shoebox

first attempts

2010-08-26T13:16:00.001-07:00

My Story

2009-07-14T16:22:00.001-07:00

When I was 18 I believed that fulfillment and satisfaction came from realizing my goals; from doing things excellently and, if possible, being the best at something. I believed in the redemptive work of Christ; and my spiritual credo came from Colossians 3 which says, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily as if working for the Lord and not for men.”

My spiritual philosophy was similar to – and no doubt informed by – the American philosophy of living your dreams or ‘having it all,’ of deciding what you want to achieve and then working relentlessly until your dream is realized. When I was 18, my dream was to be a writer. And I concluded that if it turned out that I didn’t have the talent to write great books, I wanted to spend my life reading and teaching them – so I planned on getting a solid education and going to school for as long as possible, perhaps even living abroad in some cosmopolitan city.

My dream school was Georgetown University in Washington DC. All throughout high school I worked hard until, one drizzly spring afternoon, to my awe and stupefication, I received an acceptance letter from Georgetown, along with a sizable scholarship offer.

Weeks later I flew east to visit my cousin – also a Georgetown graduate – and together we took a tour of the campus. With its wide green lawns, its high brick buildings strewn with ivy, and its sophisticated students hastening to and from their classes, Georgetown seemed everything I imagined it would be. I had the feeling that the world – and all my dreams – were at my fingertips.

There was only one problem: from the time I sat down with one of the academic counselors, a knot began to form in the pit of my stomach. With each additional interaction – each person encountered, each question asked, each class visited – the knot hardened and settled. By the afternoon, while I was having lunch at a little delicatessen called the Booeymonger, I could hardly swallow. As I looked around at the students, most of them boys – and very well-dressed and good looking boys I might add – and listened to their conversations my mind was drawn to the verse in Mark 8 which says: “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? For what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”

And another, John 5.44, in which Christ asks, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?” In other words, How can you have faith in Me, when you look for and receive your praise from other people?

Though I may have been 18 I wasn’t completely lacking in self-awareness. I knew I wanted desperately to succeed; perhaps more than that, I knew I wanted the praise of people - and not just people in general but these kinds of people. This realization scared me because I recognized it meant that if I were to attend college in such a place, the allure of worldly acclaim might come to mean more to me than God’s approval, and that if this were true I would be putting my soul in jeopardy by accepting any kind of admissions offer. After all, I reluctantly conceded, wasn't it Jesus Himself who said, "If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away... [For] it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell" (Matthew 5.29)?

Though I waited until the last possible moment, in May, after much wrestling, I declined my acceptance.

Two years later I was attending a small liberal arts college in Washington State. I was working hard academically and immersed in a social environment that was enabling me to grow spiritually. All this was very good. Yet I continued to nourish secret hopes of one day applying again for acceptance to Georgetown’s graduate school: perhaps then I would be grounded enough spiritually to go back and live the life I dreamed.

But then something unexpected happened – or should I say, something expectedly unexpected: I met a boy with a very unusual Dutch name: Hessel, the ancient Teutonic meaning of which is, "man with a big sword."

Superficially we had nothing in common. I was a literature major; he had been a business major. I was a traditionalist; he was an entrepreneur. I thrived – and still do – on consistency; and this man clearly loved to take risks.

But in spite of our differences, Hessel was unique. He had something that other boys didn’t; and that was a wholehearted commitment to Christ and a desire to please Him instead of people. This, above all his other qualities, deeply attracted me to him.

I remember, after one of our earliest encounters, I went home to visit my parents and my mother woke me up in the middle of the night (a tactic for 'information-getting' which she had developed while I was in high school) and asked me what I thought of this 'Hessel person' (whom she had heard from a friend was a very desirable young man). With my voice full of sleep I assured her unequivocally that "he was not my type.” "But," I went on very quietly, "I'm almost sure that if he asked me to marry him I would say yes."

An inevitable period of courtship ensued. We wrote letters. Many, many multitudes of letters; and soon we were in love. During my senior year of college I studied abroad in Rome. We saw the Coliseum, the Parthenon, and many other antiquities. More letters followed and many effusions of love were exchanged.

Then, just six weeks after I graduated from college, we said ‘I do.’ At this point, though I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, my attitude toward God was one of self-righteous entitlement. I thought, I have made sacrifices; I gave up what I wanted and now God is making it up to me by giving me a great man with whom I will do great things.

Yet within days of our marriage – six days, to be exact – we entered into what stands out to this day as the most difficult time of my life.

On our honeymoon we totaled our only car; Hessel’s investments went bad and, after searching without success for some form of reliable work, he had to take a job as a busboy making $6 an hour. Meanwhile I was working two jobs and yet we still couldn’t pay our bills. At the end of six months we got evicted from our apartment; we became very sick and could not pay our hospital bills; we even became the recipients of charity by our church… By this time, I was desperate and in despair. In the words of Jeremiah, “All my glory was gone and everything I hoped for from the Lord…” (Lam. 3).

That fall I spent a weekend away from Hessel visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. One morning I climbed to the top of one of the grassy mountains –I should say, for those who have ever been to the Northwest, that it would be more accurate to call them hills - and poured my heart out to God. I expressed my anger, confusion, and disappointment. I asked Him what was happening to me and why He was ruining my life. I opened my Bible at random to Matthew 3.16-4.1 and immediately my eyes fell on the words from Matthew 3.16-4.1 : “Christ, led by the Holy Spirit, went into wilderness to be tempted [or tested] by the devil…”

In Deuteronomy it says that God led the Israelites into the wilderness to be tested for their good, to humble them.

Over the course of those few days I came to believe I was following the same path… though I had no idea the temptation was about to get worse.

That winter North Carolina was hit with one of the worst ice-storms in its history. With no electricity (we hadn’t showered for five days) and nowhere else to go, we drove five hours north to Washington DC, to stay with the same cousin who had accompanied me to Georgetown five years earlier. She and her husband now lived in a beautiful home; they were both lawyers; they had two young children and a nanny to take care of them during the day. Superficially their lives seemed perfect.

The next day we visited the same main street in Georgetown, right near the university campus, where I had been before. I will never forget standing on that frigid corner in the shivering rain watching well-dressed people pass hurriedly by me. We were separated by a few inches, but they may as well have been many thousands of miles.

My mind flooded with lies and distortions: What a fool you were, said a voice, You could be one of those people if only you had made a different decision. In that moment I couldn’t bear the shame of having identified myself with Christ; and in my heart I regretted having remained failthful to God. If only I could go back, I thought, I would make different choices. Even if they would have been disobedient choices, I would make them, if it meant I could have the success and acclaim I had so naively forfeited.

But then... my eyes began to shift to the figure beside me. I could always go back to school - but it wouldn’t be quite so easy to get rid of this man who I knew meant to keep God first in his life. Without realizing it I found myself wishing something might happen to Hessel – something terrible, maybe a car accident? – so that I could be free from my vows.

In a flash - as violent and piercing as a stroke of lightening - I became aware of my thoughts. I was shocked, horrified to realize I was not who I thought I was: I was just like Peter, willing to deny the name of my Lord if it meant I had to suffer the loss of all the things I valued most... Perhaps even more disturbing, I saw what hell was in my heart and that - and as the poet Goethe says - “but for the slightest change in my character there wasn’t a crime I was incapable of committing.”

That moment was both an end and a beginning. From then on I knew, not only intellectually, that I was a sinner and wretchedly depraved, I believed it with my whole soul. My illusions of myself as a good person, a good wife, and a faithful daughter were shattered. And it was only then that I really began the process of transformation that is described in Romans 12.1-2: the renewing of my mind and the transferring of my hope.

Slowly, very slowly, I began to learn - and am learning still - how to view reality through the lenses of Scripture. To see my circumstances - not in terms of what I (or my culture) consider valuable - but in terms of what God values: people and not things, obedience instead of sacrifice, the process over the product.

I still want to write; and I would love to live in a cosmopolitan city someday. But for now God has planted me in the desert, the Wild West, surrounded by what I used to call its "hostile terrain" and "cultural leanness." Yet here, ironically - indeed, miraculously - I have experienced more growth than I could have imagined had I planted myself in the center of the lushest, most culturally rich garden in all the great, glittering world. For here I have learned that it really doesn’t matter where you live; what matters is where you’re going and who you are becoming.

Moving to the desert - as moving to any new place often does - served to solidify my sense of being an alien in a foreign land. Hebrews 11.14-16 says, “…those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own….a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”

For the greater part of my life I thrived on praise from other people; but in the desert, God took away all my props, all the things – like my family and the institution of academia – that told me I was valuable. Instead, he placed me in a family and a culture whose values and mode of expression were different from mine.

God used these things to bring me to yet another crisis of decision: which did I value more? Knowing Christ and learning to be found in Him? Or being a "success" in the world's eyes? Did I want my security to be vested in being understood and affirmed by other people? Or in Christ?

One of my spiritual mentors once told me, "God is never punitive; He is only protective." In other words, God doesn't deprive us of things in order to punish us, but in order to protect us. Though this was hard to believe at the time, she was, she is, right. God wasn't punishing me. Instead, He was (and is) giving me the opportunity to gain something better than success as I define it.

He loves me, to the very core of who I am, and thus He knew - far better than I -that I could not pant after those other things and still keep Him first in my life.

During my first agonizing years in the desert, while I combed the length of my cage like a rat looking for some means of escape, I couldn't help but find comfort in the stories of Abraham, Moses, Joseph, and Paul, each of whom experienced a period of exile in the desert.

Of course, these men are spiritual giants in whose category I would never presume to place myself. But as a Christian I do stand in their shadow. After all, in Christ I am one of Abraham's descendants. And if the God who dealt with them is anything like the God who deals with me, then I can rejoice that He has seen fit to place me in my own proverbial prison.

For if history is any indication, He did not do so because He is some kind of cruel taskmaster, because He delights in locking people up and then dangling the key in front of their sordid little prison windows. No, He did so because He is the key. And He loved me too much to let me go through life in bondage to things that couldn’t save me.

In the spring of 2008 I spent the weekend visiting my little sister in Washington DC. It was March and, when I boarded the plane with my squirming one-year-old, I became suddenly aware that it had been exactly ten years since my first visit.

On Saturday afternoon we decided to browse through the shops in Georgetown. We folded up the baby carriage and took a cab to that same familiar street where I’d walked as an 18-year-old girl, wanting God’s approval more than worldly acclaim; the street where I’d stood again as a newlywed in the frigid cold and repented of having wanted any such thing.

Halfway through the afternoon, as Audrey began to fuss, I left my sister to complete her shopping and veered off the main road to stroll through the quiet neighborhoods. We passed beautiful brick brownstones, painted gray and black with creamy white steps and red doors with iron knockers. Other doorways were flanked with tall white pillars and large potted urns. And everywhere, on every street, the cherry blossoms bloomed, pink and white and lovely.

Though I relished this ambience, and felt very much like a schoolgirl wandering through the pages of "Mary Poppins," my heart also throbbed with a sense of God's sovereignty and goodness in my life, of gratitude for His many blessings, chief among them, my daughter. But the further I walked the more I began to be nagged with the same old questions; the more I wanted to know for certain whether it had merely been youthful zeal or profound conviction from God that prompted me to make the choice that lead me to the very cobblestone upon which I stood at that moment. Finally, I let myself wordlessly form the question: God, was it really you? And was all that pain and heart-ache and 'deprivation' really necessary?

At just that moment I turned a corner and, there before me, in the dizzying sunlight, amidst the sweet smell of earth and grass and cherry blossoms, was that same little delicatessen – the Booeymonger – where I’d lunched those many years before. I rushed to the window and cupped my hand to the glass. As I peered inside a flood of memories poured over me: I recognized the table where I’d sat before and remembered the handsome faces of the boys who sat beside me; and then all at once, in a rush of blood and perspiration, God brought that same, unmistakable knot back to the pit of my stomach.

And in the silence that descended upon me, in my heart I heard His voice, saying, Heather, I don’t care about success or failure as the world defines it. I care about your eternal soul – its development and its destination. I care about your getting to know Me and being transformed by Me. Knowing and obeying me is all that matters. This is what gives your life purpose. All that I have taken you through is nothing more than preparation. Ultimately, I am - and will throughout eternity be - your Reward.

In that epiphanal moment I realized that it truly doesn't matter where or whether you even went to college, whether you are married or single, whether your career is satisfying or unsatisfying, your salary lucrative or meager, your bank account empty or full, whether you have a clean bill of health or are battling illness, whether you are working or staying at home, whether you have children or don’t have children, whether your children or grandchildren are living nearby or far away – none of this has any intrinsic value or purpose. What matters is seeking Christ over and above and through all these things – letting Him have His way in us, and demonstrating a willingness to follow Him wherever He leads, no matter how great the cost may seem.

Ephesians 2.10 says, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has chosen beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2.10).

If we are His workmanship then, like any master artist, He decides precisely what we are to be. It is up to us to decide whether we will allow Him to do His work. If we do, He will, in His mercy, take away everything in our lives that keeps us from Him.

Saved Through Childbirth

2009-02-27T16:10:00.001-08:00

“But women will be saved through childbearing…” – 1 Timothy 2.15 Over the years I have responded, in turns, with bafflement and annoyance, to this verse. Bafflement because it arouses all kinds of puzzling questions about the grounds of salvation; and annoyance because of what these questions imply about the status of the ‘fair sex:’ does it mean that women are saved in a manner different – perhaps inferior – to men? If so, doesn’t this contradict the fundamental truth that all are saved by the blood of Christ; and that in Christ “there is neither male nor female”? Isn’t it a bit patronizing, even heretical, of Timothy to suggest that women need something additional to the blood of Christ to accomplish their salvation? And if so doesn’t this cheapen the cost Christ paid on Calvary? Besides all this there is the glaring fact of what the passage may imply for single women or women unable to bear children: are they somehow exempted from this particular form of salvation? It wasn’t until recently, after becoming pregnant with my second child, and writhing under the grip of first-trimester nausea, that a new thought entered my mind: what if the experience of “carrying a child in the womb and giving birth to it,” as the word is literally defined, is but one of God’s many practical methods of sanctifying His people? Childbirth, then, and all that accompanies it, is not the ground of salvation – for we are all, male and female alike, saved by the propitious work of Christ – but, as one scholar put it, something which, for some women, “designates the circumstances” of the “working out of salvation.” After all, the primary definition of the word ‘salvation’ is: “to rescue from danger, destruction;” “to save one suffering from disease, to make well, heal, restore to health.” For the Christian, the ultimate “danger” is eternal enslavement to self; the ultimate “destruction,” eternal separation from God; the greatest “disease,” sin; and the only cure, Christ. Christ’s method of “restoring the sinner to health” requires the individual die to self in order to live for and with God. If one thing may be said of childbirth and its consequences, it is this: in a very real sense, it liberates the mother from enslavement to herself, from that perpetual preoccupation with meeting and gratifying her own needs and desires, and elevates her to think foremost of the needs of her child. Although it is often the subject of poetic effusions, this process is more often violent than peaceable. Childbirth is emotionally taxing, practically disruptive, and physically disfiguring. Nevertheless, having endured forty long weeks of nausea and discomfort once before, I know the benefits outweigh the costs: all the ‘pains’ work to achieve something infinitely greater, and more valuable, than my paltry imagination could have previously conceived. Thus, as in all things, Christ turns that which was meant to be a curse (Gen. 3.15) into a blessing. Yes, childbirth and its ensuing trials are painful; but the pain is transformative, the tool Christ uses to accomplish a purpose perhaps superior to the miracle of bringing a child into the world: He uses it to transform the soul of the mother, to ‘convert’ or ‘save’ her from the tyranny of self-will, the curse of a way of life that leads only to destruction. In this sense, its pain is also privilege; its bane, a blessing. “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; …with your right hand you save me. The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever… (Psalm 138.7-8).”

Seeking Him First

2008-12-30T12:26:00.000-08:00

"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.” – Matthew 6.33-34

From a commonsense standpoint, our Lord’s commandment to seek His kingdom and righteousness first – before, or, above all other things – is bold, even outrageous. His words contain no subtlety; they are clear as liquid, stark enough to shatter glass; direct, unqualified – like hard rain on desert soil. In essence, Christ is saying that seeking Him – His kingdom, His Righteousness – must take the main stage of life while all other occupations remain perennially ‘in the wings.’
But how can I when, from the first moment of waking consciousness, my mind is crowded with the persistent concerns and pressing obligations of the day? When the baby at my knee is vying for attention? Or the school age child is baring his temper? Or the notice arrives in the mail telling me my electricity will be turned off if I cannot pay my bill?
How, in these dark days of economic crisis and turmoil, can I possibly manage to “seek first His kingdom” when it feels as though my own kingdom is falling apart?
Just who does God think He is, after all, demanding that I seek Him first?
Of course, that one is easy: He thinks He is God. The great “I AM;” alpha and omega, unchanging, uncreated, Creator God; Who knit my soul together in my mother’s womb; Who recognizes my frailty, and is mindful that I am ‘but dust;’ but Who – in spite of all these things – loved me enough to die a sinner’s death and pay my ransom in order that I could not only be with Him in His Kingdom, but like Him in righteousness.
In His providence, He knows what is best for me, and because He is good, he insists that I have it – namely, Himself. Seek Me first, He says, and if you do, I will add to you every other essential thing. Food and clothing – give no thought to these. Instead, feed yourself on Me; clothe yourself with Me. Renounce your stubborn ways – your insistent belief that you know best how to meet your needs – and I will meet your needs out of My abundance and riches.
It scarcely needs saying that if we are looking for reasons not to seek Him, all we must do is look around. The woman who makes it her aim in life to seek God first will be bombarded by obstacles that appeal to her fears, distractions that seek all the time to wrench her view away from her Heavenly Father. God knows this; thus in order to safeguard His own from squandering their existence, He commands us “not to worry about tomorrow.”
God knows the very real, and very grave, threats that face His people, both within and outside themselves; but He also knows that worry does not add a single hour to a woman’s life (Matt. 6.27). Those who worry waste their time rather than redeem it. God knows and, indeed, promises us that in this world we will have trouble; but He reminds us over and again, in words of angels – behold, I have overcome the world!

Life In Him

2008-10-21T16:05:00.001-07:00

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." - John 15.5

Throughout the New Testament Christ uses various analogies to describe the believer in relationship to Himself. He is a house; Christ is the builder. He is a lump of clay; Christ is the potter… John 15 is no different except that, in this particular instance, the analogy is organic. The vine and the branches are part of a living whole which breathes and grows and bears fruit; or else, if it fails to remain in the vine, suffocates, withers, and rots.

A living branch is different from a house or a piece of sculpted clay in that it is never quite finished. It could go on living forever, so long as it continues receiving nourishment from the vine. A house may be renovated; it may be meticulously well-maintained or it may fall into a state of utter disrepair. But once each stone is placed it remains there, unmoving, ungrowing. It can, in a sense, abide; but it cannot flourish! The same is true of the clay – it may undergo metamorphosis - a total change in form and appearance - but once it hardens and sets, once it has been thrown into the kiln, it can neither change nor grow.

In contrast, stands the branch. It starts out naked and small. Alone it is nothing, just a future bit of firewood, barren and brittle (John 15.6). But if it remains nestled into the vine, drawing its nutrients from the source, the branch will grow clusters of buds. At first, they are just little nubs – small and hard and sour – small foreshadows of what they might someday be. If plucked too early they will taste bitter. But if they are properly nourished they will ripen into beautiful pieces of fruit – full and soft and sweet.

Important to remember is that fact that the fruit cannot - indeed, should not - attempt to distribute itself. When the time is right the fruit will fall off all on its own or else it will be plucked by some desperate passerby who is hungry enough to stoop down and pick it up from the place where it has fallen, the place at the foot of the tree.

Just so, if we abide in Him, He will bring forth fruit in our lives; fruit that is a small reproduction of the Life we bear inside. Unlike the house or the finished sculpture, this fruit has the capacity to nourish others. It can give the Life that it has drawn. And not only once, but many, many times, for nestled inside each piece lay the seeds of Promised Future Life.

And yet - however marvelous and beautiful this is - it is a rare branch that learns the secret of abiding.

Most, being frustrated by the slowness – or seeming lack! – of growth, become deceived into thinking they no longer need the vine. Those who have lived long enough to experience the painful process of pruning may conclude that it is futile or masochistic to persist under such ‘intolerable’ conditions. Won’t we grow much faster, they reason, if we find our own rich waters to drink from, far, far away from here?

And so they literally break out, severing their ties from the vine, not realizing that in doing so they betray themselves, becoming guilty not only of adolescent thinking, but adolescent behavior.

They may indeed find waters; and these they may drink from. But the growth that such drafts produce will be deceptively short-lived. The buds cannot, under such conditions, grow into ripe, round pieces of fruit because they have been poisoned by waters which make bitter and desolate all who drink from them. These branches, and the infant buds they bear, will not only cease growing; they will ultimately wither and become grotesque – the asylum of insects and other parasitical organisms.

Conversely, the branch that abides in the vine will – indeed, it must – bear fruit. To do otherwise would be to go against nature. However, the aim and purpose of its life is not oriented round the fruit, but round the vine. This is the emphasis of its life – its raison d’etre, or, reason for existence. It finds security and rest in the vine, not in its fruit, for the fruit is but the natural consequence of abiding; not ‘the thing itself.’ “He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” It is one of God’s great graces that He bears fruit in a man’s life and then gives him credit (eternal reward) for having done so. If we abide, He will give us life, power, and rest in Him; all we have to do is let Him.

A Little Yeast...

2008-09-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

“...[M]ake every effort to add to…natural affection, love.” – 2 Peter 1.7,8

“Now that you have...sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.”— 1 Peter 1.22

Experience shows – and Scripture inadvertently affirms – that human relationships have different points of origin. There are those with whom you share a near instantaneous bond of affection; these you ‘love’ naturally, viscerally, without willful premeditation; and those whom you must choose to love by an act of your will, in the strength or, more likely, weakness, of your character.

For instance, you and Jane have been fast friends since the first day of middle school when you found yourselves, alone, in the same corner of the cafeteria, reading the same book.

Conversely, you've known Diana since the day she moved in next door, when she 'popped' over to introduce herself and then politely informed you that your flowerbeds needed watering. Whether consciously or not, Diana seems to be constantly making light of the thing – the very thing! – which is causing you greatest pain. And she has an uncanny knack for drawing out your weaknesses while disparaging those traits you have always taken for your strengths.

Nevertheless, Christ calls you to love both women. But how? In what way?

At a certain point - it is inevitable - your sin, and Jane's, will make a mutual show of itself. And when it does you must add agape, the love which, with its connotation of self-sacrifice, enables you to rise above your feelings, and do the thing that is in the best interests of the other person (John 3.16). Somewhat ironically, there may come a time when you realize your natural rapport has prevented you from learning how to really stimulate or provoke each other toward love and good deeds. You may realize that you are better at commiseration, and affirming each other’s prejudices, than telling each other the truth. When you do, you must take pains to alter your course; to 'add agape' and trust it to deepen your friendship in ways that simple affection cannot.

In contrast, Diana has never inspired your affection – from a natural point of view you feel little other than annoyance toward her, sometimes even profound animosity such as you would feel for an arch enemy. But Scripture anticipates this! Thus when Christ commands us to “love” our enemies He uses the word, agape, meaning that we can choose to rise above our petty emotions and show kindness where we might feel disdain, or generosity where we are want to be stingy. If we do, the seeds of Love will, at a certain point, bloom into natural affection.

Still, there is no disguising the fact that, with Diana, you must take the long way around: remembering birthdays; initiating phone conversations; taking pains to express those things you do appreciate and admire, even if they are often obscured by your differences.

As you do, slowly, you begin to see her in a different light – what you took for lack of sympathy was simply an inability, or reluctance, to express herself; what you experienced as cold-heartedness was merely pragmatism, a pragmatism that, in a later moment of personal crisis, manifested itself as practical, almost life-saving, care.

But it is not only your perception of Diana that has changed – you are changing too, the both of you.

Where she has gained compassion, you have grown in fortitude. Where she has gained the courage to be vulnerable; you are learning to stand by your convictions, without encouragement or praise. You don't notice these changes at first for character development is the kind of thing one only notices retrospectively. But the fact is, you have changed... both of you.

And something else has changed too.

Perhaps it is after a long summer away that you begin to realize - and Diana does, too: somehow, precisely how neither of you quite knows, but somehow you have become more than neighbors... you have become friends.

Nevertheless, from a practical standpoint, it remains difficult to find the motivation to pursue relationships which are 'hard.' Why should I call Diana when it is so much easier to pick up the phone and dial Jane? What is the point of exerting so much energy only to see an intolerable relationship transformed into a (still, perhaps) marginally satisfying one?

The reason is simple: although phileo is preferable - as the ice cream cone on a hot summer afternoon - only agape will remain (1 Cor. 13.13). It is that little bit of heaven which, if you are faithful to work it in to the relationship, promises to work its way through the whole dough (Matt. 13.33), transforming not only it, but you. You and Diana may never laugh at the same jokes; you may never read the same books; or plan a picnic just so that you can indulge in your mutual appreciation for reciting poetry under the cool trees - but you can rest assured that Christ will use your relationship to further your reliance upon Him, and so mold you into the person He created you to be.

Believing is Seeing

2008-09-29T13:25:00.002-07:00

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” – Ephesians 1.18-19

“Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS… So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.”

- Galations 3.7,9

We have all heard the old adage, seeing is believing - for it is in the nature of man to suspect those things which cannot be apprehended through the senses. But even the most cursory look at Scripture proves that - where faith in God is concerned - seeing is not believing. A great many of Christ’s contemporaries saw Him perform miracles but they did not believe in His Name. From a biblical point of view it would perhaps be more accurate to say: seeing is knowing.

For example, an agoraphobic may stand all day in the lobby of the Empire State Building, watching people travel safely up and down; but ask him to get into the elevator himself and he will look at you with incredulity and fear in his eyes. He has seen; he knows; but he doesn’t believe. At least not enough to act. In just this way, the Israelites saw the works of God for forty years in the wilderness; they knew – and had in fact witnessed - what wonders He was capable of, yet they did not believe.

Why not? In part because, though they saw God work, they did not take time to get to know His ways - that is, His character as it was revealed in the realm of their everyday existence. Instead, "they always went astray in their hearts," thinking more about their ‘deprivations’ than God's deliverance, and privileging their grievances over God's gifts. Like the agoraphobic, though they watched God perform miracle after miracle, they did not believe; at least, not enough to risk acting on what He had revealed.

The Bible teaches that faith, or the ability to believe, is a gift of God (Eph. 2.8) - that is, it only comes through revelation by the Holy Spirit. But belief, if it is authentic, must be followed by action - i.e. obedience. "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." What does this mean? It means that when God revealed Himself to Abraham, Abraham believed the revelation, in spite of its seeming impossibility. "In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken" (Rom. 4.19). As a result, though he was a sinful man, God honored him by granting him righteousness - that is, moral perfection in His eyes.

The very idea that someone with no past experience of God - no thousands's-year-old religious tradition or canonical body of Scripture to draw from - would have the courage, even the audacity, to believe is not only incredible, it is near to being beyond all human comprehension. Yet Abraham did.

He was seventy-five years old when God bid him go forth from his country, from his father’s house, and the land of his relatives (Gen. 12.1). But when God spoke, “Abraham went,” even though he did not know where he was going (Gen. 12.4). Ten years later, when God spoke to him again, saying, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them…So shall your descendants be” (Gen. 15.5), Abraham believed.

Can you imagine looking up at a great black sky glittering with countless stars, and, at the age of eighty-five, with a wife in her early seventies, actually believing that your descendants would someday rival them in number?

But (it is worth repeating) Abraham did; in fact, Scripture says, "Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform" (Rom. 4.19-21).

"Being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform..." When was the last time I responded to God with such assurance? And how might my perception of the world be different if I did?

Though it's hard to say when - perhaps at the moment his heart first responded in faith - Abraham's belief was transfigured into a new way of seeing; what was his ordinary, humdrum existence, became extraordinary because he viewed it through the eyes of faith.

Abraham no longer saw obstacles as hindrances - things that impeded or blocked his way - but opportunities to experience God’s character made manifest. Thus, rather than shrinking back in fear and disbelief when God asked him to sacrifice his son, the son of promise, Abraham “considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead” (Heb. 11.19). He ‘saw’ through the eyes of faith that God is not limited by any natural law, that he can move above, beyond, and outside the bounds of human reasoning, and so he obeyed.

Neither did Abraham’s faith divorce him from the world; it merely changed his attitude toward it. He did not become a perpetual stargazer, denying the pains and hardships of life, because he served a God with theoretical power to overcome them. No, he engaged life’s challenges; he endured its trials; and he endeavored to accomplish the tasks put before him, but always with one eye to the horizon, “looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11.10).

Like Abraham, we may not see God literally, as we see the ocean or the trees, but if we respond in faith and obedience to that which, through Christ, the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit, He reveals to us, we will begin to see things spiritually, through the eyes of faith. As we do we will discover and affirm the truth that few find - seeing isn't believing; believing is seeing.

Rags to Riches

2008-09-29T13:25:00.001-07:00

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 5.4

In his great essay, The Weight of Glory, CS Lewis says, “There are no ‘ordinary’ people.” Cultures and nations rise and fall but people, all people, will last forever. If Lewis is right – and I believe he is - then it is fair to say that all human beings, in all moments, at all times, are progressing down one of two paths: the path toward becoming, in his words, an “immortal horror” or an “everlasting splendor.”

But how do you know which path you are traversing? The path of corruption or the path of greatness?

Christ’s Sermon on the Mount offers a stunning outline of the path to spiritual greatness. It hallmarks, in chronological order, the characteristic virtues of those creatures that are progressing along this path…

The path begins with poverty – not necessarily literal poverty (though the two are often inextricably linked) - but poverty of spirit, that state of spiritual bankruptcy whereby an individual, that is, I come to recognize what is not only my lack of spiritual riches, but my absolute depravity of them. I realize I am destitute, not only of spiritual wealth, but of influence and honor; my abject poverty makes me powerless to achieve anything for myself. Instead I am in a condition which compels me to beg for alms, for charity, that is, love, agapos – the embodiment of which is Christ in the flesh.

Such poverty of spirit leads to a state of mourning. I mourn over my sin; an affliction I cannot, of myself, remove. Mourning leads, in turn, to meekness which is not only mildness of nature or disposition, but gentleness of spirit. In our culture, no doubt due to its connotation of passivity, meekness is seldom praised. However it is precisely this quality of spirit which produces a hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness do so because they recognize their lack of the thing – in the same way that I hunger and thirst for food when my stomach is empty. Such people, because they are in tune with their own deficiencies, are, by necessity, apt to be merciful. Having been made dully aware of their own depravity, and consequently learned to look to God for the meeting of their needs, they are not motivated by a desire to use others. Thus they are not manipulative, but pure in heart.

Those who have – by Christ’s power – been set free from the compulsion to manipulate, control, and use others can, in turn, apply their freedom to making peace. They become peacemakers. And if, or – as likely happens – WHEN their efforts toward peacemaking fail, they are willing to be persecuted - to suffer insults and all manner of evils - for righteousness’s (that is, for Christ’s) sake.

In contrast, the inversion of this path highlights the qualities of those who are progressing toward a state of eternal corruption.

Rather than poverty, this path begins with a state of self-sufficiency akin to that which (presumably) possessed Eve in the moments before she succumbed to Satan’s lies. Those who are self-sufficient are often self-satisfied – they are, in the modern sense of the word, happy. They are getting what they want – that is, an endless measure of THEMSELVES.

Being self-sufficient or, as the expression goes, “full of themselves,” such people are often proud or superior. Rather than hungering or thirsting after righteousness, they often think they, themselves, are right. Consequently – how can it be otherwise? – they are unmerciful. For how can you exhibit mercy towards creatures who, at all times, fail to live up to your very high, very SELF-righteous standards?

Failing to demonstrate mercy toward others, such people often feel compelled to manipulate. They are highly skilled in the art of bending others’s wills to their own. Rather than making peace, they are makers of strife, contentious, quarrelsome. In the end, they are those who persecute, rather than those who are persecuted.

Ultimately, all human beings must arrive at one of two destinations. Those who go through life insisting on their own way and using others to get it must arrive at what is the height of spiritual bankruptcy, that is, damnation; whereas those who admit their weakness, surrender to God’s ways, and sacrifice themselves to serve others, must end in a state of spiritual riches. It is to them that Christ says," Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great” (Matt. 5.12).

Life in Him

2008-09-24T14:26:00.001-07:00

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." - John 15.5

A living branch is different from a house or a piece of sculpted clay in that it is never quite finished. It could go on living forever, so long as it continues receiving nourishment from the vine. A house may be renovated and meticulously well-maintained; or it may fall into a state of utter disrepair. But once each stone is placed it remains there, unmoving, ungrowing. It can, in a sense, abide; but it cannot flourish! The same is true of the clay – it may undergo metamorphosis - a total change in form and appearance - but once it hardens and sets, once it has been thrown into the kiln, it can neither change nor grow.

And yet - however marvelous and beautiful this is - it is a rare branch that learns the secret of abiding.

And so they literally break out, severing their ties from the vine, not realizing that in doing so they betray themselves, becoming guilty not only of adolescent thinking, but adolescent behavior.

Suffering and Glory

2008-09-06T13:55:00.001-07:00

For it was fitting that he...should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers…” – Hebrews 2.10-11

In the second chapter of Hebrews we are shocked to discover that the God of the Universe is not ashamed to identify with depraved humanity – with we who inhabit a world which GM Hopkin’s rightly described as “smeared with toil,” which “wears man’s smudge and shares men’s smell.” He through whom and for whom the world was made; who upholds the universe by the strength of His power; who is and was the exact radiance of His Father’s glory – the perfect imprint of His nature – this Lord, this God called us brothers, brothers!

He made Himself “a little lower than the angels,” friend to a fallen race of men – of fallen gods (Ps. 82.6) – in order that we could be redeemed, bought back, and reunited with the same Father from whom we both originate. Perhaps most magnificently, He not only did all this so that we could be made like Him, but so that we could be with Him in glory.

How did He do it?

First, by symbolically identifying a group of people as His own, the Jews; second, by speaking to them through their fathers and prophets; later, by delivering them from physical bondage in the desert of Egypt. Afterwards, in the wilderness where they wandered, He gave them bread from Heaven; and covered the ground with quail, all the time saying that He did so in order that they would know He was Yahweh, the benevolent, all-knowing, ever-existing, creator God. To these great lengths, He gladly went.

But even if all this was – or at any rate should have been – enough for them and, inadvertently, us, to come to know His character, it wasn’t enough to save us.

So He went further by becoming the bread. He suffered on the hill called Golgotha so that we could be delivered from spiritual bondage in the desert of our own souls; the blood He shed, by a kind of miraculous transfusion, became – and forever outside of time remains – our life, our sustenance and nourishment, the thing that will protect us from damnation and decay.

Of course, it is He who made us to desire glory (the inverse of damnation) and eternal life (the inverse of decay). This desire – this “eternity in our hearts” – is not some aberration, some narcissistic consequence of Eve’s indiscretion or Adam’s abdication. It is part of our divine make-up (1 Peter 5.10). No saint in honesty can look with disparaging eyes upon the promise of being awarded a crown. We hold fast to the promise that “if we endure with Him, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2.11-12).

But what we oft fail to recognize – what we sometimes, even, shudder to suppress – is the knowledge that, in order to identify with Him in glory, we must first be willing to identify with Him in suffering. It is only “if” we endure that we will reign; and "if" we suffer with Him that we will be glorified with Him (Rom. 8.17).

Thus Paul promises that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (3.12); or as the same verse is translated elsewhere, “they will suffer." We all want to identify with Him in glory; but who wants to identify with Him in suffering, or to endure the shame of persecution?

If we must endure, where, and to whom, can we look to find the courage to face such suffering?

We look to Christ, “the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” We take time to consider “Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that [we] will not grow weary and lose heart” (Heb.12.3); we gird ourselves up, summoning every ounce of the strength He has given us, every shred of resolve, to remember “that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Rom. 8.18).

Having It All

2008-09-04T11:41:00.001-07:00

"Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it,
Where is the director?
I want to see him."

- Soren Kierkegaard

One morning last spring my friend Madeline dropped by for a visit. We sat in lounge chairs in my front yard on the little circle of synthetic green that, in Arizona, constitutes our ‘lawn.’ Our babies, born a week apart, ogled each other beneath silk sunhats, groping now and then at a loose thread that sprouted between the faded quilt squares beneath them.

Madeline’s three-year-old, Lizzie, quickly made a game of tossing pennies into the stone fountain that stood beside the lawn. Occasionally she trotted lightly round the fountain’s base and, tucking her chin into her neck, abashedly made us guess at her ‘wish.’ When I suggested that, perhaps, since it was so terribly hot, she might have wished for a cold soda or an iced cream cone she said, “No,” more solemnly than I thought any three year old capable. “I asked God to make me more grateful.”

Madeline and I exchanged glances, at once baffled and delighted by her innocence and depth.

In between slow sips of iced tea we chit chatted about this and that – the books we were reading, a newly discovered recipe for chocolate dipped coconut macaroons – and at 11 o’clock shared a snack of fresh strawberries and crackers and cheese. By 11:30 the babies began to rub their eyes. “I believe our window is closing,” I said.

Lizzie, at my elbow now, looked up at me quizzically. “Miss Heather,” she ventured, searching stoically about the yard, “which window is it?”

I started to answer, then stopped myself, having grasped her meaning. “Oh, sweetheart,” I said, making little effort to conceal my amusement, “that’s called a metaphor.”

“A meta-what?”

“A metaphor. For example, have you ever heard anyone say, ‘It’s raining cats and dogs?’

“Nooo.”

“How about: ‘She has a heart of stone?’”

Lizzie shook her head.

“Please,” interrupted Madeline, “stop while you’re ahead.”

“I don’t believe I ever was - Oh, Madeline. She's an absolute dream.”

Madeline smiled. “Moments like this make it all worth it,” she said her voice trailing off “…which is why I am embarrassed to admit I sometimes fear I will wake up one day and wonder if I wasted my life. I’m terrified that perhaps staying home was the easy answer.”

I squeezed Madeline’s arm and told her I didn’t think there were any easy answers.

But after we waved goodbye I lingered a few moments on my front step, feeling a stab of regret that I hadn’t a better response to my friend’s admission. If she could only see herself through my eyes, I thought. If only she knew what she had gained compared to what she had lost…

Madeline met her husband in law school. They clerked together, graduated together, and after their marriage took a job together with a Phoenix firm. When they got married, Madeline was sure she’d return to work after having children. But two weeks into her maternity leave, her husband began to rethink his convictions regarding childrearing. He felt it was important for children to have their mother at home, particularly during their earliest years. And so, contrary to her own preferences, Madeline submitted to his wishes, choosing to honor him at the expense of her career.

Needless to say, she was not the kind of person with a predilection for easy answers.

I knew she loved being a mother. I loved being a mother. Yet I resonated with her fear - not because I felt ambivalence at my decision to stay home – but because I shared what I believed was Madeline’s underlying desire to live a purposeful life. I considered that all people harbor such desires – to live lives that have impact and, as worn out as the phrase may be, make some lasting difference in the larger world.

The desire for meaning and purpose are intrinsic to human nature. But how, I pondered, does one go about attaining these things? More specifically, how does one do so as a mother and a Christian?

THE PROBLEM

As a woman, the culture tells me that I should be able to have it all – love, career, and children – and that I am justified in pursuing my dreams regardless of the cost to my husband, child, and – above all – my relationship with God. Moreover, I am given the subtle but unmistakable message that doing something “important” and being a full-time mother are mutually exclusive.

In contrast, Christianity teaches that in order to find my life I must lose it; and that the key to living is dying. Thus the two states are directly opposed. To live a life of temporal significance – according to the world’s value system – I must devote myself to self-actualization whereas, to follow Jesus Christ and live a life of eternal significance requires self-sacrifice.

Madeline chose to sacrifice her own plans by submitting to the leadership of her husband. From a Christian standpoint, she made the right decision.

But if so, why are there lingering doubts in her mind, and the minds of so many women like her? If what we are doing as wives, mothers, and children of God is really meaningful in His eyes, why does it so often feel mundane and purposeless?

THE SOLUTION

I have come to believe that life often feels meaningless because it is meaningless. King Solomon surveyed the nature of existence and concluded that all things are absurd, futile, and without meaning. Whether you are a lawyer a mother or a world-renown tightrope walker “all is vanity and striving after wind.”

A man may build an empire today but tomorrow no one will remember his name. As the Psalmist says, “[There is] no remembrance of former [things]; neither shall there be [any] remembrance of [things] that are to come with [those] that shall come after." The Bible teaches that we cannot effect any lasting change in the universe. Whatever impact we are to have is in, through, and by the power of Christ at work in us “to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

Galations 5.6 says, “…In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

I thought again of Madeline. She was but one of a great many of the women I knew who had “put to death” their own plans in order to be obedient to the thing which they believed God had called them to. Madeline was staying home with her girls even though her preference was to practice law. Lucy, a surgeon, was working faithfully despite the fact that her real longing was to be a wife and mother. Jane had made great domestic sacrifices in order to care for her aging parents. And Elizabeth - who had been eager to cease working after the birth of her first child - continued after her baby was diagnosed with a serious illness - just so her family could maintain health insurance!

All of these women have drastically different circumstances; none of them is living the life she envisioned for herself. Yet each is stewarding her circumstances with a faith that is expressing itself through love.

Thus it is neither working nor staying home, mothering nor remaining single, that have any value. What is valuable is being faithful to God through the circumstances He gives – believing Him, hoping in Him, and staking our lives upon His Word.

Hebrews 4.2 says, “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they [the Israelites] also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.” If we are to live profitable lives, lives that, in God’s kingdom, “amount to something,” we must spend our energies believing in the gospel that was preached to us and the God which it reveals: a God who became man and died a sinner's death in order to reconcile us to Himself. It is this gospel - and not the gospel of self-actualization or self-empowerment - which must become the single, unifying power that holds our lives together. It alone must be the foundation upon which our life is built, the framework through which our every decision is made.

Ephesians 2.10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has chosen beforehand that we should walk in them.” The American mindset is that I am my own workmanship. The world is my oyster; and thus my destiny is my own. I must set my mind on the thing I want and work relentlessly until it is my possession.

But if the Word of God is reliable and true, if we are His workmanship then, like any master artist, He decides precisely what we are to be. He chooses the medium (whether oil, watercolor, charcoal), the subject (perhaps a portrait or landscape) and the period in which the work that is my very soul is rendered. We choose whether to comply with Him in the making, whether – in faith – to persevere through the circumstances He chooses, letting Him have His way, or whether we will dig in our heels and in defiance say, No, You must use this color! And how about sketching me in a grand old house by the sea instead of out here in the desert or the mountains or the swamp?

What is more, if we are His workmanship – His works of art, like living stones being built up into a spiritual house – then it is fair to say that He made us for the same reason that the painter paints her painting, or the sculptor sculpts her clay – she does so for the sheer joy of the thing! The process is certainly painstaking, but it is also delightful! And the outcome remains forever afterward something that brings glory to the Painter, something that proclaims to the whole universe just how magnificent He is.

Proverbs 16.4 says, “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose. Even the wicked for the day of evil.” The clause “for its own purpose” comes from the Hebrew word maaneh which, when translated literally, means “for Himself, for His answer or response.” Accordingly the King James Bible says, “The Lord has made everything for himself.”

Thus we find our life’s purpose in belonging to God, and being the thing He has made us to be. We are valuable because He says so. Specificities of application aside, He has made us to be conformed into the image of Jesus Christ; to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Such love, if it is genuine, is demonstrated through obedience: “This is love for God: to obey his commands” (1 John 5.3). Like Christ, ours should be an obedience that persists, regardless of circumstances and irrespective of cost.

If we believe Him – and spend our lives seeking to conform ourselves to His word – then we will become increasingly immune to the oft-times alluring but hopelessly mistaken values of our world.

“Having it all” will always be defined as having all of Him. John 15.5 says, “Abide in me and you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Only God can effect change in the universe. He accomplishes the work; but I can participate. I – with Madeline, Lucy, Jane and Elizabeth beside me – can allow Him to take the mundane and meaningless tasks that often form the substance of my days and use them to shape me into something beautiful, something that brings everlasting praise to His Name.

Community Living

2008-07-31T09:46:00.001-07:00

“So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other…just as the Lord forgave you...Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.” – Colossians 3.12-13

The presence of such commands in the New Testament epistles implies something glaring about myself and my neighbor: we are both sinners, sinners to the core. One does not say to a bird, “Chirp!” or to a horse, “’Whinny’ and ‘neigh!’” These things come naturally to both creatures.

But to a human being, God must make a point of saying, “put on” compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross means we can do so – relying not upon our own nature, but upon His. To exhibit these qualities is not natural; I am not innately kind or humble, gentle or patient. Instead, I am prone to think a man rightly earned whatever hard lot has fallen upon him. I am more often callous and indifferent than compassionate and kind. It takes no effort for me to assert myself; but I must practice humility!

Further, the fact that I am commanded to demonstrate gentleness or patience inadvertently implies that God will sprinkle my path with individuals whose behavior naturally incites the opposite within me. It is easy enough to be gentle and mild with a helpless babe; but put me for five minutes in close quarters with someone brash or haughty and I must exercise all my powers of self-restraint to keep from throwing punches or baring claws.

Of all the virtues, patience is, in our culture, perhaps the nearest to extinction. We are eager, hurried, impulsive, and rash; who has time for patience when you are so used to having the thing you want now? Patient people, we feel, are passive people. Not so for the Christian! It is patience which breathes wind into the sails of faith. The dictionary says patience is “the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties.” We must put on patience if we are to persevere in the Christian life.

Finally, to know that I must bear with others and forgive means that others will try my patience and sin against me.

Why should I? The most natural thing to do, when I am face to face with a conflict between myself and my neighbor, is to withdraw. No need to fight it out – aren’t we above all that? Instead, I will remove myself from the presence of my enemy! My sense of justice tells me that such forms of retribution – whether active or passive - are only fair. After all, don’t I have a right to protect myself?

But the Scripture says I have no such right because my sense of right and wrong have been distorted by sin (Lam. 3.39). I have become not only my own worst enemy but I have also made myself an enemy of God: "Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge" (Psalm 51.4).

Thus when commanding Christ's church to "put on" His natural virtues, the apostle appeals to a higher law than the law of justice.

Christ’s sacrifice on the cross – through which perfect Justice was completely satisfied – renders my sense of justice obsolete. I am now under a new law – the law of love (Mar. 12.28-31). Thus, in Him, I am compelled to forgive just as I have been forgiven; to love without regard for myself; only then can we begin to know and experience what is meant by “…the perfect bond of unity.”

Staying Home

2008-07-30T22:27:00.001-07:00

One morning last spring my friend Madeline dropped by for a visit. We sat in lounge chairs in my front yard on the little circle of synthetic green that, in Arizona, constitutes our ‘lawn.’ Our babies, born a week apart, ogled each other beneath their silk sunhats, groping now and then at a loose thread that sprouted between the faded squares of the quilt spread between us.

Lizzie, Madeline’s three-year-old, quickly made a game of tossing pennies into the stone fountain that stood beside the lawn. Occasionally, she trotted lightly round the fountain’s base and made us guess at her ‘wish.’ When I suggested that perhaps, since it was so terribly hot, she might have wished for a cold soda or an iced cream cone she said, “No,” more solemnly than I thought any three year old capable. “I asked God to make me more grateful.”

Madeline and I exchanged glances, at once baffled and delighted by her innocence and depth.

Lizzie looked at me quizzically. “Miss Heather,” she ventured, searching stoically about the yard, “which window is it?”

I started to ask what she meant, then stopped myself, having grasped her meaning. “Oh, sweetheart,” I said, making little effort to conceal my amusement, “that’s called a metaphor.”

“A meta-what?”

“A metaphor. For example, have you ever heard anyone say, ‘It’s raining cats and dogs?’

“Nooo.”

“I forgot. We are in the desert. How about: ‘She has a heart of stone?’”

Lizzie shook her head.

“Please,” interrupted Madeline, “stop while you’re ahead.”

“I don’t believe I ever was. Oh, Madeline. She's a dream.”

Madeline smiled. “Moments like this make it all worth it,” she said. Her voice trailed off. “…which is why I am embarrassed to admit I sometimes fear I will wake up one day and wonder if I wasted my life. I’m terrified that perhaps staying home was the easy answer.”

I squeezed Madeline’s arm and told her I didn’t think there were any easy answers.

But after we waved goodbye I lingered a few moments on my front step, feeling a stab of regret that I hadn’t a better response to my friend’s admission. If she could only see herself through my eyes, I thought. If only she knew the superiority of what she had gained compared to what she had lost…

Madeline met her husband in law school. They clerked together, graduated together, and after their marriage took a job together with a Phoenix firm. When they got married, Madeline was sure she’d return to work after having children. But two weeks into her maternity leave, her husband began to rethink his convictions regarding childrearing. He felt it was important for children to have their mother at home, particularly during their earliest years. Contrary to her own preferences, Madeline submitted to his wishes, choosing to honor him at the expense of her career.

Needless to say, she was anything but the kind of person who looked for easy answers to life’s difficulties.

I knew she loved being a mother. Yet I resonated with her fear - not because I disliked motherhood – but because I shared what I believed was Madeline’s underlying desire to live a purposeful life. I considered that all people harbor such desires – to live lives that have impact and, as worn out as the phrase may be, make some lasting difference in the larger world.

The desire for meaning and purpose are intrinsic to human nature. But how, I pondered, does one go about attaining these things? More specifically, how does one do so as a Christian?

THE PROBLEM

As a woman, the culture tells me that I should be able to have it all – love, career, children – and that I am justified in pursuing my dreams regardless of the cost to my husband, child, and – above all – my relationship with God. Moreover, I am given the subtle but unmistakable message that doing something “important” and being a full-time mother are mutually exclusive.

In contrast, Christianity teaches that in order to find my life I must lose it; and that the key to living is dying. Thus the two states are directly opposed. To live a life of temporal significance – according to the world’s value system – I must devote myself to self-actualization, whereas, to follow Jesus Christ, and live a life of eternal significance, requires self-sacrifice.

Madeline chose to sacrifice her own plans by submitting to the leadership of her husband. According to the outline I've just set out, she made the right choice.

THE SOLUTION

I have come to believe that life often feels meaningless because it is meaningless. King Solomon surveyed the nature of existence and concluded that all things are absurd, futile, and without meaning. Whether you are a lawyer a mother or a world-renown bird caller “all is vanity and striving after wind.”

A man may build an empire today but tomorrow no one will remember his name. Today’s bestseller is tomorrow’s trash. As the Psalmist says, “[There is] no remembrance of former [things]; neither shall there be [any] remembrance of [things] that are to come with [those] that shall come after. The Bible teaches that we cannot effect any lasting change in the universe. Whatever impact we are to have is in, through, and by the power of Christ at work in us “to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

Galations 5.6 says, “…In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

I thought again of Madeline. She was but one of a great many of the women I knew who had “put to death” their own plans in order to be obedient to the thing which they believed God had called them to. Madeline was staying home with her girls even though her preference was to practice law. Lucy, a surgeon, was working faithfully despite the fact that her real longing was to be a wife and mother. Jane, a doctor of history, had made great domestic sacrifices in order to care for her aging parents. And Elizabeth, who had been thrilled at the thought of quitting work after the birth of her first child, continued part-time after her baby was diagnosed with a serious illness, just so the family could maintain their health insurance!

Thus it is neither working nor staying home, mothering nor remaining single that have any value. What is valuable is being faithful to God through the circumstances He gives – believing Him, hoping in Him, and staking our lives upon His Word.

Hebrews 4.2 says, “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they [the Israelites] also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.” If we are to live profitable lives, lives that, in God’s kingdom, “amount to something,” we must spend our energies believing in the gospel that was preached to us and the God which it reveals: a God who became man and died a sinner's death in order to reconcile the world to Himself. It is this gospel which must become the single, unifying power that holds our lives together; the framework upon which our life is built, and our every decision made.

Ephesians 2.10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has chosen beforehand that we should walk in them.” The American mindset is that I am my own workmanship. The world is my oyster. My destiny is my own. I must set my mind on the thing I want and work relentlessly until it is my possession. To do less is to prove myself a coward or, even worse, mediocre.

What is more, if we are His workmanship – His works of art, living stones being built up into a spiritual house – then it is fair to say that He made us for the same reason that the painter paints her painting, or the sculptor sculpts her clay – she does so for the sheer joy of the thing! The process is certainly painstaking, but it is also delightful! And the outcome remains forever afterward something that brings glory to the Painter.

Proverbs 16.4 says, “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose. Even the wicked for the day of evil.” The clause “for its own purpose” comes from the Hebrew word maaneh which, when translated literally, means “for Himself, for His answer or response.” Thus the King James Bible says, “The Lord has made everything for himself.”

Thus we find our life’s purpose in being the thing God has made us to be. Specificities of application aside, He has made us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ; to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love our neighbor as ourself. Such love, if it is genuine, is demonstrated through obedience: “This is love for God: to obey his commands” (1 John 5.3). Like Christ, ours should be an obedience that persists, regardless of circumstances and irrespective of cost.

If we believe Him – and spend our lives seeking to conform to His will – then we will become increasingly immune to the oft-times alluring but hopelessly mistaken values of our world.

“Having it all” will always be defined as having all of Him. John 15.5 says, “Abide in me and you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Only God can effect change in the universe. He accomplishes the work; but I – with Madeline, Lucy, Jane and Elizabeth beside me – can participate by allowing Him to take and use the meaningless tasks that form the substance of my days to shape me into something beautiful, something that brings everlasting praise to His Name.

Finding Your Purpose in God's Will

2008-07-14T16:28:00.001-07:00

"For this is the will of God, your sanctification..." - 1 Thess. 4.3

“Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him..." - 1 Peter 4.19

Knowledge of God’s will is something men have made claims toward for thousands of years. Religions have been forged and factions formed by those who claim to possess it. It is a subject over which wars have been fought, and are being fought still. But perhaps the apostle Paul gives us the greatest insight into unlocking what this ‘mysterious’ will of God truly is: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12.2).

To know and do God’s will one must first and foremost surrender one’s own will. This surrender is not passive, but active: do not be conformed…but be transformed. One must actively resist conformity to “the pattern of this world,” turning away from or breaking out of the natural or inherited mold. At the same time, one must actively pursue the kind of transformation which – by the Holy Spirit’s power – leads to the state of having a “renewed mind.” We do this by immersing ourselves in the Scriptures and always seeking to interpret our circumstances through the lenses of biblical truth.

God’s will is rarely something concrete and easily defined. It must, in the host of situations which each of us face over the course of a lifetime, be “test[ed] and approve[d]” over and against the parameters (i.e. biblical commands) outlined in Scripture.

The question is here raised: How did Christ exemplify this process while walking the earth? Scripture tells us bluntly: “…Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; …while suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 2.23).

Christ submitted to God’s authority by following His thread, the thread that led Him to the Cross. He did not seek new and better circumstances for Himself. As His the narrative of His life so clearly proves, His life was not His own; His destiny - a word which for most Americans is impregnated with false notions - was not His to create. As He submitted, He suffered; but rather than resist such suffering, or give way to fear, He entrusted Himself to the God who judges righteously.

This is the will of God in the life of His saints – not that we pursue suffering, nor rejoice in it for its own sake; but that when He brings it into our lives, we make it our aim to suffer like Him. "...[Y]ou were called for this very purpose, that you may inherit a blessing" (1 Peter 3.9).

The Elder Brother II

2008-06-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

“For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” – Luke 19.10

It is very difficult, if you are in the class of people whom society would likely term (even moderately) ‘successful,’ ‘intelligent,’ or ‘morally upright,’ to read the story of the Prodigal Son without feeling some measure of indignation at the father’s treatment of the Elder Brother. We feel that he was treated unfairly; that he was, as so often happens in families when one child screws up and the other sucks it up, overworked and underappreciated; and we shake our heads knowingly and mutter something about how “such people” (by which of course we mean, ourselves) are always getting the short end of the stick.

And yet our very act of commiseration tacitly reveals and confirms our guilt. Those, like myself, who at first glance read the story of the Elder Brother only to find themselves overcome with a sense of vicarious self-righteous anger must recognize the smoke and follow it to the fire: for the fire is fueled by our belief that we are good, that we have proven our goodness by our actions, and that these actions entitle us to a certain standard of treatment. In this our hearts are exposed as Pharisaical, brimming with pride and self-righteousness.

We have not only failed to grasp the meaning of the Cross, but our need for it. Our faith, however sincere, is largely misguided, being built on an improper foundation (Luke 6.46-49).

Whereas the Prodigal is a personification of Immoral Man, the Elder Brother personifies the Moral or Religious person. Each is in error, each has ‘turned to his own way’ and, apart from the divine intervention of a gracious father, each is headed for an eternity separated from him.

Whereas the prodigal is preoccupied with gratifying the needs of his flesh, the Elder Brother is preoccupied with gratifying his own ego. He is out to prove his own goodness or rightness before his father and as a result becomes obsessed with his sense of what he believes is owed him – namely, his father’s recognition and his father’s things.

What is more, he is oriented toward obeying a set of rules and performing to meet a set of standards, rather than cultivating a relationship with his father. As a result, he is filled with a sense of entitlement: 'Look! For so many years I have been serving you and…{yet} you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.' When he does not get what he believes he deserves, he is filled with malice and self-pity.

The Elder Brother simultaneously demonstrates his hubris – for who but Christ can justly say to his father, ‘I have never neglected a command of yours?” – as well as his total failure to comprehend that the primary means of acceptance in any relationship is grace and not works. Because of this failure, the Elder Brother proves incapable of genuine love and compassion, toward his brother or anyone else. He is too busy judging the failures of others to realize his own (Romans 2.1).

But perhaps the primary difference between the Prodigal and his Elder Brother is their varying levels of self-awareness. The first ultimately apprehends that he is lost and returns to his father begging mercy; the other, as far as we know, remains entrenched in his own false perceptions of himself and by the end of the story has drifted further astray than when we first met him. In the end, he is more to be pitied.

Certainly, the abruptness with which Christ ends the story - relaying the earnest Father's appeal without mention of the Elder Brother's response - is meant to serve as a kind of stimulus. Perhaps we are meant to finish and act out the ending in our own lives.

How will we respond? Will we allow ourselves to be truly converted, or will we harden our hearts, to God and men?

A God Worth Fearing

2008-06-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

“And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.” – Exodus 1.21

David and Solomon understood that: “The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1.7). Thus one of the most obvious indicators that a man is lost is his total absence of any fear of God. In his condemnation of all men, Paul uses the words of David as a proof: “There is no fear of God before there eyes” (Rom. 3.18).

The fear of God is critical to being rightly related to Him. To fear God is not merely, as our society would like to think, to display reverence – though of course we should conduct ourselves reverently in His presence. God is awesome and should therefore inspire awe. However, to fear God also and more precisely means exactly what it says: to be stricken with fear or terror, exceedingly frightened, terrified.

When Christ was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, the Scriptures tell us that “they were terrified” (Mark 9.4). Peter was so filled with fear that he began to mumble nonsensically. Similarly, when the disciples saw the wind die down in response to Christ’s direct order “they became very much afraid” (Mark 4.41). Both words – “terrified” and “afraid” – come from the same Greek root, phobos, from which is derived the English word phobia. It literally means “to be struck with fear or to be seized with alarm.”

But objects of fear are also sources of hope. All human beings tend to display fear toward those persons or thing in which they also invest hope. For example, I may fear for the safety of my child because I also hope in her future well-being. My husband may fear his employer because he hopes the man will one day grant him a raise. In this sense, fear and hope are conversely related; the more I fear X, the more my hope is in X.

But if I am rightly related to God I fear nothing and no one but Him because I hope in nothing and no one but Him. In Christ we are liberated from the fear of “those who kill the body and after that can do no more” (Luke 4.3). Instead, as Luke instructs, “Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him” (Luke 4.4). It is to God, not man, before whom we will one day give an account; and whatever praise we receive will come from Him. Thus we also hope in Him, believing that He alone – through Christ – is capable of offering us salvation from Hell and grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4).

The Egyptian midwives demonstrated this kind of fear; and God rewarded them for it. They protected the Hebrew women at their own risk because they feared God more than Pharoah. Those who truly possess a fear of God will often demonstrate this kind of courage because they know either explicitly (via God’s word) or implicitly (through the work of the Holy Spirit) that only God is worth fearing.

The Abolition of Fear

2008-06-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

"To those who reside as aliens…who are chosen…to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood...” --1 Peter 1-2

To those who are chosen. To do what? To obey. And to be sprinkled with His blood. This is well worth repeating because it sheds profound light on the vocational purpose of those who would identify themselves as Christians. We devote exorbitant amounts of time and energy to talk of vocation, and of finding one’s purpose, without recognizing that the predominant part of our purpose on earth, our raison d’etre, so to speak, is simply to obey Christ and to live as marked men and women in a world that is perishing.

Peter goes on throughout his epistle to highlight the various ways in which Christians are called to demonstrate their allegiance to Christ by submitting to earthly authorities: citizens to governments, servants to masters, wives to husbands, and young men to elder men. The application may differ depending on one’s station in life, but the essential call is the same for all people: obedience to Christ displayed through obedience to authority, even when that authority is unreasonable.

Lest there be any confusion about this, Peter states very clearly: “…this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly’ (2.19). He goes on, “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps” (2.21).

We do not submit because we feel like it; in fact, if submission corresponded with our natural inclination it would not be submission at all but preference. Neither do we submit because we are convinced that, in doing so, we will achieve the particular outcome we think best at the time.

We submit because we believe that the best things emerge from obedience. Just look at the Cross and all it accomplished. Every single act of obedience, however small, is a profound demonstration, an overt testament of our belief that God’s way is the best way, that His ‘good’ is the only good worth having, and His ‘freedom’ the only kind that truly makes us free.

“Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him her lord;” but just because she called him lord does not mean that she mistook him for the Lord. Sarah’s hope was in God just as Christ’s hope was in God. She knew, just as Christ did, that obedience to any earthly authority – in this case, her husband – could only work in her favor. Perhaps preempting the words of the Psalmist, “This I know that God is for me,” Sarah, when threatened by Hagar, called upon God to be her advocate, not Abraham. She knew that no man, not even her husband, could thwart His purposes for her as long as she remained submitted to Him.

When in faith we obediently submit to the leadership of any earthly authority it requires us, at a certain point, to confront our deepest fears. But if we remember the words of God – “Do not fear…I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great” – we will prove ourselves master over them.

Making History

2008-06-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

“…Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.” – 1 Peter 3.6

What sort of children are Sarah’s? They are those who “do what is right without being frightened by any fear;” in this context, they are submissive to their husbands. For the modern woman, this is a bitter pill which slides crookedly down the throat, if it slides down at all. If, however, we choose to place ourselves in the category of those who choose to submit, we can expect to face adversity, both within and outside ourselves. But it is imperative to remember that all Christians, regardless of sex, are called to submission, even when doing so results in suffering, not vainly, but in order that we may “obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled…reserved in heaven for [us]” (1 Pet.1.4).

The same Peter who wrote these words stepped out of His boat and – contrary to reason and instinct – walked on water in obedience to Christ’s bidding (Matt.14.29). Like so many before him, Peter understood that believing God means obeying Him, regardless of cost. He learned from experience that when we obey God we may be assured of two things: 1) we will suffer; 2) we will be afraid. When we choose to obey God by submitting to those in authority over us we are filled with a sense of unease. Call it anxiety, nervousness, or apprehension, the root of the emotion is the same: we are afraid.

Sarah’s life demonstrates this principle. She began her marriage by following a man who admittedly “did not know where he was going.” Twice he asked her to enter the household of King Abimelech; she went (for all we know) willingly – with no assurance as to whether she would be left unharmed. Later, weary from Hagar and Ishmael’s mocking, she did not demand that Abraham comply with her wishes and expel the pair, but insisted that God act as judge an arbiter between them. Lastly – and perhaps most tellingly – Sarah watched her only child, the son of promise, the boy for whom she had waited so many years, depart with Abraham to Mt. Moriah to offer sacrifices with only a saddled donkey and a thatch of split wood. We cannot help but wonder whether she knew what word God had spoken to Abraham to test him by commanding him to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice? Certainly, if anyone understood that submission is frightening, Sarah did!

The history of Christianity is filled with such persons, flawed persons without knowledge of the future, yet standing up against extraordinary odds, all because they believed God enough to put themselves at risk in order to obey Him. Moses stood before a hard-hearted Pharoah; Esther risked her head by entering the court of the dreaded King Ahasuerus; and David, full of passionate zeal for God, fought the giant Goliath and endured persecution under the voluble king Saul. None of these people were perfect; but all were obedient. It is worth considering that we might not know their names if they had said, ‘no’ or ‘I will not,’ to God. The landscape of biblical history would be just as variant and rich, but it would be peopled with other names and stories.

God does not need us to accomplish His purposes; but in His goodness He offers us opportunity to obey and become part of the great lineage of those who, like Sarah, “considered Him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11.11).

Do you trust God enough to submit to the leadership of your husband? Do you believe that He is not only sovereign, but good? If you do, you will submit, not dejectedly or resignedly, but with a hopeful glimmer in your eye. You will be among those blessed few who realize that He is not out to get you, but to remake you, and in so doing make you a living part of that Great History that is, most simply, His.

God's Authority; Our Safety

2008-06-22T14:35:00.001-07:00

“…Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.”

-1 Peter 3.6

If you are a typical modern woman you likely choked on the first half of this verse, making it nearly impossible for your eyes to remain fixed long enough to make any sense of the second. The very idea of obeying one’s husband not only jolts the mind, it turns the stomach. We begin to feel lightheaded and queasy, certain somehow that Scripture cannot actually mean what it seems to be saying. To submit is one thing. In his epistle to the Ephesians Paul instructs both wives and husbands to “submit to each other in the Lord.” But, we say, trying to calm ourselves, obey? Isn’t that what children do to parents? Or, still worse, slaves to masters? But wives to husbands? The mere suggestion is offensive to most women. It is what our society calls: backward, misogynistic, and – perhaps not least -- utterly ridiculous.

Our eyes fly to the nearest photograph of our dearly beloved – on the face of our flip-phone or the screen of our office computer. Suddenly his imperfections are thrown into high relief: the slightly crooked teeth, the goofy grin, the asymmetrical tilt of the head. ‘What,’ we think, ‘Obey, him?’ We feel an ambivalent mixture of discomfort, even perhaps latent fury, as we attempt to conjure up some wild scenario in which we might, in all seriousness, garner the courage to call him “lord.”

I say ‘courage’ because that is exactly what is required if we are to submit to the leadership of any man who, by nature of the fact that he is human, is thereby fallible.

If all men are fallible, why does God call us to submit to them? On one level, the answer is rhetorical: we submit because He says so. Everything hinges on the authority and reliability of the One who speaks.

Either God is trustworthy or He is not… If He is not trustworthy, then we can justly say, “To hell with your standards.” But if He is trustworthy, and still we insist on having our own way, then – to put it in the most terrifyingly obvious terms – we put ourselves in danger of hearing Him say, “To Hell with you.” I mean no disrespect; surely, God is not as flippant as the preceding phrase makes Him out to be. On the contrary: God is Love. He is Love’s perfect embodiment. Being such, He demands – for our own good and His glory – that we be conformed to His image, the image of the One who “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2.8). If He truly has our best interests at heart, then we can – along with Sarah – find the courage to do that which we have no desire or inclination to do. We can submit to our husbands “in the Lord” or “as unto the Lord,” believing that God is big enough to lead us through them.

But still, you say, it can’t be stomached.

Let us, for a moment, examine the issue in more neutral terms. God asks us to do X, insisting that X is the very best thing for us. X is instituted – not to constrain and belittle – but to protect in the same way that a hat and sunglasses, combined with a thick slather of sunscreen, protect the desert dweller from the sun’s rays. Conversely, not to do X is to place our souls in the gravest jeopardy. Sounds simple, right? In the abstract, it is. The problem arises when we define X. True, God knowingly asks us to do the very thing which comes least naturally to us. But if it came naturally it would not be a command. God does not command us to eat when we are hungry or call a friend when in need of a good chat for the simple reason that these things are both natural and pleasurable. If He knew how hard it would be, He must be after something larger and more important than we can imagine. He is, I believe, after our hearts.

Lest we get carried away with false notions about the rotten ‘plight of women,’ let us remember that the call to obedience – to submission – is not exclusive to sex. 1 Peter is oriented toward calling all people to a posture of submission “for the Lord’s sake” (2.13). Citizens are called to submit to governments; servants to masters; young men to their elders; and, yes, wives to husbands. Peter is clear that such submission – and the pattern of suffering and endurance which it begets and inspires – is not merely preferable. His language is starkly authoritative: “For such is the will of God…” (2.15); “For you were called for this purpose that you might inherit a blessing” (2.21).

Christ is, of course, the ultimate example of this kind of obedience. He lived His life in perfect submission to His Father; and although doing so required Him to submit to the earthly authority of depraved men, His death and resurrection prove that God’s purposes are not in the least obstructed by the fallibility of men.

Ultimately, as Pilate and Judas prove, we are His instruments whether we place ourselves under His authority or not.

When the stakes are highest, on whose authority will you stake your future well-being? Yours or God’s?

Oh, To Be the Friend of God...

2008-06-22T14:34:00.001-07:00

“You are my friends if you do what I command you.” – John 15.14

All human societies are arranged according to hierarchies. Employer to employee; teacher to student; parent to child. We moderns tend to resent such hierarchies for their own sake. Authority and corruption are practically synonyms. Apartheid, genocide, and infanticide are not merely possibilities; they are inherited memories or ongoing events. We have seen the greatest atrocities committed by the most powerful tyrants; or, worst of all, by men who “thought all along they were doing the right thing.” Thus we are skeptical of authority whether we wield it or whether we find ourselves subject to it. Why else do you find so many parents asking their children for advice on how to raise them? We don’t want to be in charge; we want to be friends. We don’t want subjection, but freedom.

The Cross has given us opportunity for both of these things. God, in Christ, reaches out His hand and offers us friendship; but it is friendship unlike the kind we are accustomed to on earth for: “we are His friends if we do what He asks.” His friendship presupposes surrender to His authority. Now, under normal, earthly conditions, people who talk in this way are usually of the Bullying or Queen Bee variety. They have a hint of the masochist in them. They are palpably delighted by exercising authority over others, by making them admit and own their weakness. This “strength,” however, is really just veiled weakness because it needs the other to subsist. It is parasitic; like the physically large but insecure boy who feeds off the fear he inspires in his smaller classmate. Or the attractive young girl whose superiority depends on surrounding herself with other, relatively less attractive or emotionally pliable girls whose will she can bend to her own, and whose ‘weakness’ she can exploit.

But the friendship of God is precisely the opposite. His strength is His own; He does not need us to maintain or uphold it. Christ offers us friendship – which is reconciliation with God – at His expense, not ours. He died so that we might have it. In fact it is we who are invited to feed on His body – His flesh and His blood – so that the life within us, His life, may endure eternally.

By His strength, we are strong. By His beauty we are made beautiful. Moreover, God delights in granting us these things. It is His nature to do so. All we need do is accept. For Him to insist on having it His way, then, is not tyranny. It is pure mercy. Whatever ‘constraints’ Christ places on our friendship by asking us to submit to Him, as well as the earthly authorities He institutes, are there for our protection.

Friendship with God begets freedom, but it is freedom with constraint. John’s gospel says, “Whom the Son sets free is free indeed.” And yet we are called to use our freedom to act as bondslaves of God (1 Pet. 2.16). At the heart of Christianity lies paradox: to live you must die; to be free you must obey.

Thus we obey, in faith, believing that this not only finds favor with God, but that we, along with those under whose authority we stand, will someday give an account to “Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Pet. 4.5).

Christ, the Source of Wealth

2008-04-23T22:17:00.000-07:00

“God is my defense; I shall not be moved. He is my salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength, and my refuge… Lowborn men are but a breath, the highborn are but a lie; if weighed on a balance, they are nothing; together they are only a breath.

– Psalm 62.5-7, 9-1

We live in a world which assigns supreme value to wealth, rank, position, and power.

Christianity inverts these values so that “what is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.” Whereas the kingdoms of this world uphold the man of riches - the “donor,” “investor” “benefactor,” and “patron,” Christ says, “Blessed are you poor for yours is the kingdom of heaven” (Luke 6.20). Our culture equates wealth with honor, and affluence with independence, yet the apostle James urges “the brother of humble circumstances…to glory in his high position; and the rich man {…to glory} in his humiliation” (James 1.9-10), or, tapeinosis, meaning, “lowness” or “low estate.”

From a human perspective, James' assertion is absurd, primarily because it defies human experience. No worldly-minded person would dare say to the slum-dwelling child, “Take pride in your position for it is very high!” But, from a Christian point of view, physical poverty is to be gloried in, or thought “high,” because it most accurately reflects man’s true state as an insecure, fragile, finite being.

The poor man likely possesses a higher level of self-awareness. He knows, both by instinct and experience, that, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field"(1 Peter 1.24). His poverty cannot blind him to the fact that his physical body is in a state of perpetual decay. He does not dispute that his life amounts to very little in the grand scheme of all life; that it shrinks to nothingness when thrown up against the backdrop of eternity; that it is “vanity,” “a vapor,” “a breath.”

But, perhaps most importantly, physical poverty is “blessed” because it exposes and confirms that, compared to the riches that are to be found in Christ, all men are poor - not just poor materially, but poor spiritually. For this reason, Christ says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (italics mine, Matt. 5.3). It is a paradox, a seeming contradiction, but it is true nonetheless that those who possess a poverty of spirit – those who have gained an understanding that, apart from God’s divine intervention, they are empty, bankrupt, lost – are in fact, by God’s definition, truly rich . In Christ, they are unshakably secure. Ironically it is this poverty of spirit, this awareness that, regardless of one man's relative wealth over and above another, all are "lowborn," that is, in God's kingdom, the mark of highest royalty.

On the other hand, there is no greater form of self-deception than that which is found in the man who believes himself to be “highborn.” He is like a donkey convinced he is fit to race in the Kentucky Derby. He may, with his four hoofed feet and his appetite for oats, rightly perceive himself to have been created in the image of the horse (just as man was made in the image of God), but there is nothing changing the fact that, train as he may, he is still an ass – not worthy to be placed in the same category with the horse, let alone compete with him. If he saunters in on race day expecting to find a place in the stalls, he will not only be laughed at, he will be thought insane or under the influence of some form of hallucinogenic.

Thus those of “high estate” are “a delusion” and “a lie.” The security or freedom which the wealthy derive from their riches is not only unreliable, it is deceptively unreliable. It is not merely false like 2 + 3 = 4. It is cunning in its falsity. Like the bottle of wine which, for a few hours, makes the shy person sociable, or the miserable person merry, wealth creates the illusion of security.

If the lowborn man is nothing, if he is “but a breath,” and “together…they are only a breath,” then the highborn man is less than nothing; he is “altogether lighter than vapor” (italics mine, Psalm 62.10).

Far before Christ ever walked the earth, David, with his limited knowledge and revelation, recognized through the Holy Spirit that God alone was his “hope,” his “defense,” his “glory,” his “rock of strength,” his “refuge,” and his “salvation.” He understood that true security is independent of material wealth; and that those who trust in riches are not to be envied, but treated with compassion, as those truly poor.

Knowledge and Freedom

2008-04-07T13:18:00.000-07:00

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate…” – Genesis 3.6

Western society is founded on the presupposition that knowledge is power; that those who have acquired the most knowledge are those who wield the most influence. Yet to become an expert rarely if ever results in freedom. Rather the inverse is true. To the degree that I acquire specialized knowledge in a particular field, such as nuclear physics, I will be obligated to contribute my time and energy to that field.

The President of the United States, arguably the most powerful man in the country, must give up many of his basic human ‘rights’ – such as the right to privacy – in order to continue functioning in his position.

Often the individual finds himself most obligated to the field in which he has acquired the most knowledge. This, in part, is why we refer to certain people as slaves to their occupations. Novelists are slaves to their latest literary creations. Lawyers to the latest big case. Doctors of rare diseases to the never-ending cycle of patients waiting to receive specialized diagnoses and treatment. The more time and energy invested, the greater the pull one feels to contribute more time and energy, on and on ad infinitum.

The fact of the matter is that no one is truly ‘free;’ the only question is: to whom will you surrender your freedom? Eve surrendered her freedom to her own appetite for knowledge. In so doing, she rebelled against God and forfeited His promise of protection and care. For Eve, having access to all knowledge changed the fundamental nature of her existence: she and Adam were not only expelled from the Garden, but she would look forward to perpetual struggle as she sought to subsist in a world at odds with these desires.

Ultimately, God knows what is best for each of us. To have all knowledge may, as the serpent rightly identified, make us like God; but it will never enable us to take His place. He is in control; He is good. Surrender your freedom to Him and He will transform the desert of your inner and outer life into a garden.

Knowledge Versus Dependence

2008-03-31T11:05:00.001-07:00

"And the serpent said unto the woman, 'Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, the your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Genesis 3.4-5

All worlds abide by a unique set of values. In our world progress is highly esteemed; but in order for progress to occur, knowledge must be gained. Whether academically, occupationally, or relationally, one must acquire the right kind of knowledge in order to "make the grade," "land the promotion," or "get the girl."

But in God's world, His system of values reigns. Chief among them is the value or necessity of dependence. Dependence requires the individual to live by faith - a condition that demands commitment before knowing. By eating the forbidden fruit, Eve sought to do away with this element. She wanted her rights more than she wanted a relationship; the 'freedom' to know all without realizing that it would cost her all.

Because God wants a relationship with us, He wants us to depend on Him for sustenance, direction, and a sense of worth. We must walk by faith - in obedience - to acquire these things, believing God will provide them even when we lack any scientific proof to assure us that He will.

The accumulation of knowledge is not wrong; it is simply worthless compared to "knowing God and being found" - i.e. finding one's value - "in Him" (Col. 3).

The patriarchs and prophets lived in this way, committing themselves to follow after God, though they did not know where, precisely, He was leading them. "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called...And he went out, not knowing where he was going" (Hebrews 11.8). Noah spent years building the ark despite a lack of evidence to prove it would rain. Sarah believed she would conceive though she was past the time of childbearing. "By faith Moses, when he was grown, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's Daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin" (Hebrews 11.25).

We are wise to thank God when we encounter circumstances that require our dependence. "He knows our frame; he is mindful that we are but dust." And he will not fail to lead us in the way everlasting.

Our Dreams; God's Plans

2008-03-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

‘Therefore, when I have finished this…I will go on by way of you to Spain. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ.” –Romans 15.28-29

Paul was a man like all men. He was bound by the laws of space and time, subject to physical and emotional frustrations, and plagued by those universal desires – for purpose and meaningful work – which are common to all.

In an attempt to live out his calling to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, Paul developed a precise set of strategies and goals - hopes, if you will - for his ministry and future.

In his letter to the Romans Paul does not attempt to conceal these hopes but rather shares them openly. Having “fully preached the gospel of Christ…from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum” (15.19), his ultimate desire was to “go to Spain” and “to be helped on [his] way there by [the Romans]” (15.24).

It is conceivable, then, that Paul viewed a potential voyage to Rome as part of his long term vision to preach the Gospel throughout the West.

Paul is not impartial or detached but filled with a relentless sense of urgency to carry out God’s plan as he then understood it. “God is my witness,” he says, “as to how unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers making request, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you”(italics mine, 9-10). Understood thus, it is not surprising that his letter is filled with such ardor, almost like a lover separated from his beloved.

But although his plans to visit the Romans had been thwarted in the past, Paul is insistent about his desire to visit them in the future. His expressions are effusive – “For I long to see you” (vs. 11) - and sincere - “I have often planned to come to you (and have been prevented so far)” (vs. 13).

Moreover, his goals for such a visit are manifold. In addition to “enjoying [their] company for a while” (15.24), Paul hopes to (1) “impart some spiritual gift” (vs. 11); (2) “be encouraged together with [them]…each…by the other’s faith” (vs. 12); (3) “obtain some fruit among [them]” (vs. 13); and (4) “preach the gospel to [them]” (vs. 15).

But Paul’s visions are never realized, at least not as he imagined them. He not only fails to travel to Spain (at least there is no evidence to suggest he did), but he never lives to experience this long-hoped for visit to the Roman church.

What actually happens is far more complicated. During his 3^rd missionary journey (while on his way to Rome) Paul is falsely accused and imprisoned, first in Jerusalem, and later Caesarea. After languishing in a Caesarean prison for 2 years, he claims his right as a Roman citizen to be tried in Rome. Traveling by boat he is first shipwrecked on the isle of Malta; and later proceeds to Rome by way of Syracuse. When he does finally arrive, in chains, at the Eternal City, he lives under house arrest for two more years until, in approximately 64 AD, he is brought to trial under the Emperor Nero and executed, it is thought, by beheading, just outside the city's gates.

On a cursory level it may seem that only a cruel God would create Paul with such hopes, and allow Him both to nurture and express them, if such was his end. But then we forget that Paul identifies himself first as a “bond-servant of Christ”– a slave bound to service without temporal wage.

As “an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God” (1.1), Paul was a marked man; and his ultimate goal was not to do his own will but the will of God. This understanding of himself as a slave unto Christ did not inhibit Paul from developing and articulating a set of goals for his ministry; but at no time did he fail to submit these goals to Christ. He set about upon a certain action, upholding it in prayer, and if and when it was not realized, he recognized this not as a failure on his own part but as evidence that it must not have been God’s will.

If we are to learn anything about the true character of God we must look beyond the roughly seventy or so years, at most, that marked Paul’s earthly life. We know Paul’s greatest ambition: “And thus I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on another man’s foundation; but as it is written, ‘They who had no news of Him shall see, and they who have not heard shall understand’” (15.20-21).

Ironically, we need look no further than the book of Romans to find evidence of its achievement. For while it is true that Paul authored at least twelve New Testament books, Romans is “by common consent his masterpiece…an Alpine peak towering over hills and villages” (N.T. Wright). Coleridge once called it “the most profound work in existence;” and it is, indeed, considered the most theologically important and influential work of the Christian faith.

It was the epistle to the Romans which Augustine, sitting under his pear tree, took and read at random, thus catalyzing his conversion. Martin Luther’s study of the book of Romans fundamentally influenced his development of the 95 theses in 1517 and of it he wrote, "“It is well worth a Christian's while not only to memorize it word for word but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the daily bread of the soul". More than two hundred years later, in 1738, John Wesley, after reading Luther’s introduction to Romans and feeling his heart “strangely warmed,” subsequently became one of the earliest leaders in the Evangelical Awakening; and in 1919, Swiss theologian Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans inspired the beginning of neo-orthodoxy.

In this light it may be concluded without question that God not only granted Paul’s desire to preach the Gospel - both to the Romans and the world at large - but that he did so more powerfully, and to greater profit, than Paul’s poor mind could have ever conceived. That He did so in His way and time, with more pain to Paul, is also true.

God’s activity in Paul's life confirms that He does not vainly or arbitrarily instill us with desires to do this or that, or go here or there. Though we may never know, this side of eternity, precisely why he has made us who and what we are, we can rest assured that He has done so for a purpose. Thus we need never despair as we wrestle with Him over the why nor insist upon our own way. Instead we must rely on Him entirely for the how and when. In His perfect way and time, He will do it.

The Elder Brother

2008-03-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

“Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours…but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.” – Luke 15.29-30

When it comes to having a relationship with God, we all face different obstacles. Some of us, overwhelmed by our inadequacies, are paralyzed with a sense of need; others of us do not recognize our need at all, and so sit in judgment over those whom we perceive to be our “inferiors.”

Christ addresses these obstacles in the parable which, though it is often referred to as that of the Prodigal Son, is in fact the story of two sons – one younger, one older – both of whom are lost and in need of reconciliation with their father.

Perhaps because we live in a culture which so prizes independence and ‘finding one’s own way,’ more attention has been given to the younger son. He is the quintessential sixties child, a sensualist in every respect, who only learns of his spiritual poverty through experimentation and self-indulgence. But the older son, whose false conception of his own goodness blinds him from the wretchedness of his spiritual condition, is just as guilty as his brother.

Let us, for a moment, imagine the setting in which, according to Luke, the parable is presented. Christ is speaking in some public place, perhaps out of doors, where, we are told, “all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him” (15.1). Observing this, (presumably because they were already present and listening to Jesus), the Pharisees and scribes become disgruntled, saying, “’this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (15.2). Thus Christ’s hearers, and metaphorically all people, may be divided into two, wholly antagonistic groups: the religious and nonreligious; adherers of the law and non-adherers; ‘sinners’ and ‘Pharisees.’

Christ undoubtedly sees all this and yet – notice how He responds. He does not become impatient or angry. Neither does he overtly accuse the sinners (of rebellion and profligacy) or the Pharisees (of hypocrisy and self-righteousness). Instead, he tells them all a story which dramatizes their behavior and thereby grants each group opportunity for self-revelation and growth.

And so the parable begins: “A man had two sons” (15.11).

If we look at the events of the story from the older brother’s perspective, it is fair to argue that he had a ‘right’ to be angry. First, his younger brother not only has the audacity to ask for his share of his inheritance while his father is still alive, but his father actually grants his son’s request and divides his property between them (15.12). Once he is in receipt of his wealth (a fact which no doubt requires him to sell off a substantial portion of the family land), the younger brother quickly abdicates his responsibilities as a son, and leaves his older brother to labor in the field, while he “squander[s] his estate with loose living” (15.13).

As far as the older brother can discern, his brother is not driven home by conscience, but necessity for “when he had spent everything a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished…so he got up and came to his father” (15.14, 20).

Moreover, in violation of all the laws of justice and decorum, it is the father who initiates the moment of reconciliation: For seeing his son from “a long way off” the father “ran and embraced him and kissed him” (15.20) – before his son had uttered a word of apology! When he does express remorse, his father makes no acknowledgment of it. Instead he orders the servants to fetch the finest robe, a ring and sandals; and then demands that the fattened calf – undoubtedly a prized possession during time of famine – be killed so that the household may give way to feasting.

Worst of all, perhaps, is the fact that all of this occurs while the older brother is working in the field; no one bothers to inform him of what has transpired; neither is he included in the festivities! Instead, he must make his own inquiries, by summoning a servant, after he returns to the house and hears the sound of celebration. Imagine, first, his heartache – then his shame and outrage!

Despite his father’s pleadings, he will not go into the party.

Was he not right to cast a critical eye toward his father and brother? Wasn’t his father acting just as foolishly now, by pardoning his son, as he had before? And how could he be sure that his brother hadn’t simply come home to take what he could and squander all the rest?

So the older brother grumbles, just as the Pharisees grumbled to Christ: “Look! You never gave me a goat nor let me celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property wiht prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”

But rather than affirming his son in his grievance, the father attempts to re-orient his perspective by guiding his focus elsewhere - toward what he has been given. He reminds him that he is the privileged of the two. He has always been able to enjoy his father’s presence; and now he has all his wealth besides.

His father’s statement, “...all that is mine is yours” (15.31), is not merely a gesture of goodwill but a statement of fact: for whatever wealth now remains belongs to the older son. Thus the fate of the family lies in his hands: he must decide whether to accept his father’s pardon and be reconciled to his brother or reject them both.

Christ leaves us in suspense as to how the older son responds. One thing remains clear, however: everything depends upon how he comes to view himself. If as a victim, then he will seek vindication; but if a sinner, having been shown mercy, he will be merciful.

Abigail's Cross Become Crown

2008-03-08T12:36:00.001-08:00

“Now the name of the man was Nabel, and the name of his wife was Abigail. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved.” – 1 Samuel 25.3

Scores of books have been written on marriage. Some, like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, painstakingly chronicle its deterioration following the devastations of infidelity. Others, like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, are satirical in tone, and with wit and humor highlight the inherent differences between the sexes and our consequent tendency to misunderstand one another.

But perhaps the most difficult – nay, terrifying – fact about marriage is the unpredictability of its members. “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance,” says Jane Austen. In this, she is indeed right for if ‘happiness’ may be defined as that sate of flourishing which is the natural byproduct of two people seeking each other’s best, then there is no telling whether husband and wife will prove themselves faithful over the course of a lifetime.

Success or 'happiness' in marriage is unpredictable because people are unpredictable. I can make reasonable estimations based on the history, temperament, and present behavior of my spouse as to whether or not he will faithfully abide by the promises he made on our wedding day. But because I cannot know the future I cannot unequivocally predict his or my reaction to it. Goethe says that “But for the slightest change in my character there is not I crime I would not be capable of committing.” If I am of sound mind, such knowledge should inspire fear -- fear not only of myself but of the human heart itself. For I am presumptuous if I think that, apart from the fear of God and an unwavering devotion to His Word, I am not in danger of becoming a most heinous version of myself, seeking my pleasure wherever I may find it, at whatever cost to those I hold most dear.

All life is risk-taking; and to marry is to take a calculated risk based on limited information and imperfect knowledge.

How did Abigail – a woman of purported discernment – wind up married to a foolish man like Nabel? Most probably he was chosen by her parents or clan and she had little if any control in the decision that ultimately formed the substance of her daily life. We may look at her circumstances and deem them tragic because she was doomed to come of age in a time when women had so little freedom. And yet, surveying our own culture, one could draw the same conclusion. How is it that Western women, in an age of robust freedom and privilege, remain so untutored in the school of character that they make such poor decisions, resulting in so many broken marriages, broken homes, and broken-hearted children?

Whatever your culture or circumstance, there are no guarantees. You can take the safest, most calculated risk in existence and it remains possible that you could one day wind up in Abigail’s position.

What hope, you may ask, remains, if such is our state? Our Hope is a Person. For God, “…has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1.3-5). We are right to look upon ourselves with fear and mistrust; but we must remember that our security rests absolutely on the solid rock of Christ, not the fluctuating currents of our own, or other's, hearts.

We do not determine what evolutions will give shape to our temporal circumstances; but we can, through faith in Christ and good stewardship, determine the ambiance of our eternity. A wise man once told me, “No one can destroy your life but you.” The Bible is filled with many holy and upright men and women who achieved greatness, not because they had perfect marriages, but in spite of the fact that their marriages were imperfect.

Abigail’s tale may begin a tragedy but it ends in triumph. She hoped in and feared God, and willingly took grave risks in order to protect her household. It is beyond debate that her character impacted the landscape of her future. But her faithfulness is mirrored and outshone by the faithfulness of a God who moves her from being the wife of a fool to the wife of a king. He breaks through her shattered circumstances and uses her faithfulnesses to turn her mourning into gladness, her angst to joy. In the end she is no longer the object of pity, but the recipient of praise: “Blessed be your discretion and blessed be you,” says David, “Go up in peace to your house. See, I have obeyed your voice, and I have granted your petition” (1 Samuel 26.32, 35).

Beginnings

2008-03-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

"In my end is my beginning...in my beginning is my end." - T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

These words remain etched in my mind because they describe something which is at the heart of human experience. By that I mean: change, cycles, seasons. It is a paradox: beginnings give way to endings which are in themselves beginnings.

Ironically, there is no state closer to oldest age than earliest infancy when the baby is most helpless and the world most hostile. When my daughter was first born - toothless, with shriveled skin, wrinkled brow, and a pursed and frowning mouth - I couldn't help but call her 'my old woman.' In her beginning I could faintly perceive her end.

One most memorable beginning in my life occurred in 2003 when, exactly one year after our marriage, my husband and I moved to the desert of Arizona, to Tucson, where circumstances had made us desperate enough to accept a job.

To my inexperienced young mind I thought this an ending.

I am not one of those 'desert dwellers;' I have never been naturally drawn toward the rugged, barren beauty that has captivated the imaginations of some. Having grown up in the verdant, misty Northwest, I am most at home indoors, rain streaking the window pane, with a strong cup of coffee and an absorbing book. The desert, to me, meant death, isolation, and of course stifling heat. In five years I have not gotten over how blindingly, paralyzingly hot it is when the desert warms up.And so, at first, I felt as though I had been cast out of civilization, as both an exile and prisoner.

I wasn't all wrong. There was truth in what the writer of Lamentations says for: "I was walled in on every side so that I could not get out" (3.7). Bu what I didn't realize was that my story was not unique: it was also the story of Joseph, Moses, Abraham, even Christ Himself.

And so I came to understand that death is not the end; nor is the death of a hope. In fact, it is and was only a beginning, a giving way to something better if infinitely more mysterious...

My purpose in keeping this blog is to chronicle what became, and continues to be, a journey toward Hope in Jesus Christ.

May it bring nourishment to your soul,

H.M. Baker

"Passing through the Valley of Baca [Wilderness] they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with blessings." - Psalm 84.6

The Call of Peter

2008-03-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

“And He got into one of the boats which was Simon’s, and He asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’ And Simon answered, ‘Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.’ And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’” – Luke 5.3-9

Though he didn’t realize it, washing his net rather fiercely - as I imagine him - by the side of Lake Gennesaret, Simon was perfectly positioned to be used of Christ for the furthering of His ministry. So often we assume that we are in control of our lives; and if we are in control, we are therefore responsible to “make things happen” – whether in terms of our ministry or the meeting of our monetary needs.

Christ’s calling of Peter proves that neither assumption is accurate. The truth is that God is in control of our circumstances; and because He is in control, He is also responsible for the meeting of our needs.

Christ’s command presumably ran counter both to Peter’s intuition and experience; nonetheless he obeys, acknowledging Christ's authority by calling Him “Master.” Peter does not attempt to mask his feelings from God but says very openly, possibly even with a tinge of bitterness, “we toiled all night and took nothing!” But still he acts according to Christ’s bidding rather than his own understanding.

It is no accident that Christ’s first encounter with Peter occurs at the hour of his deepest need. We know from Peter’s own admission that his inability to catch any fish was not due to lack of effort or industry. In spite of the commotion and the crowds caused by Christ’s teaching Peter had not stopped working! Yet Peter’s illusions about himself had all been shattered. He was a broken man, beaten down by one failure after another. And it is precisely this moment which Christ seizes to call Peter to Himself, giving him a new name and a new vocation.

Peter's posture of brokenness demonstrates that God fulfills His purposes in our lives in spite of us, not because of us. His call is a call to obedience over understanding; brokenness versus self-sufficiency; process above productivity. Until Christ stepped into Simon Peter’s boat, he caught nothing. But this does not mean that the time before Christ appeared was wasted. Not at all! Yes, he was forced to wait on God through a wilderness of seeming stagnation and failure. But it was then that Peter learned he could not, in his own strength, fill his own net. It was then that he came to see himself as he really was: a sinner in need of grace.

And so we too act out the motions like characters in a play. We let down our nets and cast our bread upon the waters, feigning surprise, after a time, to find them always coming up empty. But we can rejoice, even in such moments, for we know that through them we are not only learning the truth about ourselves but of God: He controls our circumstances; He will be faithful to appear; and His goodness is proved not just because He brings the fish, but because he brings us to our knees. It is the one place where we can rest assured we are seeing reality as it truly is.

Bitterness II: Brokenness Precedes Beauty

2008-01-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

“All discipline seems for the moment not joyful but sorrowful; yet afterwards it bears the peaceful fruit of righteousness…” - Hebrews 12.5-6

Human experience proves that bitterness finds fertile ground in the heart whose sense of justice has been violated. Literature offers countless examples to this effect.

The Yearling tells the story of a pioneer boy, Jody Baxter, and his attachment to a young fawn; but glance deeper and you will find a poignant meditation on human suffering and endurance: how the heart, in bitterness, mourns, before it slowly heals. From the beginning of the story we see that Jody’s mother is filled with bitterness. Not only does she refrain from embracing her son – nor showing any outward signs of affection – she can hardly look at him! Instead she is vexed, impatient, and perpetually displeased. Because Jody is a tender-hearted, imaginative child, we are surprised by her implacability; that is, until we learn that, before Jody, she buried three children. On the gravestone of her husband’s namesake, Ezra Jr., lies the inscription: He never saw the light of day. At once her bitterness and hardness of heart become, if not quite justifiable, then certainly understandable.

But while Mrs. Baxter’s story is exceptional in its severity, in principle it is not unique. As so often happens, God gives a gift; but either it is not the gift we wanted; or if it is, it is soon taken away or dies or turns out to be something else entirely from what we thought it was; in its place a new and different gift is given – not unequivocally or intrinsically better but better for us otherwise He would not have given it – and we reject it like a spoiled child at Christmas; we resent it and are affronted that God, in His supposed wisdom, would deign to give us something so cruel, so ill-suited to our talents and desires, so inferior to what we believe, at bottom, we truly deserve.

When I married I had precise, if latent, ideas about what conjugal life would be like. Youth and ignorance tend to travel in pairs and in my case it was no different: I vaguely anticipated we would undergo trials and, likewise vaguely, concluded that we would triumph over them. Yet no amount of pre-nuptial preparation could have fully equipped me for what actually occurred. Four days into our honeymoon, while winding through the sun-spattered roads of Napa Valley, we totaled our car; aside from two black eyes (mine) and a mild case of whiplash (his) we emerged uninjured, but this event marked the first in a stream of mishaps and failures that followed us throughout our early life.

Within six months, my dream of married life was shattered and a different, far less glittering picture had risen in its place. I felt not only disappointed; I felt cheated. Like any good home buyer, I had taken all necessary precautions. I took multiple tours and passed countless inspections; but now that I had moved in suddenly the roof leaked, the faucets dripped, the plumbing was bad, and in every room, from some unknown place, wafted the smell of mildew!

I found myself confronted with the usual questions: Had I done something to deserve such treatment? Was God trying to punish or destroy me? Worst of all, was He even listening? But the principal and underlying question was this: How can God possibly be good?

The author of Hebrews anticipates the fact that, very often, when we experience pain, hardship, or adversarial circumstances, we tend to draw back in some mixture of outrage, bitterness, and grief. Thus it is no accident that he places his caveat against bitterness directly after his discussion of Godly discipline, describing God’s ultimate purpose (our good) before addressing our natural predisposition (toward bitterness). He appeals to us to remember that whereas our earthly fathers “disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, …[God] disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (Hebrews 12.10).

Of course, if God is not good then we are right to feel horrification and dread; and we should take up Job’s lament when he says, “Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth” (13.26).

But if He is good – as Scripture tells us over and over that He is – then we have no cause but to trust Him to perform the divine reconstructive surgery that will make us, in the end, not only more ourselves (without the gross obfuscations that sin begets), but more like Him.

I came to find – not immediately, but over time – that every pain brings with it a kind of divine favor; some heavenly instruction or supernatural and transformative gift. I learned, as Corrie ten Boom expresses, that “God never takes away; God only gives” (Tramp for the Lord).

In hindsight I can almost laugh – with gentleness and affection – at my younger self for failing to apprehend that most basic - and most extraordinary, unprecedented, and powerful – principle of the Christian faith: that God is good. I entrusted myself (past, present, and future) to Him and before long began to experience the character of God at work in my heart, setting into motion a kind of chain reaction: "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…” (Romans 5.4-5).

Yet as I move from “faith to faith,” exchanging one trial for another, I often find it impossible to conceive – particularly when my wounds are fresh and the blood still flowing – that the God who created the Universe, who sent His only Son to cover the cost of my sin, is also working through my circumstances –in all their ugliness and ambiguity – to accomplish what is in my best interests; that He is, in short, taking those things which I find most humiliating and painful, and using them to make me perfect.

Instead, as my dear friend Jayne Berry put it, “In such moments we usually try to run from God, raising our fists to the sky to ask Him just who He thinks He is.”

But if we desire wisdom, we must remember that it was “for the joy set before him” that Christ “endured the cross, despising the shame…” (Hebrews 12. 2). The man of sorrows was no strangers to pain; he understood shame and humiliation; and yet He was able to “despise” it – translated from the Greek this means: “to think little or nothing of;” the same word used in Matthew 18.10 when Christ commands His disciples, “Take heed that ye despise [kataphroneo] not one of these little ones…” – because He knew that compared to what He was accomplishing, the shame was inconsequential.

At every moment we are faced with a choice: to submit to God’s authority or rebel against it; to accept our circumstances as Providentially chosen or reject them as flukes – random, arbitrary, and even cruel. As the character Maleldil says in C.S. Lewis’s science fiction chronicle, Perelandra, “You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of another” (italics mine, 59). And so we do – so I do – each time I fail to accept that God not only allows the circumstances that come into my life; but that He has planned them – painstakingly, tenderly – each and every one.

If we do submit we find, over time, that He takes of the formless void that is each man’s existence and makes of it a world unto itself – at once beautiful and teeming with life. God did not waste a moment before shattering my dream of married life; but He has – He is –in the process of assembling the broken pieces into an intricate design, like a stained glass window. After all, God is the original Artist and latent within his finest masterpieces is the idea that brokenness precedes beauty; that greatest intricacy proceeds from barest simplicity. A clear pane of glass may be functional; but it is also transparent: it does not bend the light nor shower its subjects with color.

In order to do so it must be broken and afterwards re-built.

Bitterness 1: A Failure to See the Big Picture

2008-01-25T12:53:00.001-08:00

“See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of the bitterness, springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled:” - Hebrews 12.15

Anyone who has had any experience with bitterness knows that it is like cancer to the soul; swift, stealthy, and indiscriminate. Bitterness builds walls within the human heart faster than any artisan with brick and mortar. Above all, bitterness squelches life, like the thorny root that grows up amongst the flowering plant and silently chokes it. While taking a walk with my husband’s grandmother, Pearl, she said, “Bitterness is what happens when we take offense. Only it is we who become sick; not the person who offended us.”

The word “bitter” is a derivative from the Old English biter, or, bite, and is defined as “designating or having a sharp, often unpleasant taste;” bitterness is that state which is “characterized by strong feelings of hatred, resentment, cynicism” (Webster’s New World). The word in Greek is pikria meaning: 1) bitter gall; a) extreme wickedness; or b) a bitter root, and so producing a bitter fruit.

Scripture is ripe with examples of individuals who struggled with bitterness. In obedience to the Lord, the prophet Jeremiah preached repentance to the Israelites during the Babylonian exile; as a result he faced tremendous persecution, compelling him to write, “He [God] hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood” (Lamentations 3.15).

Because she could not conceive a child Hannah “[was] in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore” (1 Samuel 1.10).

Job is perhaps most obvious biblical example of someone who, by human standards, had just cause for bitterness. In the wake of devastating losses – his health and assets, his social standing and friends, even his children – Job cries out to the Lord saying, “I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul” (Job 7.11).

His story proves that we are most susceptible to bitterness when our sense of justice is violated; when we are persecuted, seemingly without cause, or cast down without explanation; when a hope is deferred; a dream shattered; or an expectation which we considered legitimate is left unmet.

Job’s primary obstacle against discerning God’s good intent was that he was bound by time. He did not have perfect knowledge. He could not see beyond his present circumstances; could not, even faintly, anticipate what the outcome of his story would be. All he knew for certain was that he was in pain.

But because we have access to the end of Job’s tale we can see that his bitterness is based on an incomplete view of history. At the end of Job’s trials, God not only restores his position, but grants Job an impartation of Himself. In response Job rescinds his complaint: “Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (italics mine, Job 42.3).

In the face of my own pain, when I am overcome with bitterness that my friend, my husband, God Himself would allow X event to come into my life, I must remember that God does nothing by accident. He not only institutes the circumstances that come into my life,but He controls the outcome. “He knows our frame; and is mindful that we are but dust.” Perhaps most importantly, He is working to accomplish what concerns each of us; to complete the good work He began so that we can cling with confidence to the promise in 1 Peter 3: “After you have suffered for a little the God of all strength will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.”

True Value: Defined

2008-01-21T14:33:00.000-08:00

“Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” - Romans 12.2

We live in a godless society which values, above all, beauty, brains, talent, money, power, and man’s praise. Just look at television shows like American Idol or America’s Next Top Model. If you do not have the talent or beauty to compete favorably against your neighbor you get voted off, eliminated. In the world of the show, you cease to exist.

God tells us that in His kingdom, only three things will endure. These are: faith, hope, and love; the greatest of these being love. Just as money is the greatest commodity on earth, faith, hope, and love are the greatest, and I would venture to say the only, commodities of heaven.

From the world’s perspective, nothing is eternal. Life ends when the body does. The closest thing to achieving eternal life is living on in the minds of other men; this is why fame is so important, why people like Donald Trump spend their lives building empires to themselves. The Romans understood this which was why the worst fate that could befall any leader was to have his name “stricken from memory.”

In contrast, the Bible teaches that every person is born with an eternal soul; and that all souls will live on forever, whether in Heaven, united with God, or in Hell, separated from Him.

For this reason, it doesn’t matter how much talent, beauty, or brains you have. For as Paul’s epistle to the Romans reminds us: “[W]hat do you have that you did not receive and if you did receive it why do you boast as if you did not?”It matters not what you have, but what you do with what you have; it is not, ultimately, who you are that is important, but who you are becoming.

You may be thinking, What a silly, foolish concept. If this is true, then there is no way for a man to compare himself with another man. No way for a man to take ownership over his own, hard-earned achievements. It may be distasteful to the American way of thinking, but that is precisely the point! For “…God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…And the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are. So that no man may boast before God” (italics mine).

God has ordered the universe in such a way so that all boasting must be toward Him; all praise must be oriented toward Him; whatever value you and I perceive in human existence is imputed by Him. So that everything that has breath praises the Lord.

By turning man’s value system upside down, God forces dependence on Him alone. In His infinite wisdom He has created a universe wherein a mother – someone who spends her days washing, nursing, clothing, cooking and playing – could be, in the next life, judge of a kingdom or queen of a realm. After all, Jesus was a carpenter. His disciples were fisherman. None came from kingly tribes but God called them great because they had faith in Him.

Throughout the Bible we are given ample evidence that here we are not citizens, but strangers. Our true citizenship is in heaven; and it is to heaven we must look when determining our values. When my husband’s grandfather sailed from Holland to America he spent his time reading about America, its laws and values, its great leaders and statesmen, the historical developments which made it what it then was; he even went so far as to memorize those features which stuck out to him as being quintessentially American.

Is this not a perfect metaphor for our lives on earth? We are on a voyage, sailing toward our true home. Thus while we are in between places we should spend our time transferring our citizenship, refining our hope, and actively seeking to transform our minds in conformity with His will.

Where Your Treasure Is

2008-01-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. -- Matthew 6.19-20

“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation.” In the nineteen fifties this belief lay at the foundation of society. No one questioned whether it was valuable for a mother to spend her time caring for the needs of her child. People understood that children needed more than basic care – they needed discipline, correction, and the attentive role-modeling that only a full-time parent can give.

So what happened?

A thorough answer to this question would fill a great many pages. I believe a central part of the answer has to do with the revolutions of the nineteen sixties. In particular, the women’s movement – and its culture of entitlement and self-actualization – bred a new generation of women who rejected the former way of thinking and embraced the lie that self-fulfillment and “having it all” are rights that no one, not even their children, should take away from them.

I once had dinner with a female surgeon and her eight-year-old son, Lucien. She got up from the table several times with calls from the hospital. After the second or third interruption Lucien let out a long sigh and said to me, “She cares more about her patients than she does about me.” I attempted to console him but quickly discovered I could not find the words. This was a woman who worked eighty hours a week while her son spent the majority of his time with a nanny or relatives. How could I argue with something that was so obviously true?

Do not misunderstand me: I am not saying there is anything wrong with being a surgeon or working eighty hours a week. These things only become morally wrong when they are pursued at the expense of others.

Though the phrase of Jim Elliot’s has become a little worn from use, it deftly articulates a concept well worth repeating: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” This philosophy is nowhere more applicable than in Christ-centered motherhood wherein a woman freely sacrifices her time, energy, and resources – she gives of her very soul – in order to prepare her child to live a fruitful life, both in this world and the next.

But she does not delight to put her child’s needs before her own because she is self-pitying or masochistic. Quite the contrary! The Christian mother is working for her own good as well as the good of her child; she understands that “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he is and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11.6).

Mothers are living illustrations of the concept of biblical rewards. Just as Christ was able to endure the cross “for the joy set before Him,” the Christian mother is capable of putting a stake through her own will in order to, out of obedience to Christ, service the needs of her family.

Christianity says if you want to be great you must be a servant; that in order to be first you must make yourself last. We give, believing that we will one day receive back in spades all that we have ‘given up.’ In the process, if we seek God, we can enjoy the added benefit of finding our needs met fully in Him.