Thursday, August 26, 2010
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
My Story
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.
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.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Saved Through Childbirth
“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).”
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Seeking Him First
"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!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Life In Him
“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.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
A Little Yeast...
“...[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.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Believing is Seeing
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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