Under Construction

I believe that there is a difference between the moment I was saved and the moment I became a Christian. Salvation was the moment when I first received that the debt for my sins was paid for by the blood of Christ and I was adopted into the Kingdom of Heaven. Becoming a Christian was when I decided to surrender my life to him and follow his desires and not my own. Since the second transformation, which I believe is just as important as the first, I have been consistently under construction, complete with demolitions and renovations. It’s easy for me to dwell on what still needs to be knocked down and rebuilt, but sometimes, God shows me how far he’s brought me since he started his work.

Paul said that anyone who was in Christ is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). Salvation makes us new spiritually and instantly. Surrender makes us new in our lives and over the course of a long process.

The reward for choosing God’s plan over ours can sometimes not appear to be a good thing. We had blueprints of our own when we started out, after all, and those are hard to abandon. God will call us to be who he intended us to be, and that’s not always what we intended or what our family had in mind for us. Sometimes he pries the desires out of our hands before he changes our minds. Even if we know what he’s doing is better, we still mourn for what we know we won’t get. There are things we have always wanted that we have to accept we may never have.

What God has been teaching me recently is that what I imagined, though perfect in my mind, would always have flaws. I could never design something perfect completely and so there were gaps needing to be filled. Some things I was just plain wrong about, and now that I can see them, I’m glad they didn’t last. He has shown me that, though different from what I imagined, his creation is good.

Clinging to what I had wanted, despite it’s uncertainty, and focusing on what still needs work, only blinds me from seeing the good in God’s new creation. I have recently been called to embrace what God has given me. Specifically embrace, nit merely accept, to find the blessings in it, and take captive the thoughts that slide toward what I wanted and didn’t get.

This week particularly, I am reminded of many things that I had wanted that would have gone terribly wrong, some things that I never imagined could change for the better but have, and also that the things that seem like losses now, won’t in time.

Paul said that those who are in Christ are new. Christ said we can abide in him and he will abide in us. The change won’t come apart from him. Like branches cut from the vine, we will wither and die without him (John 15:5).

God didn’t say being in him will change our circumstances, but it will change us. It will bring joy where we couldn’t find it, bring love where we held bitterness, set us free from the things we made our masters, and give strength when we thought we had none.

To know what he is doing, understand his purposes, and hear the promises for our future, to be changed at heart, we have to abide in him. Study his word. Talk to him. Listen to him. Never stop searching and never stop being open to change. God isn't going to abandon us, sometimes that's comforting, other times just annoying, but it's always better. I'm thankful for how I have been transformed and I'm glad for the times I went voluntarily. I don't know what else God plans to do with me, but I will try to embrace whatever it is. 

Confronting Tragedy

Tragedy is a hard subject for the Christian to tackle. The “problem of evil” is a real problem and one we would all rather ignore, until we can’t anymore. Whether it happens to you, a friend, someone famous you only hear about, or a stranger calls you out on it because you have a fish on your car, someday you will have to wonder what God is doing and why. Typical Christianese won’t settle this one. I don’t claim to be able to settle this one, but what I am looking for is a universal applicable hope that can maybe change something.

What you won't hear in most church services, is that Paul himself said that he wanted to die so he could be with Christ rather than wait it out here. He stayed for the sake of those he knew he was meant to lead (Philippians 1: 22-24). I don't know for sure if it was the trials of Paul's ministry and relentless persecution, shipwrecks, and floggings that made him desire escape, or if it was a love for God and understanding of what was waiting for him that made him impatient to get there. Either way, I know even Paul looked at his life at some point and thought, “This sucks and I’d rather not do it any more,” (or something like that). Tragedy is an all-inclusive fact of life. Some Christians would prefer to sweep it under the rug and ignore it entirely because there is no “good” answer for it. I want to understand how God works and why tragedy exists, but the truth is, I’m too small for that, like I’m too small for a lot of things.

I don't want to get into a predestination debate about how God can let any tragedy happen if that tragedy is not his plan, but I can try to explain why bad stuff happens the way I understand it best. It's no surprise that God allows tragedy. Some people say he causes it. I see it the way a professor of mine once explained it, saying we are in such a fallen world filled with disease and depravity and pain, God doesn't cause things to go wrong, he sometimes lifts his hand of restraint that would have otherwise made things go right. Left on our own, we can only suffer by our actions, the actions of others, or by our imperfect universe. Sometimes God stops it, sometimes he doesn’t. The choice is up to him and somehow it all works for the better. I can’t explain that last part well. I can’t tell the grieving mom why her baby died. I can’t tell Paul why he was shipwrecked and flogged. I sometimes get tired of just telling myself to “trust God”, but that’s the only answer, even if it’s not a “good” one. Even if it’s made some people hate God because they don’t think he’s worthy of trust. Somehow, he is. Somehow, this will all work out. Somehow, even the largest quantity of pain will be erased. Nobody wants to hear that we were not designed to understand but to trust, but that’s the truth.

Learning of Robin Williams’ suicide, made me remember a day not five years ago when I laid in bed counting the methods and trying to choose the right one. I just wanted it to be easy and simple. I closed my eyes and imagined my breath going out and not coming back in. I imagined a sweet oblivion coming over me and the torrents in my mind slowing down to smooth seas. Even though God was a distant and disappointing former friend at the time, I think part of me could still hear his gentle voice telling me that I wasn't done, to wait for change. Because every time I wanted it to be over, something was urging me to just wait a little longer. Change is the only certainty and, though some find that disheartening, I find it is the greatest source of hope, that change comes, and every broken sick and vile situation can be redeemed. Change came for me in forms I didn’t think were possible five years ago, so I’m glad I’m around to see them. I’m sad that Robin Williams felt he couldn’t wait for change. I’m sad that so many people now have to contend with the tragedy of his death and maybe they think they can’t wait either. Even death, though it is something that won’t change for a while, it still will change, and that’s what we need to cling to.

So if it all can be redeemed? Why is it so often seemingly not? Why doesn't God fix things before they get completely screwed up? Why does death exist at all? Why didn’t he stop the fall or undo it or start over? I can only say what I have said before, I don’t know, but I trust him and he's bigger than I am and I can't see the whole picture. I don't know why he lifted his restraint when a beloved actor father and husband decided to take his life this week. I don't know why your tragedy happened to you, or what made his still small voice whisper to some part of me that day to wait. I don’t know what made me listen. I do not try to dismiss or belittle pain by saying, “It will be gone eventually, don’t worry about it”. I have had a taste of the torment possible on this earth and I know how crippling just a taste can be.

However, I still trust that all pain, no matter how terrible, will be insignificant and unimportant when we reach eternity. I believe that, by and by, we will meet on a beautiful shore. Sometimes that’s all we have to cling to. EVENTUALLY, this will be over. That should NOT be a reason we end life to get there. It is a promise we can carry with us to help us tackle the otherwise impossible. The promise of eternal peace is what should encourage the Christian who suffers to go on suffering knowing it will all disappear in time, and that it isn’t for nothing.

One of my favorite movies as a kid, and one that happens to star Robin Williams is Jumanji. So, you’ve started the game, and now you have to finish it, not matter what comes out. But, there is a promise. If you finish the game, it will all go away. And even if you didn’t know it going in, things will turn out better than they would have been before. Maybe it’s a cheesy metaphor, but a fitting one, I think. There were a lot of things in that movie that needed to happen in order for Allan to get the girl, Judy and Peter to not lose their parents in Canada, for Mr. Perish to stop being a jerk, and for that one guy to not lose his job at the shoe factory, but none of that would have gone right if they had given up playing or never started to begin with.

I know that the waiting is hard. and again, I don’t mean to belittle that with cheesy movie metaphor. But I also know every broken depraved and sick part of our lives can be turned around if we let God be the one we trudge hobble and crawl behind until we can walk again.

Hope is a very fragile yet very precious and necessary resource. Once lost, it is not easily regained. It needs to be fought for, even if it can only be as small as choosing to trust that all tragedy serves some purpose in overall eventual redemption, and that also eventually, it will be over. Even if we're too in-the-middle to see how. 

Let It Go

This week, I have been listening to a song called "Let It Go". Not THAT "Let It Go", but the one by Tenth Avenue North. I keep listening to this song and some others like it because I’m hoping to get some kind of consistency in my response to them. Sometimes I get excited at the prospect of surrender, but then the song is over and then I go back to normal. Other times I say, “Yes, I will do that, just as soon as you tell me when I’m gonna get it all back”. Other times I just get sad and start feeling sorry for myself. But all of this has really gotten me thinking about just how much of my life and my happiness have been poisoned by expectations that are now in conflict with reality.

I know I’m not the only one. I know that most people have a formula for how things are supposed to work out There are presupposed blue-prints starting from very early on depicting how our lives will go and what we will want. From what I remember of being a little girl, they start thinking very early about the man they might one day marry, what he will look like and how he will act, the house they will live in, the job they will have. They practice with little baby dolls that are even designed to cry and poop (inaccurately, I find). I don’t know anyone who grew up thinking “I hope I get thrown a curve ball. I hope something unexpected comes along to challenge what I always thought I would do and what I would have. I want all the things I want to get taken away or never show up. I want to do something weird and risky that will make people think I’m nuts”, Okay, I know some people who wanted that last one. But the point is, we all want things, conventional or not. We all have expectations and desires. Sometimes those desires are for things that are not good for us. We all imagine things going a certain way or one of many ways. Still, we don’t have every possibility considered. However, God does, and at any time, he could call us out of our plan and into his, and it’s scary when he does that.

For the people who have nothing to hold onto, nothing that they cherish or would leave behind, it’s great. But I don’t know anyone like that. Plans, whether they have come into being or not, are comforting. We make them because we like the way they look. We buy things because we want them. We hang out with people because we like them. We chase our dreams because making our dreams come true is what every little kid is instructed to do at some point by someone. Then God says “Leave your home and go to the land that I have shown to you”. Then he says, “Sell all of your possessions and give them to the poor”. He comes to you on the Damaskas Road. He takes you out of your very well stable job collecting taxes to follow him around the county. He tells you to climb out of the boat and try walking on water. These are the moments we don’t plan for, but God does.

Sometimes we work for years to buy a house and then it burns down. Sometimes we try all our lives to find someone to love, and then loose them. Sometimes we train to get that job and never get it. Sometimes we put on a front because the truth is too scary to face. Sometimes we look back on where we thought we would be and our hearts break because we so wanted things to be different. Why didn’t I get what I want? Why didn’t the plan work for me when it worked for them? What did I do wrong? And God says “Let It Go”.

Trust Me.

Don’t Be Afraid.

Lose your life and you will find it.

All of this just asks the question, what are we holding onto? What isn’t negotiable? What could we not let go of? At what point do we draw the line and say, “No, I need this.”?

My problem tends to be that even if I know that what I’m really saying is, “No, I need this more than you,” and I know that it’s the wrong answer. Still, it sometimes doesn’t matter. I have blatantly told God, “No, you can’t have that.” It usually has ended up with me later having to give it up anyway and wishing I had done it sooner. Still, he asks me for things and I’m reluctant. It’s still not easy to just obey when God says

Let go of your pride.

Let go of your fear.

Let go of what you want and what you hoped for.

Let go of this person.

Let go of your “security”.

Let go of how you feel about that.

It’s hard to believe that the things we hold on to hold onto us. It’s hard to see that the things we have or want aren’t the best we can do if God is telling us to abandon them for something else. He offers us LIFE in exchange for our “life”. He offers us freedom and joy in exchange for our boundaries for happiness.

The new rope probably isn’t as pretty. Maybe we have to take a fall and get hurt. Maybe we’ll have to go back to where we started. But God says we’ll find our life if we lose it. We lose the counterfeit that we can never and were never meant to have and get something real.

Let go of bitterness, start healing. Let go of expectations, see the blessings. Let go of the plan, wait for what’s supposed to happen instead. Let go of what you want it to look like, see the beauty in what it is.

God hasn’t promised me that things will be as pretty as I pictured, but he has said that I will find my life if I lose it. If I lose what I’m holding, I will have something that he says is better. That still doesn’t make it easy. Maybe nothing will make it easy because I’m still a person and I still want what I want when I want. But I don’t need easy, I just need enough and I think I have that. 

Pride and Prejudice and Backfire

My son has accomplished much in his almost-seven months of life and I keep catching myself telling him that I’m “proud of him”. This has led me to dissect the term perhaps more than is necessary. Is it simply a common term used to express one’s pleasure at seeing another succeed? I see that the word “proud” is almost always used negatively in every other scenario, and this got me thinking about the root of the term. When we tell someone we are proud of them or say we are proud of or take pride in something we have done, we are saying the thing pleases us, that we claim it as our own, we stand by it. Upon some consideration, I find that these descriptions also apply to the bad kind of pride. When we are “proud” it means we say the things we are/do/say/think/, are the right things. We claim those things as good. We stand by them.

There are times when this confidence in our doings can be a good thing, because we know we are correct and we will not break from the truth. The problem presents because people are not perfect. We can, do, and WILL make mistakes. Even the most intimidatingly competent among us fail every day at something. Most of the time, others can see it before we notice they can see it. Or, we’re terrified that they will find out somehow. So we hide, and pretend, and stiffen our resolve to prove that we are not wrong or could not be wrong, even if we might be, and even if we are.

Probably the worst thing I have ever done in my relationship with my husband was recognize during an argument that I was wrong, and still not give up. Even if I had to bring up something that he did wrong, I was not going to end the conversation there. Then I realized that relationships with people like that don’t last very long and that it was a really terrible way to treat someone whom I said I loved. But it was still so freaking hard, and still is sometimes, to say, “okay, fair enough, you’re right”.

The Bible talks a lot about pride. Proverbs especially has some good things to say about it. A particularly interesting one is Proverbs 29:23 which reads, “One's pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.” I find this interesting when I look at the primary motivation for the bad kind of pride. It’s usually some kind of fear of disrespect or dishonor.

A parent may resist telling their child that they made a mistake because it may lead their child to think less of them as an authority figure. A boss at a company may stick by a decision they have made because it may look weak to the employees if he admits he was wrong. A politician would rather spin a web of lies to avoid coming out with to the public about his affair and appear dishonorable. Neither party of the arguing couple wants to say “okay, I’m wrong” even if the probably both are because it will make them less credible in future arguments. People are terrified of looking bad.

However, the kid will eventually learn that the parent isn’t infallible and think of them as arrogant for not recognizing it. The employees are probably talking about the boss behind his back for being so blind to his mistake. The politician is doomed to become another viral meme on Facebook. And the couple will continue fighting the same fight for hours, possibly years, and be supremely miserable, forgetting what good they ever once saw in the other.

Yet, as a culture, it is the norm to never say “I’m wrong and I’m sorry” unless you want to look weak. It is a much harder thing for most people to say those words than it is to face sometimes literal ruin because they just don’t want to. One of the greatest lies that Satan can tell us, and he’s good at it, is that admitting defeat will somehow make things worse. It won’t. If you made a mistake, things are already bad. End it there. Don’t keep digging because you will not find anything good.

There a lot of great things that the Bible has to say about pride (google it if you’d like) but I like Proverbs 29:23 because it promises honor with humility. Specifically, with being “lowly in spirit”. Lowly is such a scary word to people, and probably was when Proverbs was written. It speaks of fragility and vulnerability, of being low compared to something high. But honor, the result, is strong, esteemed, looked up to.

Imagine the kid who can say that they learned from their parents how to admit, without fear, that they messed up. Imagine the governor who comes out and says “I’m sorry” before the truth has a chance to bleed its way to the public via tabloids and twitter. We may fear dishonor, but that is all pride creates for us, and we’re wrong if we think we’re that good at hiding stuff.  

In a Christian community, there is no room for pride in anything but Christ because he is the only thing infallible. If we screw up or learn we’re wrong but don’t do anything to admit it or change, we’re an example, which is why we get laughed at in the media and on TV. I think even the Westborow Baptist people would be met with some form of mercy if they just stand up and say “Wow, we have it wrong. Sorry, folks”. But that’s just the other side of it too; we also have to be willing to give mercy. If our pride in wanting to be superior leads us to grind someone’s mistake in their face, be it confessed or not, we’re not imitators of God anymore than they are. Jesus said that the merciful will be shown mercy and the meek will inherit the earth. I like that outcome a lot better than the alternative, no matter how much it may hurt to pry the words “I’m sorry” out of my mouth.

The things I want to stand by are the Bible, God’s promises, my son’s awesomeness, and the fact that I could be wrong about pretty much anything else.