't get too fat. (What? I'm being honest.) So, if I eat what I want, have a jog, and can still fit in my Ann Taylor jeans, then it's all good. But is it? Really? Because for some people in our world, food really is their life. And they haven't any. And Jesus said He came that they might have life. Dare I withhold the very thing Christ came to give? I stole this Thomas More quote from a friend's facebook page because he says it better than me. “It's wrong to deprive someone else of a pleasure so that you can enjoy one yourself, but to deprive yourself of a pleasure so that you can add to someone else's enjoyment is an act of humanity by which you always gain more than you lose.”
A theme for me this month will be this verse.
A theme for me this month will be this verse.
"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body," (II Cor. 6:19-20)
You are not your own.
Really? Because I'm afraid I've been eating like I am entirely my own and that I'm entitled to have what I want. I'm afraid I've eaten from a vain perspective instead of a tending of the frame that God crafted approach.
Therefore honor God with your body.
The choices I make either honor my God or mar His image. Just because I can get away with eating whatever I want from a physical standpoint doesn't mean I have honored God. And if what I eat causes another person to have less, than I have in fact, dishonored Him.
So, here I am beginning. Already today while sipping my boiled water from a Tim Horton's (the best coffee place in the world for my American friends who don't know) mug, I doubted this entire thing. Why would anyone want to torture themselves? God allowed me to be born in North America; He must have wanted me to have these things. At church tonight I had to bring my own supper because I wasn't very confident that their meal would be SEVEN approved. Someone immediately noticed my organic Greek yogurt and said . . . and I kid you not, "Yogurt? Really? You live in North America with all these choices and you pick yogurt?" (She had no idea I was doing this . . . otherwise she'd have been a thousand percent supportive.) But, it proves my point exactly.
I do live in North America ,and I have so many choices that I no longer understand what it means to live without any choices. Here we are in what some call Holy Week . . . those sacred days that we've placed on the calendar to remind us of the brokenness of Christ. Surely Jesus ached with thoughts of what He would face, what He would endure that we might have life.
"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich." (II Cor. 8:9)
He became poor. Gave up. Sacrificed. Relinquished.
That I might gain the riches of eternity.
May I become poor that someone else may gain those same blessings.
Amen.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
SEVEN: A New Kind of Fast
I like to blame things on my parents. They gave me their genes--wide feet, chubby cheeks (all four), and the-caterpillar-for-eyebrows. Thanks for that, Mom and Dad. They nurtured me too. That meant tea parties with Mom, endless hours soaking sun at the lake (so yeah, that's gonna mean skin cancer), loving food, loving the outcasts and misfits (never a holiday where we didn't sit elbow to elbow with some eclectic conglomeration of people who may not have had any other place to celebrate that year), and loving Jesus. With Dad it has always been about the underdogs of the world. His heart is tender; he cries over chickens squashed in cages and about went bankrupt feeding stray cats who I swear migrated from all six other continents when they heard he was filling Rubbermaid bins with food for them. He is color blind for real, but it wouldn't matter if he could see color correctly. He still wouldn't see it. The world, for him, is shaded by justice, inequality/equality, and thinking critically about what we believe to be true. So, what you are about to read is entirely their fault. You've been warned.
I just can't accept status quo. I can't NOT rock the boat. Not in my nature. I think about things. (I explained this in the first paragraph.) For quite some time now I've been uncomfortable with a few things--namely, I don't go hungry, nor do my children, but starvation manages to murder a child every five seconds, I live in a large, comfortable, 72 degree house while almost 1.5 million (can't even fathom that number) were without shelter in 2011 in the US alone, and a few pesky verses like that one about how religion that's pure and faultless tends to look after widows and orphans, and there are something like 15 million without mother or father in the world. So, while most of us are thinking about where we are taking our annual beach vacay, I'm haunted by the justice gene, the loving of the downtrodden gene, and I can't manage to pull the trigger on all the new GROUPON vacation bargains to viva la Mexico. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.
In reality, I'm a tough nut to crack. God has to peel back the scales that seal my eyes to the truths of His Word and how He intended them to be applied. If I'm being honest, both spiritually speaking and economically speaking, in comparison with the rest of the world, I'm a saturated sponge. Completely saturated. I grew up in church, learned to read using the King James Bible as my primary text, and I've never gone hungry a day in my life. Never. So, that puts me in a privileged category. Privileged and so full, I can't always fathom what it means to need, to want, to hunger, to thirst. And in a spiritual sense, I've read the red words of Jesus so many times, heard the sermons so many times, sung the songs, that they have become like white noise in the background. So, God has to peel back these scales, cause a bit of a ruckus until I'm raw, squeeze the sponge until it thirsts again for Living Water.
Enter a chance post from a dear Canadian friend (Hi, Dani!) that linked me to a random blog that tugged at scales like you tug at a Band-Aid when you're trying to rip it off fast. Ouch and Wow! It was here, at Jen Hatmaker's website that I first saw her book Seven: an experimental mutiny against excess. (Leave me alone grammar police; she didn't capitalize the letters in her title, and she has an editor! K?) Jen's premise? We have far more say in what happens in our world than we realize. We vote everyday with our wallets, with our forks, with our garbage, with our time. We are called to love God and love others, and we are doing a shoddy job at best. She started with herself and decided to commit seven months to purge seven specific areas of excess in her life.
Her words: "I started praying about what God wanted; what would move me closer to His agenda and further from mine? How could this be meaningful, not just narcissistic and futile? What areas needed the most renovation? How am I blind and why? Where have I substituted The American Dream for God's kingdom? What in my life, in the lives of most westerners, is just too stinking much?
I approach this project in the spirit of a fast: an intentional reduction, a deliberate abstinence to summon God's movement in my life. A fast creates margin for God to move." (pg. 4)
How am I blind and why? Mmmm. Most people unable to see are aware of their deficiency, but I'm afraid I've been a blind gal thinking she knew where she was going. And when Jesus said, "Seek Ye first the Kingdom of God," (Matt. 6:33) I'm afraid I understood Him to mean, "As long as you seek me a lot, squeeze in everything else you possibly can, Sarah."
Where have I substituted the American Dream for God's kingdom? Okay, I'm reading Radical for the second time through. This whole American Dream vs. God's kingdom business? Just.Starting.To.Sink.In. Just starting. I don't even know if I should say it's sinking in--remember the saturated sponge problem? We can spend so much time listening, reading, hearing about God loving us that we become sopping,heavy, wet with love and yet it is that very love that "compels us" (II Cor. 5:14) to motion. Mary, sweet Mary (I kinda hate her) may have chosen the more excellent thing when she sat, soaking at Jesus' feet, but I can promise you that if she remained at his feet, he would have eventually told her to get up, go pick up her cross, and FOLLOW Him. Surely He didn't praise her choice because she was sitting; I have to believe it had to do with the fact that she was filling herself up. But, fellow Americans, our threshold for fullness is broken. We are so prone to excess we no longer even know how to stop feeding. We are a engorged people. I am an engorged woman.
Follow Me. "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) Jesus called us into action, motion. And in truth, He modelled it for us, didn't He? At the cross? Like dressing the the sun or the moon, Christ clothed his holiness in the cloak of mortality, and walked among wayward, willful, wandering humanity. And though there were only a few steps up the Golgotha's hill where carried his crucifixion cross, he had carried it his entire earthly life, hadn't he?
So I'm thinking of His words--the follow me words--and wondering, where? Where will I follow Him? When I was young I thought the ultimate test of my willingness to follow would be geographical. Would I go to Africa? Would I? But now I'm not so sure. It turns out Africa might have been easier for me than denying myself here in the have-it-your-way-right-away culture of North America. In fact, it turns out, you can run clear across the globe shouting the salvation of Jesus and never once pick up your cross and follow Him.
And what, my friends, if that's me? Plucking at keys and yakking in small groups and I'm only a resounding gong, a clanging symbol whose sound causes Christ to cringe?
What if when we post Joshua's Words in walnut frames on the walls of our homes, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord..." (Joshua 24:15) we are foolish enough to think that our commitment to go to church on Sunday, maybe teach a Sunday School class, attend a small group, and tithe exactly ten percent reads as a life of solidarity with the man who obeyed God in CRAZY ways (Would you fight a battle by walking around some city walls in silence repeatedly, day after day?) when in reality we are really hiding behind a modern version of the Mosaic Law? Solidarity? I'm thinking not.
What if I raise my hands in worship on Sunday, but my life is a pair of hands clenched into fists grasping, gripping, groping for my American Dream when the world is hungry for true worship. The worship of a life lived out of love. A life of motion. A life that sacrifices in this life to gain that which cannot be taken in the next life.
What if I'm a part of a corporate body of Christ that has gone into a sugared-life induced coma and we lay, lifeless, motionless while the world dies?
What if my two cup of coffee a morning habit is the cause of a Compassion child NOT being sponsored because I say there's no room in the budget. I mean are you kidding me? I can't give up coffee in this temporary life so a child will have a chance to live, period? To one day hear of Jesus' love? I mean don't the rivers flow Columbian brew in heaven? Could I not wait 'til eternity to continue the habbit? Yeah, what if?
I read her entire book in a very short amount of time. (Okay, it may have been a good distraction from the ten million pages of our Family Book Club book, Atlas Shrugged. Sorry, guys, I'll get back to it, I promise.) You should too. (Read her book--The verdict's still out on Atlas) Go here to find out more about SEVEN. Three words in and I knew I'd have to do this. Knew I needed to do this. Knew God brought me to this. And the timing is perfect. One week before Easter, I'm a little late for Lent, but maybe I'm right on time to Follow Him into the Garden. I see Him there, praying. I see his face, washed red with blood vessels broken--a foreshadowing of what would come. I see Him there, releasing every single ounce of personal ambition and desire. My Savior, planting surrender. My Savior, watering it with drops of bloody sweat so it would grow into a ransom for my muddy mired heart, and not just for mine, but for mankind's.
I too want that level of surrender, and I wonder if a fasting time might not be the way to train myself. In her book, Jen Hatmaker says, "After saying "no" to things I wanted for nearly a year, I guess I gained some control over my emotions and impulses. God used fasting as a tool to curb my appetites and regulate my reactions. It was a concise realization: "Something in me has deeply changed."
Perhaps this is why Scripture calls us to the practise of fasting--from food, from greed, from selfishness, from luxuries. It isn't just the experience; it's the discipline. It changes us. Fasting helps us develop mastery over the competing voices in our heads that urge us toward more, toward indulgence, toward emotional volatility. Like consistent discipline eventually shapes our children's behavior, so it is with us. Believe it or not, God can still change us. Not just our habits but our hearts. Say "no" for a year and see for yourself." (Seven, pg. 219)
I'm going to see for myself, friends. Along the way, I hope to share with you what I'm learning, what I'm seeing. For now, I'm standing aware of the thousands of competing voices demanding I seek them first, but my hands are open, my ears are strained. I'm listening for the still, small voice.
Pray with me:
Lord, what are my SEVEN?
I just can't accept status quo. I can't NOT rock the boat. Not in my nature. I think about things. (I explained this in the first paragraph.) For quite some time now I've been uncomfortable with a few things--namely, I don't go hungry, nor do my children, but starvation manages to murder a child every five seconds, I live in a large, comfortable, 72 degree house while almost 1.5 million (can't even fathom that number) were without shelter in 2011 in the US alone, and a few pesky verses like that one about how religion that's pure and faultless tends to look after widows and orphans, and there are something like 15 million without mother or father in the world. So, while most of us are thinking about where we are taking our annual beach vacay, I'm haunted by the justice gene, the loving of the downtrodden gene, and I can't manage to pull the trigger on all the new GROUPON vacation bargains to viva la Mexico. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.
In reality, I'm a tough nut to crack. God has to peel back the scales that seal my eyes to the truths of His Word and how He intended them to be applied. If I'm being honest, both spiritually speaking and economically speaking, in comparison with the rest of the world, I'm a saturated sponge. Completely saturated. I grew up in church, learned to read using the King James Bible as my primary text, and I've never gone hungry a day in my life. Never. So, that puts me in a privileged category. Privileged and so full, I can't always fathom what it means to need, to want, to hunger, to thirst. And in a spiritual sense, I've read the red words of Jesus so many times, heard the sermons so many times, sung the songs, that they have become like white noise in the background. So, God has to peel back these scales, cause a bit of a ruckus until I'm raw, squeeze the sponge until it thirsts again for Living Water.
Enter a chance post from a dear Canadian friend (Hi, Dani!) that linked me to a random blog that tugged at scales like you tug at a Band-Aid when you're trying to rip it off fast. Ouch and Wow! It was here, at Jen Hatmaker's website that I first saw her book Seven: an experimental mutiny against excess. (Leave me alone grammar police; she didn't capitalize the letters in her title, and she has an editor! K?) Jen's premise? We have far more say in what happens in our world than we realize. We vote everyday with our wallets, with our forks, with our garbage, with our time. We are called to love God and love others, and we are doing a shoddy job at best. She started with herself and decided to commit seven months to purge seven specific areas of excess in her life.
Her words: "I started praying about what God wanted; what would move me closer to His agenda and further from mine? How could this be meaningful, not just narcissistic and futile? What areas needed the most renovation? How am I blind and why? Where have I substituted The American Dream for God's kingdom? What in my life, in the lives of most westerners, is just too stinking much?
- Food
- Clothes
- Possessions
- Media
- Waste
- Spending
- Stress
I approach this project in the spirit of a fast: an intentional reduction, a deliberate abstinence to summon God's movement in my life. A fast creates margin for God to move." (pg. 4)
How am I blind and why? Mmmm. Most people unable to see are aware of their deficiency, but I'm afraid I've been a blind gal thinking she knew where she was going. And when Jesus said, "Seek Ye first the Kingdom of God," (Matt. 6:33) I'm afraid I understood Him to mean, "As long as you seek me a lot, squeeze in everything else you possibly can, Sarah."
Where have I substituted the American Dream for God's kingdom? Okay, I'm reading Radical for the second time through. This whole American Dream vs. God's kingdom business? Just.Starting.To.Sink.In. Just starting. I don't even know if I should say it's sinking in--remember the saturated sponge problem? We can spend so much time listening, reading, hearing about God loving us that we become sopping,heavy, wet with love and yet it is that very love that "compels us" (II Cor. 5:14) to motion. Mary, sweet Mary (I kinda hate her) may have chosen the more excellent thing when she sat, soaking at Jesus' feet, but I can promise you that if she remained at his feet, he would have eventually told her to get up, go pick up her cross, and FOLLOW Him. Surely He didn't praise her choice because she was sitting; I have to believe it had to do with the fact that she was filling herself up. But, fellow Americans, our threshold for fullness is broken. We are so prone to excess we no longer even know how to stop feeding. We are a engorged people. I am an engorged woman.
Follow Me. "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) Jesus called us into action, motion. And in truth, He modelled it for us, didn't He? At the cross? Like dressing the the sun or the moon, Christ clothed his holiness in the cloak of mortality, and walked among wayward, willful, wandering humanity. And though there were only a few steps up the Golgotha's hill where carried his crucifixion cross, he had carried it his entire earthly life, hadn't he?
So I'm thinking of His words--the follow me words--and wondering, where? Where will I follow Him? When I was young I thought the ultimate test of my willingness to follow would be geographical. Would I go to Africa? Would I? But now I'm not so sure. It turns out Africa might have been easier for me than denying myself here in the have-it-your-way-right-away culture of North America. In fact, it turns out, you can run clear across the globe shouting the salvation of Jesus and never once pick up your cross and follow Him.
And what, my friends, if that's me? Plucking at keys and yakking in small groups and I'm only a resounding gong, a clanging symbol whose sound causes Christ to cringe?
What if when we post Joshua's Words in walnut frames on the walls of our homes, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord..." (Joshua 24:15) we are foolish enough to think that our commitment to go to church on Sunday, maybe teach a Sunday School class, attend a small group, and tithe exactly ten percent reads as a life of solidarity with the man who obeyed God in CRAZY ways (Would you fight a battle by walking around some city walls in silence repeatedly, day after day?) when in reality we are really hiding behind a modern version of the Mosaic Law? Solidarity? I'm thinking not.
What if I raise my hands in worship on Sunday, but my life is a pair of hands clenched into fists grasping, gripping, groping for my American Dream when the world is hungry for true worship. The worship of a life lived out of love. A life of motion. A life that sacrifices in this life to gain that which cannot be taken in the next life.
What if I'm a part of a corporate body of Christ that has gone into a sugared-life induced coma and we lay, lifeless, motionless while the world dies?
What if my two cup of coffee a morning habit is the cause of a Compassion child NOT being sponsored because I say there's no room in the budget. I mean are you kidding me? I can't give up coffee in this temporary life so a child will have a chance to live, period? To one day hear of Jesus' love? I mean don't the rivers flow Columbian brew in heaven? Could I not wait 'til eternity to continue the habbit? Yeah, what if?
I read her entire book in a very short amount of time. (Okay, it may have been a good distraction from the ten million pages of our Family Book Club book, Atlas Shrugged. Sorry, guys, I'll get back to it, I promise.) You should too. (Read her book--The verdict's still out on Atlas) Go here to find out more about SEVEN. Three words in and I knew I'd have to do this. Knew I needed to do this. Knew God brought me to this. And the timing is perfect. One week before Easter, I'm a little late for Lent, but maybe I'm right on time to Follow Him into the Garden. I see Him there, praying. I see his face, washed red with blood vessels broken--a foreshadowing of what would come. I see Him there, releasing every single ounce of personal ambition and desire. My Savior, planting surrender. My Savior, watering it with drops of bloody sweat so it would grow into a ransom for my muddy mired heart, and not just for mine, but for mankind's.
I too want that level of surrender, and I wonder if a fasting time might not be the way to train myself. In her book, Jen Hatmaker says, "After saying "no" to things I wanted for nearly a year, I guess I gained some control over my emotions and impulses. God used fasting as a tool to curb my appetites and regulate my reactions. It was a concise realization: "Something in me has deeply changed."
Perhaps this is why Scripture calls us to the practise of fasting--from food, from greed, from selfishness, from luxuries. It isn't just the experience; it's the discipline. It changes us. Fasting helps us develop mastery over the competing voices in our heads that urge us toward more, toward indulgence, toward emotional volatility. Like consistent discipline eventually shapes our children's behavior, so it is with us. Believe it or not, God can still change us. Not just our habits but our hearts. Say "no" for a year and see for yourself." (Seven, pg. 219)
I'm going to see for myself, friends. Along the way, I hope to share with you what I'm learning, what I'm seeing. For now, I'm standing aware of the thousands of competing voices demanding I seek them first, but my hands are open, my ears are strained. I'm listening for the still, small voice.
Pray with me:
Lord, what are my SEVEN?
Sunday, December 25, 2011
So I'm not serving Blackberry, Cranberry Compote This Year
This is what I hate about the Christmas season. Every year I try. Really. REALLY try to simplify. To plan well. To do in advance. To remember it isn't about presents but about presence--that of our family and that of JESUS. Try to keep Christ central. But then comes the crescendo of last minute items unchecked from the lists of labors loudly lamenting my inefficiency. That crescendo that crowds out the spirit singing Silent Night, Holy Night. That crescendo that blows to smitherines all my careful, meticulous planning.
And tension mounts.
Grows like snow falling in Ontario winters.
Soft and slow at first, a blanket that wraps me, but it becomes heavier, weightier. And it isn't long before I am suffocating, snowed in by it all, my shovel is still in Ontario, and I'm in Georgia and I can't get out.
Blinded by the blizzard.
Blinded to the light.
That's where I was when Jeff was playing airsoft, and I was transferring my blackberry, cranberry compote from stove to fridge. Blinded and singing myself a pity song. That's where I was when the Pyrex pranced out of my hands and like Santa and his reindeer, pirouetted across the kitchen plopping herself onto planked-floor slinging her fruity purple slop on every surface within a twelve mile radius. And I saw stars. (Not the one on my tree or the one from Bethlehem.) A bull chasing red, air coursed my from nostrils, and I'm sure my ears were chimneys and smoke billowed from them.
Thirty minutes I spent cleaning that mess. Wiping doors, table legs-chair legs-stool legs, pantry cupboards, under the refrigerator. How is it possible for compote to centripetally sail in every direction when I had only been traveling in one? I know it multiplied as it flew. Thirty minutes I didn't have. Not in my schedule.
Third batch of short breads waiting to be whipped, and two chickens chanting to be roasted. Counters littered with baking debris and my heart hurting.
"Lord, I know this is a season of joy, but I hate this. I can't see you in this. And how ridiculous is it that I, one so blessed, am seething when I should be singing?"
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it." (John :1-5)
The darkness has not mastered it.
The darkness of life--of the moments when gooey, glorified fruit relish slink down our walls--can overwhelm. Can blind. Can snow a soul in.
And I am ashamed when that is my darkness. Want to deny it. Pretend it isn't dark. Pretend the picket fence isn't stained, and the world is perfect because how dare I consider my world dark when there is a deeper shade of black than I have ever known? Children hunger. Children thirst, cry for a mother who is gone, a father who never cared in the first place. Men and women in parks huddle hoping to stay warm on their bench-beds. How can I, fortunate daughter of North America, claim darkness?
Darkness dawns many shades and she is all humanity's beast of the soul.
Christian. Not Christian. Child. Adult. Homebound or homeless. Prince or Pauper. We all know her shadow. She has dressed as serpent tricking Eve to taste, she has heaved her heavy blanket on hunched shoulders and stayed until the doctors give pills, she has clinched fists and coerced them into slinging, she has blinded the rich man to the homeless man, and she has tempted the weary mother to wallow in the mire of miscellaneous mountains that demand her attention. I know because I am that mother, and I have seen darkness dance. I've taken her dangling arm and waltzed a round or two.
But the darkness has not mastered the light.
That word mastered means to overcome it, to overtake it. The darkness has never overtaken the light. Never. No matter the shade, she cannot conquer The Light of the World. I recall the words of Peter, the young boy in Elizabeth Yates' classic, Once in the Year when he asks Benj to further explain what happened when the angels appeared to the shepherds, "What had happened, Benj? What made the night turn to light?"
What indeed makes the night turn to light?
I sat on the floor, eyes giving way to waterfalls of emotion--a mother tired of mothering, and I whispered, "Immanuel--LIGHT with me."
"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us." (Matthew 1:23)
These dark moments. They're why He came. To redeem them. To cast light when we can't see beyond ourselves.
These moments when celebrating Christmas is a serrated knife to our gut because we're saying goodbye to the family member we loved, when children still thirst in countries an airplane ride away, when teenage children are parents too early, and even the moments when we can't find a justifiable reason. These are the moments Immanuel--God with us--came for. They are the moments that make us eligble for His grace.
The moments when we say,
"Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me..."
But the darkness will not master light.
"...even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you."
(Psalm 139:11,12)
And that night was a mess, but it was indeed a holy night in my kitchen.
Oh, holy night, the stars were brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior's birth.
It was holy not because I felt like the serene images of Mary--hair long, clothed in pallid blue, halo over head--but because Immanuel is brighter than the darkness that overwhelms.
And the wise men followed a star that moved as they moved, guiding them to Ultimate Light.
And I too can follow The Light of Men, follow Him from darkness into light.
I cleaned in silence, wiping away the mess of my own making--my haste, my rushing. It isn't the repercussions, the ramifications, the ripple effects that are altered by the light. It is in the heart that walks through the ramifications--the valleys of the shadows of death, the cleaning of compote, the closing of caskets, the calling out to God for wayward children--that Light makes a difference. Immanuel, God with us, God in us who follow Him, is the meaning of hope, the meaning of Joy To The World.
There is not just light at the end of the tunnel, there is light through the tunnel, within us as we pass her cavernous way.
And Christmas is about that light.
It is the slowing time.
The time when we light up a thousand trees and top them with glowing stars. Just the other day I laughed in wonder at God's own light display dripping in my front yard. Not long after dawn He had ladled the dew so heavy on lanky limbs of maple trees that tiny one centimeter balls of liquid luminated the morning while blue birds made their nests nearby. God's own Christmas tree.
And those bulbs would reflect the sun.
Too, I am a reflection of His Light. The reflection of Son light in my home, my neighborhood, my little world. Sometimes a poor one, it is true.
When the floors and walls were cleaned, I stood, still steaming slightly. Emotions don't always dissolve, but they are like the shadow of a monstrous cat that nested in the folds of insulation between the ceiling joists of my unfinished childhood ceiling, that dawn slowly erased.
And when, moments later, mom came I took shelter in the human arms that God sent, the mother's arms who never stops mothering. Because we are human, after all. We need the touching, the telling that all is well.
But my spirit already knew. Immanuel was there.
And this is the hope of Christmas, that darkness will never master light.
There will be no cranberry, blackberry froo froo on my Christmas table this year, but lighted candles there will be.
To remind me.
He is here.
Here.
With Us.
Through it all.
Amen.
Pray with me:
Immanuel, God come down into my messy kitchen, stepping with me across sticky floors. Immanuel. Teach me to see the holiness in every moment. Teach me to see the burning of your Light when darkness shrouds my soul. Let me be a display of Your Light to those with greater darkness than my own. Help me to fix my gaze on You that my eyes will be good and my soul will be so full that a shivering world is wormed by your reflection in me. Amen
Sunday, November 27, 2011
The Chreestmas Boys--When Less Becomes More
Little shades of brown in itchy blue oxfords wiggling, squirming, inching and us--almond milk skin, hair any shade we choose, and clothes any style that suits. We make small talk among ourselves and grin-gaze across the room at khaki pants and collars colored sky. We wait. Somebody's doing paperwork, and it seems like we're waiting an hour. They eye us cautiously, but familiar. They've done this before. We eye them, giddy. We're all thinking the same thoughts. Which one is ours? Which sweet thing do we get to take home and love on?
And maybe they were thinking too. Will I have a bed tonight or will I sleep on a pallet? Will I share or have my own? What will they feed me? Will the house be too worm? Will it be too cold? Are there dogs at the new home? I'm afraid of dogs. Will their children be nice to me? And it's me that finally asks because it doesn't seem natural for us to sit and stare--they're humans after all, not puppies. Can we talk to them?
Then there's an explosion of bodies, mixing, asking, helloing, and we're all on the floor with them--red and yellow, black and white. Hands shaking hands, ears straining to understand accents not native, and all of us smiling to tell them in the universal language that we are kind, we are safe, we will love them.
A few weeks prior, I asked him if we could host two boys from Children of the World. (http://www.worldhelp.net/cotw/) He's my husband; he knows my heart has rooms for a thousand more children. He knew it would impact us. It did. How can you invite two children from impoverished circumstances into your lives for a few days and NOT expect your hearts to be sliced just a little? We would give them the boys' beds; we would skip school on Monday, spend the day spoiling these little lives. We did that. We are still bleeding.
The man in charge enters the room, papers in fist--a list of rules--all of them designed for the children's comfort and protection.
Don't ask about their past.
But I want to know. I want to know just what it is they will return to. I want to know if they will make it into adulthood. I want to know if they have a mother waiting for them. Is she burying face in pillow at night crying out the raw loss of giving up her little boy for ten whole months? Is she praying he'll learn English well enough to give him a better chance in life? Is she wondering about him while I carry his suitcase--a Jenson containing everything he has in the entire world--to my hybrid? I look at night sky and tell her--heart speaking to heart--I'll be good to him. I understand he's precious cargo. And I long to hold her too, that sweet mother born in a world where her options were so few that separation from the child she grew within would be the sacrifice demanded of her.
Maybe it is me the rules are made to protect. Perhaps my heart would crush beneath the weight of the truth.
They travel the United States for the flipping of ten calendar pages and sing--a choir of needs and hopes in children's frames--to promote awareness, to get sponsors. They sing for their lives.
Water you turned into wine...
They sing these words--they that come from a world with no water, while mine flows freely from 7 different taps at any temperature I desire.
Open the Eyes of the blind.
And it is me that is blind--blind to the needs of the world. Blinded by my own wants, by a country whose God is their stomach, by a media that insists I need everything on sale on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and my online shopping carts are filled. My stomach is engorged, and I am blind. Open my eyes.
They are hungry. They are thirsty, and they sing about the God who is greater, the God that turns water--that precious thing they walk three hours one way for--into wine for wedding feasts.
God, you are higher than any other.
They sing and I wonder if they understand.
But they do. They understand more than I do. It is I who will learn this week.
If our God is for us, than who could ever stop us?
And If our God is with us, than what could stand against?
I wonder if it is I, a part of North American selfishness, that has stood against what God wanted to do. Could He have used me to share. Did I stand against these sweet children while I filled my closets and my stomach. Were they stumbling over dusty paths with parched tongues like double sided tape while I quenched my thirst with the flick of an oil rubbed bronze tap?
We travel home; the conversation is hard. I don't know what to ask--me, the girl who always has something to say. They respond with "yes" to everything leaving me aching for their true thoughts, their true opinions. My own boys know exactly where they want to eat, and the olive and the black skinned children are just 'yessing' me no matter what I suggest. Yes to ice cream. Yes to McDonald's. Yes to eating at the house. Yes to rice. Yes to juice. Yes to water. Yes to chocolate milk. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then, I hear it--a gasp in word form. The olive skinned one with buzz cut says, "The lights. I love the lights!" His exclamation was a whisper unused to expressing itself.
This one likes the Christmas lights. He thinks. He feels.
And he sings for his life. For the life of others and probably doesn't know the luxury of expressing his own opinions and ideas. But He likes lights; I heard the gasp. Without hesitation, I start driving to town Square where our tree is lit up, lighted holly and poinsettias dangle from lampposts. I drive by every single house I know of that is lit all the way home. He utters and exclaims, and I point left, and my own boys point right, and we are all in awe of the light.
Jesus says, I am their light. These that know the greatest darkness receive The Light readily because they're not blinded by the gaudy light of the world like I am. They see Him. They exclaim over Him.
Christmas music seeps from the speakers into the car, and I sing a bar--a note here and there to fill the empty spaces. They are timid; I hurt at their silent moments. Are they afraid to speak? Do they know the lady whose car in which they ride would keep them forever if she could? Do they understand that she is suffocating sobs because she knows what it is to love a boy, and there are two who just might need that loving bumping shoulders in her back seat? Do they know that were they to cry she would hold them until the night ended? The music is throbbing from the speakers and Drummer Boy begins. I turn the volume up and palm flat I bang the beat onto the console, "Uganda, do you know this one? It's perfect for you! It's the Drummer Boy! Can you hear the drum?" He hears it. He begins the rhythm with me. My boys join in. And we are an international percussion section united by a rhythm we all understand. Shall I play for you pah rum puh pum pum beats air and our hands are bang bang banging on any surface we can find. I wonder which is louder, the beating of my hand or the beating of my heart.
The song ends and we are happy, laughing. Their smiles are electricity; my boys are feeling the shock. We want them to smile enough for a lifetime. Can we give them enough to last? Away In a Manger begins. They recognize it, tell me it is their carol. They sing it. The tune is a little different. We laugh when we all mess it up. But there was no crib for his bed and I wonder what bed they will return to. When the second verse begins I am dumbstruck. Bless all the dear children in thy tender care. Where has that line been my entire life? How many times have I sung those lyrics and not prayed them, not understood I was asking Jesus to bless ALL the children? All of them, in his tender care. All of them. Even these. These two that for forty-eight ridiculously short hours will be mine to give smiles, laughter, joy. The remainder of their lives will be in his tender care. Can I accept His tender care as sufficient?
And how can I sing the words, ask Him to bless, but turn my own eyes away when they leave? What if it is through me He wants to bless them? What if it is through you? http://www.worldhelp.net/cotw/sponsor/
But what if it is me He wants to bless through them? It is He who turned water into wine. He doesn't need my pennies to drill wells and deliver rice. They don't need me--their God is greater--it is I who needs them. I need their need in order to be freed. It is I who needs to be freed from the American Dream--the I-can-have-it-all mentality of North America. Because you can have it all, and have nothing at all.
As they vie for nomination, the republicans debate the status of a country where once an immigrant could cross crashing cloudy seas to make his fortune. They insist we should return to our great economic state, but I mourn the reality that we are among the world's wealthiest ten percent and yet we want more, better, faster, mightier. And children are hungry. My heart knows there is no answer a President can bring, that true change doesn't occur from the top down, but from within to without. From within my heart, my children's hearts. From selfish to selfless to Christ-filled to hungry children filled.
I remember James' words, Grieve and mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. (James 4:9) I understand him. Be broken, he said. See things for what they really are. See them in light of Jesus' heart. The New Living Translation says, "Let there be sadness for what you have done...." Yes, let there be sadness for a life of selfishness, and let their be an anchoring of my soul this day. Let me be pierced deeply enough to leave a scar. Let me bleed a while that I might be left with weakness for those who have less.
Words we mulled on after dinner during memory time pulse in my spirit. Do not accumulate for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But accumulate for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. I wonder if it is possible to have both? It isn't wrong to have possessions, is it? But the ones that I choose to store--meaning to keep for the future--should not be physical. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And I want my heart hunger to be eternal, not temporal. But the catalogues come in the mail. There is a new cell phone out that would make my life easier. There is a better gaming system that would surely mean family fun. And our BBQ is now 13 years old; is not that old enough to merit a new one for Christmas? The eye is the lamp of the body. So, the things I see then, the things I choose to see, to focus on will cast light for my entire body, my life. If then your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be full of darkness. And mine has diseases that cause blindness. Our nation too, needs bifocals. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Matthew 6:10-24 There it is in black and white--we can't serve both. We may have both, but we cannot serve both. We will be a house divided. We will eventually collapse under the pressure of two lords. But perhaps what I want is less that I may gain more. And if I left the grill to sit with all the other BBQ's at Home Depot and bought 3 goats instead http://goh.worldhelp.net/goats/ then 3 families would have milk--nutrition, and an income. And wouldn't that be more for me too? More for my children too? Wouldn't the nourishing of 3 families who have never owned a BBQ and cook their rice three times a day over an open fire with scraps of garbage as fuel become food for my family's soul?
My oldest is working on writing his life's purpose statement. He lamented to me, "Mom, sometimes I've been thinking about my life's purpose, and I see that a lot of things don't line up with it."
"It's hard, isn't it?" I look into his creek-water eyes and wish I could raise a boy to live the easy life, a boy that could take the road more traveled.
"Yes, it's the broken life." We've talked about this--broken living. It's the better way to take communion, we believe. There is a time for the wafers and juice, but we find that we remember Jesus better by breaking ourselves--stepping outside of what is comfortable. Giving up a meal, feeding homeless families, hugging powdery seniors' necks at nursing homes--things not comfortable for raggedy, rough boys--are a part of our family communions.
"Remember Jesus? It had to be hard for him watching his brothers and sisters growing up doing their own thing while He knew He would be breaking loaves and fishes, walking amongst the poor, the diseased, hanging from a cross. He lived to redeem. Lived broken so we could be whole."
"Yes. He probably didn't always enjoy that." My son relates to the idea of Jesus as a boy.
"When we give up here, we gain later. Those who live poor in spirit inherit the Kingdom of heaven."
"But we'll be rich in a better way in heaven, mom. That's what it means about storing up treasures in heaven. We'll have that in eternity." He knows. He gets it. He holds my hand and I look deep into his riverbed eyes--the pupils water smoothed pebbles--and love him.
The Ugandan and Philippine boy slept the last two nights in another host home, but they were with us still. We carry them now. We carry their people, their families, their thirst. A Christmas tree towers over ten feet tall in my living room--the room that only weeks ago I lamented being too small to host the homeschool mom's Christmas party, the room that when they entered, they exclaimed It is so big, Auntie! I had thought they would enjoy seeing the shiny decorations. Playfully, I wrapped one in strands of crimson wooden cranberries. "I'm a Chreestmas boy, Auntie! A Chreestmas boy," he had exclaimed.
Indeed, he is a Christ-boy. In his face I see a hundred thousand faces--hunger, pain, thirst, need, loneliness. Those were the real reasons Christ came, weren't they? The real reasons for all our merry making this time of year are about what we can give, not what we will receive.
Open my eyes, Father. Leave me bleeding a while longer. Let them linger in my heart--The Chreestmas boys. Amen.
Monday, September 28, 2009
What Time Is It?
He was two when he began to ask with incessant persistence, "Momma what time is it?" By three we had taught him how to decipher the numbers on a digital clock face and not much more than three and a half years had passed before he could read the face of any time telling device with mastery. My eldest son was desperate to know exactly what time it was and precisely what we would be doing at that exact time. Affectionately I refer to him as my palm pilot and still six years later he can tell you to the minute when the Georgia Bulldogs will play their next game and what exact hour and minute he awoke on any given day. To him, life is a series of appointments and he doesn't want to miss a single one. Never one to linger longer than the next appointment will allow, he watches the clock like my chocolate lab watches my hand when a treat hangs in the balance.
Just last week I had scheduled a necessary doctor's visit--one I had of course put off longer than I should. On Tuesday I panicked. It was 11:30 and I thought surely I had missed my appointment which was at 10:30. The boys and I were snuggled on the couch pouring over some incredible book about civilizations thousands of years past this calendar day. "Nathan," I instinctively yelped. "My appointment. I missed it." How in the world could I have done something so reckless? The appointment I had procrastinated in making I had now completely missed. The boxing gloves were on and I was pummeling myself in the face and over the head. Why can't I keep my appointments and responsibilities straight? Why am I not a better multi-tasker? Naturally and calmly he grabbed the calendar from a stack of papers and on closer examination we realized I had two more days. The appointment was Thursday. I made it to the appointment.
See I tend to be the polar opposite of my son the digital agenda book in human form. I tend to multiple book myself and then wonder why I'm late for everything. And the truth be told if I only book one thing, well, I'm still probably going to be late. I rarely arrive early and I rarely leave early once I've arrived. There are self-help books written for people like me. I've read a few. The next book I plan to read is called, "Balancing Life, Arriving on Time, Looking Great, Eating Great, Being Great, Staying in Shape, Eating Healthy, Saving Your Family Money, Having Girl Time, Having Date Nights, Having Mommy-Son Time, Having God Time, You Too Can Achieve The Balanced Life." But I can't find it in the library search engine.
I'll just say from the get-go here that I've met people who are pretty close to qualified to write a book like that. I have. But they are few and they are far between, and I've never looked deeply inside their lives to comment on how it's really going for them while they juggle ten thousand plates. I don't know if any of their plates have come crashing down in a thousands shreds of ironstone about their wrestless feet. It may in fact be very well with their soul. But I think it's pretty safe to say that the vast majority of us may instead find ourselves wondering how in the world do I achieve balance in a world where the demands are incredibly overwhelming and loud?
Ecclesiastes 3 says, "For everything there is an appointed time, and an appropriate time for every activity on earth." This past summer while watching as my little men splashed in the county's L-shaped concrete pool my mother said she'd heard a novel message about balance in the Christian life. I wish I could offer credit here to the guy with the new idea, but I don't think she told me his name. And if she did share it with me it is entirely possible that I cursed and spit it out before letting it sink into the long-term memory of my little brain because what busy mother of two boys and wife and sister and daughter and well, you know what I mean, what person wants to hear more about balance? The whole Proverbs 31 evangelicalistic notion that women can do and be everything for everyone can be wearisome to those of us who are natural Martha's as it is. Frankly, there are times when those messages leave us utterly defeated in a heap before our heavenly Father confessing our inadequacies and failures to Him once again. (Hey, I didn't really curse, guys...that was a joke.)
"Rhythms," my mom informed me "are what the Christian life is all about. Not balance." Now, I was listening. This was something new to me. As a homeschooling mom, I'd been pondering the idea of the natural rhythm of our family--learning the rhythm, dancing the rhythm, but I'd never consider it's application outside of that arena. She mentioned the passage in Ecclesiastes 3: "For everything there is an appointed time, and an appropriate time for every activity on earth." She talked about how this man said that the idea of achieving perfect balance wasn't even biblical. Where in the Bible did Jesus exercise balance on earth? He preached to exhaustion and then recuperated in mountainside prayer retreats. He preached until long after the noon hour when the crowd was famished and then, he fed them 'til they were stuffed and there were baskets of food left over. He didn't politely instruct the marketeers defiling the temple that he'd like them to please leave quietly through the left side exit. He turned their money-changing tables upside down and kicked them out on their little hinies. He called stinking dead people from tombs and raised them to new life and He prayed not a little while, but all night at times. Then, he praised Mary for sitting on her duff the entire time He visited saying she chose the more excellent way. Balance?
Is it possible that balance is another legalistic man-made attempt at trying to attain perfection and even dare I say it, rightness before God and man when in fact what we are reaching for is unattainable by those of us limited by a human body? (That's all of us.) I'm just asking. Could balance be Satan's newest serpent slithering about the fruit trees of our lives saying, "Are you sure you can't have it all?" And I'm asking because I have to tell you that I've run on the treadmill of the Christian life for many years and I'm watching others run on it now. The problem with running on treadmills is that you don't really get anywhere and if you quit running, you end out moving rapidly backwards until you fall. I'm not into treadmill spirituality. Not anymore. In Christian circles the treadmill runners are often praised for their endurance and commitment, but if they dare stop moving their entire life comes crashing down. I don't know if that's the right idea. I really don't. And I have to wonder what the heart of God is feeling when He gazes at His beautiful creations in heaps before His feet feeling defeated and like failures. Surely He is grieved.
So going back to that small verse in Ecclesiastes penned by the inspiration of God, apparently there's an appointment for everything in our lives. And if there's one thing I have learned it's that you when you double-book yourself, you end out missing one appointment or the other. So, is it possible that God's intention for mankind was to dance the rhythm of life--at times fast, at times slow making one appointment at a time? An appointment for healing, an appointment for planting an appointment for uprooting? Was it perhaps God's intention that we live in the freedom of ceasing the juggling act and instead picking up one plate at a time--two if our hands will hold them and that's all?
What would it look like if Christians everywhere quit running the treadmill of balance and instead said without apology, "I'm a mother and wife for the next several years so if you want to make it into my palm pilot you'll need to get in line and be ready for a wait because it's going to be a while before I can get to you too." What if Father's said, "I'm a daddy and a husband and so if you want me you'll have to line up behind my wife and kids." Ministries would end. But then maybe we wouldn't need the ministries because we would be making the appointments God already set for us. The face of churches would change. The face of neighborhoods would too though. Because when have you ever looked at a person panting their last breaths on a treadmill and thought that's exactly where I want to be? That's no great advertisement for following the way of Jesus. But when a neighbor sees a family in the backyard throwing the football together, laughing and enjoying their appointment to be a family, well, that is something utterly enticing, now isn't it?
Listen. I'm not saying I've gotten anything figured out. I'm just asking the question--is balance biblical? And I don't want pat, pre-fab unthought out answers. This is an invitation to climb out of the "this is what a Christian looks like" box and allow God to speak. Let's just ask Him together, shall we, and see where we land?
Pray with me:
Lord, show us your heart. Show me what exactly it is that you desire for my life and the lives of those around me. Show us Lord, the appointments for which we were created and empower us to walk away from ideas that are not contained in your heart. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
