From My Prayers

From my prayers this morning:

I am afraid of loving. Loving has brought such pain to me. Never once has love been easy. Never once have I fallen into love. I have dug my way into love until it covered me like dirt with every relationship I have ever had.

Loving you is not easy. You are perfect and removed. You want things from me that I cannot yet give. You demand declarations and time, gifts and acts of service. I feel overwhelmed. I don't know how to love you. I don't know how to make discipline into devotion. I don't know how.

God's Response:

I did not make you broken. I did not make you irredeemable. I did not make you unlovely or unloveable. And your faults have grown beauty within them. Your pain in love has borne fruit. Like a tree that grows in the dirt, your very presence becons life to it. You are not forgotten. You are not a lost cause.

And I am not a stern taskmaster. I do not want your perfection. I want your heart, broken though it may be. I do not want devotion as much as I want longing. Stop trying to deserve me, and start admiring me. Your heart already knows I am magnificent. Breathe it in and rest in my magnificence. Your mind already knows I am perfection. Lean back and rest in my perfect ability, my perfect love.

"May love be stronger in me than the pain that comes with caring. "

-Justin McRoberts

Keep Fighting

To my Beautiful Children,

Let’s start off right; I love you. And I don’t mean to say that I love you only when you are good. I love you when you are at your worst, and it hurts me deeply to see the way your hurt yourself. I know that you don’t know what to do. I see that you feel like you only have so many choices, and none of them are good. You’ve been convinced: by yourself, or your parents, or Satan, or some other party- convinced that you cannot possibly do the right thing. You are not strong enough, or brave enough, or maybe someone has told you that you deserve better. One way or another, you found yourself in a place where you were fighting against me. You fought me when I desperately wanted to set you to doing the right thing. You fought me, and sometimes you won. Sometimes, the stakes were too high. I would not risk losing your soul in order to win a battle.

But I am still calling. And I am still coming for you. And I still love you.

Love,

God

P.S.     Keep fighting.

In Defense of Nothing

How do I reconcile my belief in the importance of loving other people with the idea that God dooms some of those people to Hell?

I think that the greatest theologians of each faith, each denomination will ultimately have more in common with each other than with ordinary people in their own faith.

I’m currently in the middle of reading a book in the defense of Calvinism, and the more I read, the more I agree with it. I believe strongly in many of the ideas that have been put forth by some of the greatest writers within the Calvinist faith.

When I started the book, I expected to disagree vehemently with most of what I found there. I foresaw myself throwing the book away in disgust, easily able to dispute the tenets offered up in its pages. And that has not been the case.

Calvinism says that God chose certain people before the creation of the world to be set apart, to be his chosen people. Those people will never fall away from Christ, and they are set apart. It says other things as well, but that is the point on which my hesitations hang.

Because I want to believe. I want to know that I am chosen. Calvinism says that the chosen are so by grace alone; that no one merits the grace of Heaven, and that we should praise God the more for it. I want to be one of those chosen people.

But I have been on the losing side of things too many times. So, instantly, my mind asks: what about them? What about the unchosen? Of course, just like the chosen, they are not worthy of Heaven. But unlike them, Calvinism says that God chose not to offer them life. He chose, instead, to allow them to live their lives, and then spend eternity in Hell. And why?

Calvinism does not have an answer that satisfies me. It says that God is allowed to do whatever He wills with his creation. It says that I should not question God.

And I understand. There are many things that I have chosen to place in God’s hands- things I believe will be revealed to me later in life, or not until Heaven. But what I hear about Calvinism does not align with the God I meet in the Bible.

The Bible I read introduces me to a stern God, a righteous God, who is yet loving and kind and affectionate towards his creation. The God I meet in the Bible gets glory from every person who chooses him. He cares about them deeply. Sure, we can argue that those featured in the Bible were already God’s chosen. But, then, what are the rest of the people who have ever lived? Doomed to be a soul writhing in the agony of Hell, how are we supposed to feel about these people? Pity? Anger? Sadness?

So I cannot defend Calvinism. Neither do I believe the Arminians have the right of things with their beliefs that God’s grace can be resisted, that there is any force strong enough on Earth to choose to say no to God’s calling once it has been issued.

I don’t know if I am right. I don’t know God’s plan. If it is Calvinism, I submit to it wholeheartedly, because I know that God works for my good and his glory. I know that the whole  of creation waits in eager expectation for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed, and my faith is in the perfection of God’s plan, whatever it may be. But until God himself tells me, I will continue to pray for the souls of all his creations.

Something Beautiful

Conversations are like sculpting.

I like to think of myself as a very logical person, someone for whom every idea falls nicely in line with the one before it. I feel like there is more value in logic than emotion, and I pride myself on my ability to think and speak clearly.

I wonder how much God’s time is spent laughing at me. For all my self-proclaimed logic, I feel things very deeply. I even think in feelings!

It may sound like a joke, but when I think, my brain connects inherently to the feelings. It’s like a filing system in my head that is based around feelings; discussions about teaching get filed under joy, anxiety, and angst. Thoughts about Jesus can be found by searching for confusion, love, anger, or angst. My family? Affection, hopelessness, and angst. Basically, there’s a lot of angst.

But I’ve always had this idea about conversations. I’ve thought for the longest time that good conversations are like baking. You make sure all the collaborators are on the same page, and then you add ingredients one at a time, with everyone working towards the same expected result. It makes so much sense for everyone to stop wasting time and just follow the recipe. In baking, the only way to get anything worth eating is to follow a recipe.

Or is it?

I recently read a study that said that people who procrastinate moderately are more creative than those who do not procrastinate at all. The hypothesis is that when you procrastinate, you give your brain more time to process through multiple solutions to a problem- more solutions than you would normally have time to brainstorm. The idea is that you give your brain time to think its way, not just to the solution, but around the solution, looking at it from every angle so as to find the best solution. What if our conversations could be the same way?

Imagine a conversation where everyone has different points of view and shares them, one on top of another. Depending on who you are, it could sound like a dream. To me, it used to sound like a nightmare. Now, I think it sounds like progress.

I’ve decided that a good conversation isn’t like baking; it’s like sculpting. You start with a lump of material, and none of the sculptors are entirely sure how it’s going to end up. Slowly, however, each sculptor contributes something, an idea or point of view that makes the end result more clear. But it only works when each person takes a turn whittling away the excess. It only works if everyone is willing to layer ideas upon each other, not in a straight line. There is no anticipated outcome at the beginning. And being on the same page? The co-contributors are often reading entirely different books! But if you are willing to engage the material, to scrape away the excess, you may uncover something unexpectedly  beautiful in the end.

Taking over the World

When we were little, we dreamt of taking over the world. We dreamt of being famous, of being astronauts, firefighters, singers, dancers, actors, policemen, politicians. We dreamt of being people of influence, with the power to be world-changers. We were hopeful, and we couldn't wait to remake the world the way we thought it should be, making it fit our image.

Then, we grew up. We got real. We decided our dreams were foolish. We  went to college for business and accounting, teaching and nursing. Some of us found new passions, and others just drifted along with the current. We decided that the world didn't depend on us.

But we were wrong. Very soon, we are going to take over the world whether we realize it or not. There will be no coup, no media coverage, no new world order. We will take over the world quietly. It will happen one day at a time, one idea after another. We will suddenly be the ones making the decisions. The ones voting on new laws, or not. The ones speaking up against the wrongs of the world, or not. We will be the ones acting like adults, or we won't be. We will change the world, or we won't.

It is our destiny, greater than we ever dreamt as children. We are Plan A for the future of the world. If we don't take up the challenge to take over the world, no one else will. We are Plan A, and there is no Plan B.

Very soon, we will take over the world. Will we know what to do with it when it's ours?

An argument for Hope

How is it that so many Christians have been reading the same text for thousands of years, and coming to such different conclusions about its meaning? We’re all seeking after the same God, but somehow we see his plan like we read a map: we all know where we’re trying to get, but no one can agree on the best route to take. I wonder, sometimes, how we will ever manage to lead people to Christ if we can’t even agree on the way there ourselves.

I know plenty of people that have decided that enough is enough. If no one can agree on what to tell new Christians, they think, then why bother making them? If we can’t agree amongst ourselves, how will we ever convince others to join us? Is it even worth the struggle?

The answer, resoundingly, is yes. Even on days when I can’t explain why, I feel it deep within my soul: God desperately wants the people who are lost. And I think that we miss how important that is.

In the bible, Jesus tells a story of the Prodigal Son. This younger son gets fed up with his life, takes money that shouldn’t be his, and runs. He shirks his duty, and spends his wealth, and comes back home with his tail between his legs. But when he gets there, he finds that his father is overcome with joy at his return. Ready to forgive all that has passed, the father throws a party for his returned son.

And we love that part of the story. But this story has another figure, an older brother that stayed, and worked, and didn’t get any parties. When his brother returns, he is bitterly angry and refuses to attend the party thrown in his own home. And I completely understand why.

How dare his father decide to accept his younger brother home just like that! The younger brother has a long list of sins against him, while the older brother has been working tirelessly, and for what? So that his father could take the money they had earned, and use it to throw a party for the younger brother! How dare the father ask the elder to take what is his, what he has earned, and rain those gifts down on someone else? How dare the father ask him to uproot all that he has planned, all his expectations, for someone who has spit in the family’s face, and now comes groveling?!

Why would God ask us to use our gifts, our money, our time, and our energy to follow after people that don’t want Him? Wouldn’t it be much better, safer, easier, more efficient just to work with what we have? Can’t someone else throw the party for the outsiders who want to join the family? Haven’t we done enough?

I understand the older brother’s point of view so clearly. I find that often, like him, I am asking the wrong questions. The older brother is asking his father, “Doesn’t what I’ve done matter?” But God hopes that we will ask, “What are You doing, God? How can I be a part of that?”

In Exodus, God calls his people to be a kingdom of priests. But priests need a congregation. And ours is the world. When we ask God what He is doing, the answer will often be, “I am bringing the whole world under one head, which is Christ.” And Christ will take care of His body, the Church. So our part is not to babysit the Church, but to entreat the people who are not yet a part to come join us. And God doesn’t ask us to have it all figured out before we start: he asks us to try anyway. 

A Note on Sabbath

Never believe what the enemy tells you. He is, after all, the Father of Lies. If he tries to tell you any different, think twice before you believe him. He has built his house, not on our belief in him, but on our disbelief in anything else. He daily prods us to disbelieve the stories we hear from the news, from our friends, our family, and even our God, until we start doubting the very stories we tell ourselves. His best victims are the ones that trust only him to tell the truth, but this can only happen after they have renounced their belief in anything else.

Take Sabbath, for example. We are called to take a Sabbath, a rest from our work. God knows that it is good for our souls, our minds, and our bodies. So does the enemy. And so, our enemy first attacks by discrediting. Just like in the garden, he asks, “Did God really say that?” And he starts out slow. He begins by making us believe that God called us to other things more than Sabbath. He whispers that Sabbath is selfish, and God has called us to be self-less. He suggests that the people at work need us to help them. And then he suggests that work itself needs us. It finally comes to this: we are so weighed down by our belief in our own responsibility that, when we finally do rest as the Lord called us, we feel as if we are letting Him down. We don’t recognize our Sabbath for what it is. Sabbath, indeed, becomes a nice idea that never makes itself reality in our lives. And by this time, the enemy has won dominion over our rest. After all, what does he want but to steal the time God has given us, and use it for any other purpose? If he can accomplish that, he is satisfied.

I have no step-by-step program to fix this. But pray to the Lord of the Sabbath that he would gift you again with rest. Ask him who rested after his work was finished to give you his yoke, the one he offers to us. He has already promised that the yoke is easy, and the burden light. Ask him to trade you, and when you realized you’ve taken your own burdens on once more, ask him again. And keep doing it. Forgive yourself as often as he calls us to forgive others, seventy times seven. And see if our father, who has given his son for us, will not also graciously give us all things, including the Sabbath we so desperately seek.