JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL - Drive, Jesus! Drive!

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time evaluating the convictions of my heart – re-examining the tenets of my faith, and my true willingness to abide by them. Some things that were once ethereal have become fundamentals I simply cannot live a day without, while other things that were once solid have proven to be only a shell – a necessary covering for a season – and have long since blown away as chaff.

I believe in prayer and in the power of prayer, but I seldom really pray anymore – not the get alone in your closet kind of praying. I’m quite half-hearted about it much of the time, and not entirely sure that I actually want God to take notice of me. Sometimes God just seems too intentional for me and I need some personal space. If I’m looking around for a closet it’s because I want to be alone, not because I want to get alone with God.

I am completely convinced that God hears us when we pray, that God moves in our prayers, that God draws us closer to His heart and to His will as we pray, and honestly I kind of need a break. I’m spent. I’ve waited for the Lord, but my strength has been sapped. I’ve run and I’m dead tired. I’ve walked and I’ve grown weary. I don’t really feel like investing any more of myself into Anybody else’s will, perfect or not. When you’re fatigued and petulant, it is difficult to pray with any integrity.

I try to teach my children to pray with integrity. Sometimes I have to stop one of them in the middle of a prayer and ask them, Who are you praying to right now? Because it kind of sounds like you’re praying to me – and if you want something from me, you can just ask me directly. You don’t have to try to go over my head.

It’s almost instinctive to attempt to use prayer as an instrument of manipulation – we want what we want and we’ll go straight to the top if we have to, to get it. Dear God, please – give me this, take that away, don’t touch a thing. And I don’t think that there is anything misguided about making our requests known to God – but lately I’ve been very aware that the things my heart desires are not things with which I can, with any confidence, ask God to help me.

I don’t think this is a new thing – I think I am only now just seeing it clearly. It came to me in a picture last night – how so often I have come to God asking on my knees for things that have very little do to with what interests the Divine heart. Only indirectly do they have anything to do with feeding the hungry, edifying the disheartened, finding the lost, enriching the poor. If I pray to be forgiven or to be able to forgive, it is only so that I can feel a weight removed. If I pray for grace or for wisdom, it is only so that life will be less frustrating for me.

At best, my prayers are childish requests for comfort, security and pleasure. At worst, I am asking the Ruler of the universe to wield His power to satisfy the lusts of my flesh and to bolster the boastful pride of life. I am asking God to become my abettor. I don’t really want my heavenly Father to guard me from temptation at all – I just want Jesus to keep me out of the ditch. I want the weight of my sins to fall on Him. I want Him to take responsibility for the fallout of my choices. I want to grab what I can get while I can get it, and I want Jesus to drive the getaway car.

C’mon, Jesus, just cover for me. Don’t be so serious about everything. In the grand scheme of things, is this really such a big deal? You know, if you give me this one little thing I will do so much with it – you won’t even believe it. I know it's not really your plan but I’ll show you, you won’t regret it. You’ll wish you had thought of it yourself. Please, Jesus, just this one time. As a favour. Just get in the car. I promise, I’ll let You drive.

If I take off the table all the things that I think I want or need in my life, if I just leave those things in my pocket and don’t think to bring them to God, if I only pray the way Jesus taught his disciples to pray and nothing more, there is very little left – seven pure, uncomplicated sentences that speak straight to the heart of God:

Your Father knows what you need, before you ask Him. Pray, then, in this way: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.  ~Matthew 6:8-13

HOLY

They lie in sinless sleep, blankets tossed, half off the bed

brows and cheeks begging to be kissed

reverently, like sacred

bodies weighted with the breath of the angels

keeping vigil by their beds.

Devotion moves in ruffles like feathers,

in pulses through my body like blood to the heart,

sapping wearied anger from my veins,

sweeping away thoughts of stained or spilled or torn,

all self removed.

Only Love moves in this air,

fills it, demands the space,

giving the faintest nod to contrition

obeisant in the doorway.

Love presses cells in Hands like a vice

lest they combust from beauty,

lest I behold and die.

This hard hewn floor is holy ground,

eternal, magnetic,

pulling me to my knees

to kiss toes, unwashed,

nails etched with mud,

to bless the Lord, O my soul,

to confess, I am unworthy,

to keep silent vigil with the guardians

till eyelids open,

till the new mercy dawns.

 

 

WHO'S GOT A BIG FAT HEAD?

I wonder if the Godhead ever wants to bang It’s forehead on the table – say with a loud, frustrated moan, That is NOT what We MEANT. I wonder if Wisdom and Truth ever rant to each other about how nobody ever, no matter how many different ways it’s said, seems to get it. I wonder if the Author of Life and Faith ever puts fingers into hair, squeezes temples and says, Holy Me, it. was. a. metaphor! There are few things in life that frustrate me more than being misunderstood. If I were God, I would probably need more forks than the world can produce to stick into my I see everything eyeballs – I suspect God feels misunderstood a lot. Maybe not. It is impossible to fathom Truth free from ego, free from the need to be known.

I do believe that Buddhism has some things very right – so much of our pain and suffering in life is rooted in ego. There is war all around us, innocents enduring the worst human rights violations, people dying from starvation of food and of love, and we sleep at night. But when our own sense of self is wounded, our trust is violated, our expectations are not met, or something we think we own is taken from us, we toss and turn in our beds. Ego rises up within us, shocked, deeply offended. How could you do this to me? We wish we were somebody just so we could say, Do you know who I am?? Do you know what I could do to you?!

I think that sometimes Christians behave as though God has a really, really big ego – that the Godhead is swollen and top-heavy and full of Itself. We try to knit together an image of God that aligns with the world that we recognize, and what we come up with is, God is angry. God is offended. God is disappointed. God demands a return on the investment in you. God is jealous for the Divine reputation and for the glory of The Name. God really loves you, but God doesn’t love the things you do, say, want, think or feel – so stop it, or God will be hurt and upset. God only wants to see Himself when He looks at you. I’m not sure how that even makes sense, but I know that we say it.

We behave as though God humbling Himself was an act of lowering His pride – as though every other day of eternity God sits on His throne and has white-robed angelics fanning Him, singing His praises and feeding Him grapes. We speak as though being a servant is something that is beneath God, something He must greatly lower Himself to be, something He must violate His own holiness to be – as though God were not, at all times, the complete and absolute totality of all that Love is.

We cannot comprehend Love that does not seek its own, that by Its very nature pours out of Itself and does not clamour to be known, that's one desire is to be received. We cannot grasp Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things without need for acknowledgment, appreciation or reciprocation. We try, but we cannot conceive of Love that is devoid of ego.

But I think that we should try.

Because I don’t believe that Love looks at the beloved and ever thinks, Wow, I’m way too good for you.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests ,but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.  Philippians  2:5-8

JUST LISTED

I like to make lists. Some people might call this procrastination. I like to think of it as inventory – the mental notes I post for myself before I begin making piles of things and shoving them into closets for later.

In addition to the typical To Do, I have lists of things like, Things I Have to Remember to Teach My Kids about Life, Things Not to Say to People When Their Life Implodes, and Songs I Want at My Funeral (Come Sail Away, by Styx – thanks for asking). Life is so much smoother when all your essentials are organized and easy to access.

In my day to day, I balance the fine arts of raising people and pushing rocks up a hill with an inordinate amount of time scheduled in for reflection. I spend a lot of time itemizing limits and consequences, plotting out exciting new routes to take to and from school, Googling things like, How to politely tell people to mind their own business, and Is it normal for a seven year old boy to invent his own language, with multi-syllabic words like ‘penisbuttcrackhead’, and going gray in the face and the hair trying to keep things folded. I’ve spent years trying to perfect the art of distraction – mental gymnastics to turn the mundane, repetitive, same thing every day, BORING, into something noble and enlightened and fun.  I think this is why people make cake pops and why they want their lipstick and nail polish to have catchy names – so that they don’t go crazy.

It is time to name my sink. I am compiling a list – so far the only name on it is Wilson. I am taking suggestions.

A TIME FOR EVERYTHING

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. ~Proverbs 13:12

 Sometimes I wish I did not believe in miracles. I wish I had never seen any, lived any, built altars and given thanks for any. When the impossible is possible – when even three days stone cold dead doesn’t mean the end – it makes it very hard to know when to relinquish hope.

The thing about hope is that you have to know when to cling to it, and when to lose it – when to accept the death, and when to wait for the resurrection.

Most of what I feel about life lately falls into the category of hope deferred, which might help to explain my chronic case of heart sick. I hear a lot of Divine, Maybe, but not right now. How badly do you want it, really? I don’t mind waiting – I’ve never been big on instant gratification. Dr. Seuss was right – we do a lot of waiting in our lifetimes, and a person has to learn to occupy oneself. I’ve learned to stand patiently in line, flip through magazines in waiting rooms, and wait expectantly for Spring. For some things I even enjoy the anticipation, like waiting all week to watch Saturday morning cartoons – a rich experience that my children will never know.

Waiting for something is not the same as hope deferred. Waiting implies that whatever it is that you are waiting for will in fact come – maybe not right when you want it, but eventually. Time is all that is required – and patience, if you don’t want to behave like an infant while you are waiting.

Hope is an investment – there is something of significance to be gained or lost that is sitting in a balance over which you have limited control. Faith or no faith, there is the real possibility that you might not ever experience it. You might never accomplish it. You might never obtain it. You might obtain it, and it might be the catalyst for the worst thing that ever happened to you. You just don’t know. That thing you are hoping for might ask everything of you, taking everything that is not nailed down in exchange for the privilege of the journey, and in the end remain a shadow.

Hope is not a solid rock – it is not a foundation. Hope comes with a lot of up and down, slip-sliding and flip-flopping. It takes great courage to hope – to continue hoping through the tightening knots in your belly, and the skin sweats, and the icy fingers that stammer through their chores. It takes great conviction to keep hope alive when every voice and every circumstance around you says it’s hopeless.

You cannot hope half-heartedly.

Hope is an all-in endeavor.

Question: How do you know when it is time to give it up?

Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. ~G.K.Chesterton

 

SHAME

Now Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, 'Lord, wilt Thou slay a nation, even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, 'She is my sister'? And she herself said, 'He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.' Then God said to him in the dream, 'Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her. Now therefore, restore the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you will live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours'...Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, ‘What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.’ And Abimelech said to Abraham, ‘What have you encountered that you have done this thing?’ And Abraham said, ‘Because I thought surely there is no fear of God in this place; and they will kill me because of my wife. Besides, she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife; and it came about, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said to her, ‘This is the kindness which you will show to me: everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’ Abimelech then took sheep and oxen and male and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and restored his wife Sarah to him. And Abimelech said, ‘Behold, my land is before you; settle wherever you please.’ And to Sarah he said, ‘Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, it is your vindication before all who are with you, and before all men you are cleared.’  And Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids, so that they bore children. For Yahweh had closed fast all the wombs of the household of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Genesis 20:4-7, 9-18

I’ll be honest – I have a big crush on Abimelech. I have a weakness for men who have a noble spirit, integrity of heart, and a way with words. It is no small irony that of all the men who appear in the stories of the Patriarchs, it is the king of the Philistines who stands out as a man of character. There is no doubt that he behaves more righteously than Abraham and that he demonstrates a greater fear of God, showing Sarah uncommon kindness and respect, showing more regard for her honour and reputation than any man before him. He speaks directly to her, before handing her pointedly back into the care of her brother.

My heart hurts for Sarah. As a woman, as a wife, as a human being, I can only imagine her degradation. For a second time her husband had passed her off to another man – but this time he had Hagar and Ishmael to fill her barren space. I can imagine how it tormented her, after everything, to be so devalued and discarded, and how humiliating it would have been to then be returned by Abimelech, untouched, having once again been a curse to every fertile womb around. What dignity she had left must have crumpled under the weight of the polite pity she received from the honorable man she had conspired to deceive.

And how ashamed must the covenant-bearing Abraham have felt, to be bowed low before Abimelech’s integrity, to have it spelled out for him exactly how abhorrent his own behaviour was. How shame must have burned inside of him as God compelled him to come and beseech Divine mercy for the life of the guileless man Abraham himself had betrayed, and for a people cursed because of his treachery. He who had just bartered with God for the lives of the people of Sodom, who had questioned the righteousness and the judgement of God when measured against his own, who had perhaps believed up until that very point that the covenant blessing was still somehow about him – he was shamed by the revelation of his own thoughts and actions. He was shamed by the care and respect Abimelech showed to Sarah, bearer with him of the God-covenant, the wife he had forsaken.

This was not like in Egypt, when Pharaoh threw Sarai back at Abram with an unceremonious ‘take her and go’. They did not make out of Gerar like bandits. Their chastisement was slow, drawn out, deliberated – it was uncomfortable, personal and public.

Shame is a life experience not afforded to all. It is a hellish sort of torment – hot, like burning coals on your head. It wraps around you like a python, moves into your stomach and roosts there like a hen rolling eggs up and down your esophagus. Shame is the pain felt when your pride is slain and, like any uninvited death, it brings you to your knees praying for the laws of nature to be revoked, for time to be turned back, for the done to be undone. It swallows you up in regret.

It can happen to anyone. That old self you thought you’d sacrificed and buried at the foot of the cross can just sit up in the grave and start blinking, resurrected and ready to play. That old self can resurface as a desperate Smeagol with a second chance and nothing at all to lose – a tricky Gollum with no moral compass that simply wants what it wants. You tried to kill it – whatever loyalty it had to you is long gone. It is not remotely interested in preserving your dignity. It knows how to stay quiet and motionless for a long time, listening, watching for weakness – but when it opens its mouth it is a reckless confessor. It knows exactly what to say and it has no need to lie. You are a horrible person. You are pathetic. Could you possibly be more two-faced? Could you be more of a user? Could you be more of a hypocrite? Do you even know who you are? What do you have, a split personality? Google it – you’ll see. Your behaviour is positively clinical. It knows what you know, all that you so badly want to erase, all that refuses to stay buried under the sanctified, blood-soaked ground.

You don’t always feel the forgiveness. The shame doesn’t always lift off – you can walk with it, sleep with it, choke on it every day for years. It is a hard consequence of sin, to know that you have offended and that for that you have been cut off, that you might never be granted an opportunity to make amends. People don’t always want you to make it up to them. They don’t always want to make you pay. Sometimes they are content to leave you to burn with your own humiliation. Sometimes they just want you gone – so badly that they will give you sheep, oxen, servants, land and a thousand pieces of silver just to go. Sometimes they only have pity for you as they try to imagine how sad it must be to be inside your skin, cutting you free like a dead thing, dropping you off their back on a dusty road and going on their way, refusing to hear or acknowledge your desperate sorry, sorry, sorry, setting the sound of your voice to fade.

Shame isn’t remotely satisfied with forgiveness. It does not want you to be released – it wants you to be restored. Shame clamours for understanding and it craves redemption. It wants to see you lifted from the dust. It wants a do-over. It wants your dignity bought back from the place that you sold it. It covets an uncommon grace and a mercy that you can’t really hope to receive from anyone but God.

Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, it is your vindication before all who are with you, and before all men you are cleared.

And three short sentences after this, finally are written the words, Then Yahweh took note of Sarah as He had said, and Yahweh did for Sarah as He had promised. So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him. Genesis 21:1-2

What weight did those thousand coins carry for Abraham, as Sarah’s belly swelled with a child? What precious silver it must have been to her, when she realized she was pregnant and she did not have to try to persuade her husband, This child is yours. How cherished Abimelech’s public shaming and the establishment of his own innocence must have been to them both as they walked through the camp, knowing how people gossip and how quick they are to count back the weeks.

This is the miraculous – how God is able to transform our humiliation into a grace and a covering.

This is a profound beauty – how God is able to lay hold of our self-inflicted wounds and shape them into blessed mercies.

This is the great mystery of how God redeems us – threading the pain through the joy, weaving our shame into the very cloak that restores our dignity.

ON THE INNOCENCE OF GOD

Sometimes a thought will come to me, gangly limbed and gasping for breath. It’s fully formed, but not mature. It can’t stand on its own. You have to hold its head very carefully, support its neck, wrap it and nurse it. The thought is magnificent and ordinary, full of potential, certain to go the way of all living things.

When a thought like this comes to me, I wish that I were smarter. It is so beautiful, and I am so afraid of wrecking it.

I was thinking about how much I love a good paradox, and about how God seems so comfortable being two contradictory, mutually exclusive things at the same time. Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Living water, all-consuming fire. Lion, lamb. Father, son. A God far off, a God in our heart.

I was thinking about wisdom, and about what might be the opposite of wise – wondering if perhaps God could exist at the other end of that pendulum.

What if the opposite of wise is not foolish, but innocent?

What if God is innocent?

Innocent, the way a child is innocent – the way a child doesn’t even know what sin is. Innocent, the way a baby is born into this world, not knowing anger or greed, revenge, malice, envy or spite – completely incapable of comprehending it, completely incapable of passing judgment on it.

Forgiveness is a beautiful thing – but there is something in it sometimes that smacks a little, and leaves me wanting. Some small, insolent voice within me wants to say to God, Thank You for forgiving me – but You know, I did not ask to be born. I’m glad that You love me in spite of it, but I did not ask for this damning sin-nature from which there is no escape. I’d just like to have that on the record.

But what if it isn’t all only about forgiveness? What if there is something within the nature of God – not only a generous nobility but an impossible purity – that is able to hold both wisdom and innocence in balance, the way God balances time within eternity, the way God stretches the east from the west, the way God pulls taut the beginning from the end to the edges of infinity.

What if God is able to look upon us with innocent eyes and simply not see our failings? What if it is not only that God forgives our sins, atones for them, washes them away, but also that in some incomprehensible way God is simply unable to comprehend them.

Sin does not exist to the eyes of the innocent – did not exist in the eyes of the God of all wisdom formed into flesh, wrapped in cloths, lying in a manger.

What does it mean for God to look at us with purity, to forget our sin and to remember it no more?

What does that mean for us, if God is able to look upon us and love us, not in spite of our sin, but in complete innocence of it?