I AM: The Ultimate Selfie

credit: www.destineddaughters.com

Selfies.
Everybody's taking them.
They can be kind of fun, like when we get to see our daughter's pregnant belly shot, or when we get to put heads together with that friend we've long missed. Selfies can also help us see ourselves the way others see us, and for that, they may have value. Most days, I wouldn't be caught dead in a selfie. They show what I really look like...yikes.

But, whether I want to show myself off to someone else or not, I'd better know who I am. I need to know where to find my own borders--the boundary lines that mark off who I am from who I am not. I may not make beautiful material for a selfie, but I am. Just that. I am. I exist. I have been given a real, palpable life and corporeal flesh.

Most of us don't know where to begin to think properly about ourselves. We can turn around our little camera phones and snap them, but of what have we taken a picture? Of whom? What am I? Wife? Mother? Writer? Lover of God? Teacher? Citizen of the United States?  Yes, all of these, but they aren't really who I am. These are what I do or where I live. I am more than these.

I am that unique signature that doesn't change regardless of how old I get, or where I live, or what I do. I am someone separate and particular before the Lord. I soar and invent and love and fail and sin in a way peculiar to myself alone. I am the whispers of my heart, the flight of my soul. No one is completely like me. I am known to God by my own unique name. I am created in the image of my own Creator.

Jesus knows me this way. He knows me according to who He made and recognizes me by what He did to me and gave to me. In return, He wants me to recognize Him the same way, but He has a much clearer understanding of who He is than I do. And He didn't hesitate to say so:

I AM the Bread of Life--John 6:35
I AM the Light of the World--John 8:12
I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life--John 14:6
I AM the Door--John 10:9.
I AM the Good Shepherd--John 10:11
I AM the Resurrection and the Life--John 11:25
I AM the Vine--John 15:1

I AM
I AM
I AM...
Strong statements. So strong they got Him killed.

This is the bold Jesus I can't help but follow. He gives us a picture of value and strength and confidence and, to the extent we can follow Him, the original from which we can stand in reflection. We can look like Christ, all parts of Him.  We will not BE God, but we can LOOK LIKE God.

When Christ talked about Himself, he never flinched or hesitated. He behaved outrageously and to be sure, to say that we can be like Him is an outrageous statement. But I can say it anyway. I can say it because I have God's permission and example to say it.

Christ said,
Before Abraham was, I AM.--John 8:58

I say:
Because You are, I AM.

Discipline: Punishment or Consequences?

credit: wiki-crunch.com

 

I love the story of the centurion in Matthew 8. Jesus has been healing as He walked along His way--those with leprosy, with demons, a paralytic, and in Capernaum, a centurion approached Him. Now, centurions were fierce dudes--not only soldiers, but commanders in the most proficient, and most deadly, army on earth. I have no doubt that the Hebrews' most common contact with these soldiers was to be ordered by them to do something--to get out of their way or to pay them respect or to carry something for them. But not this time.

This centurion's servant was dying. He was paralyzed and suffering and, whether the soldier fretted because he was losing his investment or whether he had genuine affection for the man, he nevertheless asked Jesus for a favor, the only recorded incident of a Roman soldier doing so. And, knowing what would happen next, Jesus says that He will go to the soldier's home to heal his servant.

This is where it gets good.

The soldier replies,
Lord, I am not worthy that you come under my roof. Only say the word and my servant will be healed.--Mathew 6:8

Lord, I am not worthy, he said. 
And neither am I. Not worthy that Christ forgave me. Not worthy that Christ healed me. Certainly not worthy that Christ lives in me.
I know I deserve to die. Now. A long time ago, in fact. And it hasn't happened.
I am stuck here. And I am not worthy.
I am not worthy of life, the life that God gave me, the life that belongs exclusively to Him.

So now what?

Now, like the centurion, I have to understand my position.
Yes, I deserve to die. I deserve to be cut off from God forever. So what is God going to do about it?
He will discipline me. 
Yes, He will. One way or another, I will know the result of what I have done, and that can happen in one of two ways. I will either experience the consequences of what I have done, or I will be punished.

They are not the same thing, you know. Consequences and punishment. They are different.
It's like this:
If my child starts a fight with little Joey at school, I am going to have to do something about it. He would know consequences when I march him back to school the next day, have him face Joey on the same playground in front of the same kids who watched him fight yesterday, and let them see and hear him apologize and admit to Joey that what he did was wrong. But he would know punishment if I called Family Services and told them to come and get the little violent monster and take him away, that I didn't want him for a son anymore.

See the difference? Consequences teach and preserve the relationship, keeping the love intact, but punishment ends the relationship, withdrawing the love.

God does the same thing.

Like my love for Joey, we are given God's love unconditionally. I could kick Joey to the curb for his transgressions, and God could do the same thing to me. I've earned it, after all. But, just like Joey acknowledges my place as parent in his life so that I can administer consequences rather than punish him, God allows me to stay close to Him, even when I don't deserve it, as long as I love Him back. 

Yes, you are unworthy, God says to me.
And I say the same thing to my children. They did nothing to be born and do not deserve any of the love and care we lavish on them. But they get it. They are unworthy, too.
Yes, you are unworthy, God says. 
But I love you.
Get over it.

The Son of Man

photo: natepyle.com

Jesus Christ. Son of God. Son of Man.

The Bible tells us that He is both these things and simply by the exalted nature of them, these statements carry a lot of weight. I want to understand them, and understand well.

The idea that Jesus is the Son of God seems the easier of the two. After all, the Father Himself declares a number of times that Jesus is His Beloved Son. And I know what a son is. I have two of them.  So, if God the Father has a Son, their relationship and shared common nature make sense. 

Son of Man, not so much. If Christ is the Son of God, how could He be the son of men as well? And why? And yet, in the Bible, He declares that He is. Son of Man is Jesus' name for Himself.

What do men say that I, Son of Man, am?--Matthew 16:13

Well, it turns out that I'm not the only one who wanted to understand this better. Iraneus, the bishop of Lyons from 177-200 AD, had quite a bit to say about it.*

First, he observed, Jesus passed through every stage of human life. As Adam was made from untilled virgin earth never knowing rain, so did Christ begin His human life in the womb of a virgin. That was the beginning. Afterwards, He grew through common years like any man--preborn, infant, juvenile, adult, and even corpse--so that no man can say he has been left behind in his peculiar state. Christ became fellow of us all. He did not live outside human frailty at any time in his earthly life. Instead, He sanctified all stages and states of life by sharing them.

Christ, as Son of Man, was like me, no matter who I am.

Second, by the very act of taking on flesh, by participating in incarnation, Christ reunited man to God. The fact of His humanity made Him mediator between God and Man. 

I think that this is kind of like forgiveness--it happens in stages. The first stage is that in which we forgive an unrepentant sinner to free our own spirit from bitterness and hatred, but in which the complete relationship is not yet restored. So did God come down to unrepentant, clueless man and present Himself, ready and waiting.  The second stage, in which our relationship with the sinner is restored through repentance, Christ lived out in His own suffering and death. That freed all penitents to walk through the now-torn veil directly back to the Father.

Christ, as Son of Man, led the way for all men.

Third, Christ overcame Satan as only a man could have done. From the very beginning of His ministry, He exposed Satan's rebellion when He said, 

It is written: Worship the Lord thy God and Him only shall you serve.--Luke 4:8

So man, through the Son of Man, nullifies the power of Satan that Adam admitted in Eden. By His own obedience and submission, Christ put Satan in his place.

Later, He goes even further by subjecting Himself to disgrace and physical suffering. Had He not done so, God would have asked men to endure the scourge and turning the other cheek, something He Himself had not endured, effectively elevating the servant above the master. This, He could not do.

And then, when He became the first man to die and rise again, He showed Himself to be the Author of Life, who goes before us all to show the way.

Christ as Son of Man shows me what He created man to be.

In the end, if Christ is not Son of Man, I have no way to understand either the nature of God nor the nature of Man. Only through Him can I understand what I am created to become. Only through His humanity do I understand my own. 

*Iraneus, Against Heresies, III

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven

photo: biblethingsinbibleways.wordpress.com

Father. Our Father. Father God.
It rolls off the tongue. So easy. So natural. So....well, true.
God is our Father. He made us. He nurtures us. He loves us.
But not for everyone.

I got a real eye-opener recently when I heard the story told by Scott Hahn* regarding the discussion/debate he had with a muslim cleric about God. Actually, Hahn didn't want to engage in the debate--he was convinced by his sister and brother-in-law because he was the only person they knew who was theologically educated well enough to even try and, well, the cleric wanted to. After all, it wasn't an opportunity that presented itself every day.

And, actually, it started out pretty well. They agreed about a lot of the attributes of God--His perfection, His majesty, His sovereignty, His might. They agreed about many of His works--His creation and sustenance of the world, His destruction of mankind through flood and their preservation through Noah,  His liberation of the Israelites through Abraham, and more. But the trouble started when Hahn first referred to God as 'Father'.

The first time Hahn called God Father, the cleric slammed his fist down on the table, shouting that he would not tolerate any more blasphemy. Blasphemy? wondered Hahn. For calling God 'Father'? Apparently. For a muslim, it is blasphemy to ascribe any human characteristic to God. God, to him, is not Father, nor is He a Son. He does not love with a Father's heart, and He does for forgive with it, either. 

Then what, Hahn asked, is God if not Father?
"Master," declared the cleric. "God is Master."

Master--as in slave master. Master--with complete authority but no obligation to affection. Master--owner and source of all sustenance, but with no need of mercy. Master--user, ruler, absolute commander. Worshiped and followed without question, unforgiving of failure, not hesitating to deservedly punish. God.

And that was the problem. God the Father loves. God the Master rules.

If this sounds unduly harsh, maybe we shouldn't be too surprised. We were warned of this. Sarah, Abraham's wife, made it obvious:
Get rid of the slavewoman and her son, for that slavewoman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.--Genesis 21:10

Ishmael and Isaac, both Abraham's sons, would not share the same inheritance. Ishmael would forever be a slave, but Isaac would inherit all of Abraham's riches--his herds, his wealth, the best of what Abraham had to give. Ishmael would never again know his father's love. And neither did the cleric, the spiritual descendant of Ishmael. God was not his father.
He never heard this--
So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.--Galatians 4:7

As Christians, we will never fully understand the yoke under which some people have to labor. God is, after all, our kind Father, who, when we stray, waits at the gate for us with open arms. He forgives. He has storehouses of blessings He is saving to shower down on us. He guards and protects and nurtures. He quite literally holds us in the palms of His hands. Not so for everyone, however.

The cleric eventually stormed out of the restaurant where he sat with Hahn, having warned Hahn for the third time that he was not to use terms like Father or Son in relation to God. He'd had enough. God was not, and would never be, his Father.

I admire the cleric for his clear understanding of God's exaltedness, but I have never had to associate God with harshness or with a supremacy that exercises itself without mercy. What terror would God bring without love? How would He use His infinite power? It scares me even to think about it. In the end, though, I am so glad for this perspective. It uncovers the real depth and privilege of the prayer that Christ, the Son of God Himself, gave us. It illustrates vividly the boldness and the favor with which we say,
Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name...

*Allah or Abba, Lighthouse Catholic Media

The Curtain and the Christ

Emmanuel. God with us.
Christmas has passed. Jesus is here.
But not for the first time.

Remember--He's part of a trinity. And God's come to earth before.
A long time ago, yes, but come nevertheless.
Listen to the echoes of parallel times:

David planned the temple and Solomon built it in expectation.
Mary was born already destined as the mother of the Christ.

The temple's Holy of Holies housed the Ark of the Covenant--the most perfect structure the Israelites could provide.
Mary remained a virgin--as perfect a host for the Son of God the earth could provide.

Cherubims covered the ark.
An angel came to Mary.

When building of the temple was complete, God moved into it as a cloud.
When Mary had been prepared, God moved into her womb.

Even priests could not stand before the ark.
Even kings knelt before the baby.

And then the two collided.
And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth quaked, and the rocks rent, and the graves opened...Matthew 27:51-52

God came all right--once distant and awful, once up close and personal, and when the two met, the world was undone.
And it will happen again.
God made our world for us, not Himself, and when He enters it, everything changes forever.
Emmanuel. God with us.
Then, now, and someday.
We may not expect it or see the signs of His coming but, to be sure, once He does, we will not miss it.

What Angels Say

pic: pegponderingagain.com

The dark of night in Bethlehem.
He's born.
Mary and Joseph hold their newborn baby in those first hours, counting fingers and toes, watching those first hungry searchings, listening to those first snuffling coos. The first private moments of their parenthood. But not for long.

They have company.

source: jesuschrististhetruth.com

Angels kept them company.
Angels. God's messengers. Whenever they show up, pay attention. God has something to say.

Mary and Joseph's ancient world was a mess just like ours. Herod ran rampant, already issuing orders for the murder of children to eradicate any possibility of a challenge to his authority. Men labored achingly all their lives. Women served them with no governmental or societal equality. Only half of children lived to adulthood. Poverty reigned. Few could read. Kings held whole continents under thrall. Many died young from diseases we easily arrest today. Ignorance and prejudice and greed bred war.

But the angels brought a message from God:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King cometh unto thee...--Zechariah 9:9

Imagine them, in a barn--no, less than a barn--a cave, sharing space with animals. It was not a gentle setting. They had hay, and a manger, but no heat source, no convenient water, no facilities whatever. Just each other, the rudeness of animals, and faith in what they'd been promised.

It'd been a long time since the angel's first proclamation to Mary that she would bear a Son and that son would be Emmanuel, God with us.

She'd had nine months to think about this, to bear up under public derision, to witness Joseph's doubt, to watch Elizabeth bear her own miracle, to herself grow big and heavy and weary. To know, but to sometimes wonder.

We do it, too. We do not hear God's promise daily. It comes emphatically sometimes, when we cannot mistake it, but often it only whispers, a sigh we too often miss. But on some blessed mornings, in some dark stables, on some beds of pain and tears, it comes with announcement.

This is the promise, said the angel. This is your salvation. This is not only your son. He is Christ the Lord.

"Joseph--the Baby's Coming"

pic: www.mamamimiskitchen.com

It's been more than forty years and I still remember them.
Those first pains, that squeeze, that urgency.
And I knew.
The baby was coming.
And it always started at night.

It was likely late in the day when Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem. 
They could find nowhere to sleep and they were desperate.
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born...there was no room for them at the inn.--Luke 2:6&7
I would have been desperate, too, if I had come to the hospital, and they had turned us away saying there was no room, and sent us back out into those dark nights.

It was no different for them.
Before that night, and for thousands of years, people had walked in darkness. 
All of us. Waiting. 
We knew who and what we were. We knew what we needed. Where was He? When would the savior come?

"Now," Mary said. "Now."
There will be no more gloom for those who were in distress...the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of darkness, a light has dawned.--Isaiah 9:1,2

And there it was--the star.

Who Are We Waiting For?

pic: gal.darkervision.com

Ah. The Christ child.
That little baby in the manger.
O come, O come Emmanuel. God with us.
So sweet, so innocent.
Are you sure?

Ancient Jews didn't share that expectation.
They looked for someone quite different--

Who can abide the day of His coming? Who can stand firm when He appears?--Malachi 3:3

In other words--Look out. God is mighty and will come in all of that might. He will test us--
He will be like a refiner's fire--Malachi 3:4
Hot and destructive.

He comes not only with mercy and forgiveness, but He comes as a
Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.
He shall strike the ruthless with the rod of His mouth and with the  breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.--Isaiah 11

He is one God, you know. One. 
The Baby. The Healer. The Savior. 
but also The Judge. The Avenger. The Sword-wielder. The Dread Horseman.

Jesus, even as a baby, is not cute or safe.
He says, Follow Me, but if we don't, will eventually sweep us away in a firestorm.
He forgives. He has mercy, but that mercy has bounds. Eventually, He tires of waiting.
He brings us along, but when we try to interfere with what is, after all, His plan, He doesn't hesitate to tell us to "Get thee behind me, Satan."

He came to save and did it--without help, and without hesitation.
Who can, indeed, abide the day of His coming?

I Made This...

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God made us.
He made us good and clean and in perfect, uninterrupted communion with Himself.
He made us like Himself, with a desire to create.
And, with all that beauty and heritage of glory, what did we make?

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good, and pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.--Genesis 3:6

We made a whole new human being, one who had not existed before.
We made a sinner.

Since then, our entire journey in this life is making our way back again, abandoning what we made and finding what we left behind, what God made.
No wonder it's so hard.
No wonder it feels like I'm ripping off parts of me and discarding them reluctantly along the way.
No wonder it feels like I'm leaving unprotected flesh exposed, stinging all the while with the pain of it.
It feels that way because that's exactly what's happening.

What mankind has built through long centuries, what every voice other than God's tells me is right, what Satan lays on at every opportunity--this is the person God did not make.
My first creation.

But God is still in me. I know He is. Somewhere.
I still bear His Spirit--and the woman He made in Eden, before she asked,
Did God really say....?--(Genesis 3:3)
--before she reached out her hand for that bitter fruit.

I can find that woman again, the one God made, because He wants me to.
...put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.--Ephesians 3:24

The new me...really the old me after all.

Wearing Two Faces

Photo: findyourselflove.blogspot.com

Oh, God--you and your contradictions...
You tell me that life will be hard, but I will be glad.
You take away my sin, but not before you show me its full squalor.
You make me rich, but in the process, humble me down to the ground.

Because of you, I wear two faces--
One that knows your joy, and the other that knows myself and this world.

Who are you, anyway, that you must do this?

Father, Teacher, Brother, Friend, Lord, Christ, Redeemer...
Everything.

Somewhere, somehow, you must be enough.
You do not breathe your own Spirit into a handful of dust, then blow it apart, consigning it to random winds.
You, who ignite the spark of life and carefully lay out the order of the worlds, do not abandon your work to sad entropy.

I cannot make myself happy by leaning into days that flash by, swirling into time's tempest.
There is only You.
Satisfy me with your unfailing love that I may sing for joy and be glad all my days.--Psalm 90:14

The Baby Will Come

Photo: hipshakingmama.wordpress.com

In 1972, pregnant with my first child, I asked my mother, "How much will it hurt?"
"Don't worry," she told me. "You forget about it after the baby comes."

She was wrong about that.
I didn't forget--not then, and not through my second delivery. I still remember.
I remember the urgency.
I remember the  intensity.
I remember the whole, round, bigger-than-me desire to have the whole thing over with.
I remember how much, partway through, I wanted to give up the whole job.
But, once begun, I was stuck.
Once conceived, once carried, and so long anticipated, the baby would come.

The earth does the same thing.
God implanted in it the perfection of Himself, the pregnancy of His promise, and that child will, with or without our permission, be born.
And we groan in the waiting for it.
Every day, we feel how things ought to be and long for them.

Why do we know so much evil when God is so merciful? we ask.
Birth pangs.
Why do poverty, and sickness, and injustice continually plague us? we ask.
Birth pangs.
Why can't men and women just get along? we ask.
Birth pangs.
Every day, the earth swells with expectation of God's return, it leans into its own pangs of wanting, it opens the way and says, between cries, 
"Come, Lord Jesus!"

Creation was subject to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one Who subjected it, in hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as if in the pangs of childbirth right up to the present time.--Romans 8:20-22


Do you remember your own pangs of childbirth?
Do they give you any insight about the world's imperfections and what joy might still be in store?

What He Gave Me

Most people grow up with an expectation of disappointment or an overriding attitude of fear.
It's true.
I didn't know it for a long time but when I started to ask, almost everyone told me this.
Disappointment and fear: is this how we are meant to live?
No, of course not.

I grew up with an expectation of wonder. And I got it from my dad.
When we were young, Dad took us out for rides on Sunday afternoons (gas was 25 cents). He never told us where we were going, so we looked with anticipation around every corner, asking "Are we there yet?"  When we finally arrived, always at a place Dad had found just for the occasion--a waterfall, or a pristine sledding hill, or a remote Hopi village--he presented it to us with a flourish as if to say, "Isn't it wonderful?" And it always was.
And that was our framework for life.
He showed me what a really fine tomato tastes like.
He marked out the profile of the man in the moon.
He plunged my hands into yeasty, rising dough.
He rolled me down a hill fragrant with just-cut grass.
He stood me in front of President Lincoln and told me to think.
He showed me what the world looked like from the sky.
And it was all wonderful.

My father told me to be smart and careful, but not to be afraid.
And, more importantly, he taught me to LIVE. 
And, without meaning to, he taught me about God.

Do not fear, for I am with you--Isaiah 41:10
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity--2Timothy 1:7
I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.--Psalm 27:13

From the Mud Puddle

I'm trying my best, I really am.
I want very much to be kind and good, contientious and responsible, a good friend and a loving wife. Isn't that enough? Isn't that living?
God gave us life, didn't He? Isn't it enough for Him that we live it well?

Well, it might be if we could actually do it.
But we can't.
I am not good. I am lazy and selfish. Love is an effort. Charity is a discipline. Goodness is an ever-escaping echo of a lesson learned long ago, but constantly forgotten.
I will live not able to measure up, and then I will die.

Though his excellence mount up to the heavens and his head reach the clouds, yet he shall perish forever, like his own dung; those who have seen him will say, 'Where is he?'--Job 20:6-7

No wonder Job sat in the mud puddle, depressed.
Talk about epic fail.
I'm so there, too.
I can't win.  I can't do the one thing I want so much to do, the only thing that makes my life worth living.

And that's why I believe God.
It just doesn't make sense any other way.
I know there was beauty in man once. The remnant of it still shows itself at the edges of the ruin, but I can't put my arms fully around it.
I can't be a good person, so I either stay here in the mud or let God lift me out. 

Life is not the taking of successive breaths. It is not preservation of flesh.
Life is finding and holding a ever-fresh beauty that lasts.
Only God offers this, and only He brings what I lack.
Only a life with God makes sense, and if I love life, I must love God.

Only One Journey

Everybody started with God, so we are all in the process of returning to God.

If we believe God made us, and that we are, at the bottom of all things, His, then we have to acknowledge not only that our yearnings always draw us back to Him, but that our failure to follow them is the root of all of our unhappiness.
“Their deeds do not permit them
    to return to their God.
A spirit of prostitution is in their heart;
    they do not acknowledge the Lord.
Hosea 5:4

We talk about being saved, but this is not a new experience, it is a returning.
We have already been near to God, so it makes sense that we should want Him back. Only one thing--only one-- prevents that.
Israel’s arrogance testifies against them;
    the Israelites, even Ephraim, stumble in their sin;
    Judah also stumbles with them.
When they go with their flocks and herds
    to seek the Lord,
they will not find him;
    he has withdrawn himself from them.
Hosea 5:5-6

Whether we know it or not, we are always seeking God. It doesn't always look like Him, but it is God nonetheless. He is farther away from some than others, but we are all on the same way. There is no where else to go. We must seek God. We were made for this and only this. We only have to admit it and go.
“Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces
    but he will heal us;
he has injured us
    but he will bind up our wounds.
Hosea 6:1 

Born by Will

Of all children physically born into this world, of all ages and times, only Jesus Christ chose to do it.
I did not choose to be born.  Neither did you.
I did not choose my time, my place, or my parents.
But He did.

And, by doing so, by inhabiting a physical body, by living and dying, He made it possible for us to do the same.
Now, we can be born by our own choice and the Father's will, just like He was.

To those who received Him, to those who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God--children born not out of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God.--John 1:12-13

By believing we choose, and we are made new.
As Christ was born by His own consent to fulfill His Father's purpose, so can we be.
And when we are, Christmas shines through us all.