No Beast of Burden, Reflections on an Empty Yoke

Burdens. We all have them. Heavy by definition. Awkward, uncomfortable, ill-timed, strength-sapping, discouraging sometimes. I keep thinking I can dodge mine by careful planning but it doesn't work. God isn't following my script. He keeps writing His own and I'm left with them. The burdens.

He says they are light and momentary.
My yoke is easy and my burden is light.--Matthew 11:10.
Really?
 It doesn't feel like it. Not today. Maybe not ever.

I know what God says. Walk beside Me. Let me help you.
But He doesn't get it.
I am not a beast of burden.
  
A yoke is made for animals. I am a human being. He made me that way. I walk upright. I think. I dream. I have dominion. He gave it to me. He put me in charge.
Why, then, do I feel so helpless?

It's the burdens that keep me there. The cares. The problems. The misunderstandings. The intentional hurts. My arms and back tire of them. My neck hurts. 
My neck. Where I'm supposed to wear the yoke. That darned yoke.

For a farmer, a yoke does two things. 
First, it provides an efficient way to get work done. It harnesses and employs the work of two strong beasts focused on one task simultaneously, sharing the load equally between them. 
Second, and maybe more important, it makes those beasts docile. Before being confined, they roam or butt or buck. Within the confines of the yoke, they know they are mastered. Once there, they calm down and settle into what the farmer wants them to do.

That's the problem. 
I want that calm but I don't want that confinement.

It's better, I think, to bear the whole load than to be mastered.
There's only one problem.
It's not working.
The burden is crushing me.
And I still don't want to let go.

My problem isn't a new one.
In the 12th century, Baldwin of Forde had something to say about it:
The Lord advised and instructed us to put ourselves under His yoke and His burden and thus, through obedience and patience, to become His docile creatures...

Agreed, but it still feels like defeat, like giving up, like copping out.
And I don't want to become docile.
I was made to lead, not be led. I am a person of intelligence and decision. He gave those to me. I'm supposed to use them.

If you're looking for a neat answer to this, you won't get it today.
I know the promise. Probably, so do you.
Again, from Baldwin:
Patience enables us to rise above tribulation and not be crushed beneath it. All who become gentle under the yoke and burden of Christ find that God is also gentle with them.

Why do I think myself so smart and capable when I'm still dragging and snorting, pushing the empty yoke around with a streaming snout, flanks worn, running and stinking with years of sweat? Why don't I just give it up and push my ragged head through the thing?
I don't know, but I do know one thing. I'm tired of this. It's got to change. 
And so I've determined my advent discipline this year.
To admit that God is God.
To let Him master me, tame me, rule me.
To figure out this yoke thing.
To give in, if that's what it takes.
To give up the burden and admit I can't do it any more.
To become gentle with Him and finally, finally, let Him be gentle with me.

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The God of No/The God of Yes

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One God. 
That's what we have. One God. Unchangeable. Forever.
But which one is He?
Is He the God of the Old Testament--the one who punished and destroyed and slaughtered?
Or is He the God of the New Testament who saves and forgives and loves?

The simple answer is that He's both, but that's the problem. It's not simple. It doesn't make sense. Unless we toss out the Old Testament in the face of the New, our God does not appear unchangeable. He seems almost schizophrenic.
Let God be God, some say. Trust Him today and you will understand Him later. After all, He is the God who said to Moses,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and compassion on whom I will have compassion.--Romans 9: 15
And it's true. He has that right. He's God.
Why, then, am I still not satisfied?

Take sacrifices, for instance.
In the Old Testament, God set up an complex system of sacrifice--a calf for this, a pair of doves for that, incense, grain--an unending stream of them so that the courts of His tabernacle ran red with blood and stank with entrails every day. And then, after Jesus, they stopped. Just like that.
Old Testament/New Testament.
One God....or two?

Was the coming of Jesus as revolutionary as all that? Really?
Well, as it turns out, yes, it was.
 As it turns out, I need to see both sides of our God, the old and the new testament sides. Otherwise, I will not know Him at all.

The God of the Old Testament is the God of No.
 After men sinned, He had to be. We lost our connection with Him. We would no longer walk with Him in the cool of the day. We could no longer share His heaven. We would die. From that day on, His answer would be No.
Do you hear me, God?
No.
Can I satisfy you, God?
No.
Can I properly worship you, God?
No.
Can I draw near to you?
No.
Will you forgive me?
No.

All the sacrifices....they were never enough. The prayers...they could not pierce the veil.
Mankind needed the one thing they could not provide. They could follow all the rules, perform all the sacrifices, say every prayer, celebrate every feast day, but everything fell short.
In the Old Testament, men learned their hopelessness before a holy God. 
Nothing they could do was good enough. The answer was, and always would be, No.

Then Jesus came. And died. And rose. And established Himself as not only the perfect sacrifice, but as the perfect and eternal intercessor between sinful man and Holy God.
In that moment, God's No became Yes.
Do you year me, God?
Yes, through Christ.
Do you forgive me, God?
Yes, through Christ.
Will you take me into your eternal presence?
Yes, through Christ.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all--Ephesians 4:4-6

One God.
One.
Old Testament and New. Not schizophrenic--just what God's perfection looks like with and without Christ. 

And that is why we have them both. Jesus may be our friend, but He will never be our buddy. He may be fully human, but He will never be like us. Never.
Christ Jesus is the only One who makes possible any rejoicing, who allows us hope in the face of our own corruption. Christ Jesus lived and died so that God would not have to destroy us, too. His own creation. The ones He loves.

Without the Old Testament, the New Testament has no real purpose. Jesus came to save us from the justifiable wrath of His Father. Without understanding of the coming wrath, His salvation has no meaning.

The temple sacrifices taught us that God meant business. And then He swept them away with the only sacrifice that could actually accomplish its purpose.
In Jesus, God's forever No became a forever Yes.

Humpty and the King

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I keep trying to understand why some people believe and some do not. It has nothing, apparently, to do with intelligence, because lots of very smart people have no faith in God. It has nothing to do with exposure, because, in this country at least, an overwhelming majority of people have heard about creation and Christ. It has nothing to do with behavior, because many very nice folks refuse to consider faith in God as the only logical reason to behave decently.

So what is it? Why do some believe and some don't?

The simple answer is that some have heard the call of Christ and some have not, and that is true. God is clear about that.
I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion--Exodus 33:19
Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God--John 8:47

But even that understanding does not satisfy. I look at unbelievers and they seem so....well....happy. They do. Life is often easy for them. I hear sometimes about how unhappy life is without Christ, but the evidence often does not seem to bear that out. In fact, it looks just the opposite. Once belief does come, the believer is plagued by a stubborn, inconvenient truth by which an unbeliever is not troubled. 

The believer knows he is broken. 
Irretrievably, unrelentingly broken.
And there is nothing he can do about it.
He's like Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses and all the kings men can't put Humpty back together again.

And, in case you haven't noticed, brokenness is not fun. It makes none of us happy. And yet, that's the first step on the road to faith. It's a step down, not up.
What gives?

I remember a few years ago, when our parish priest was baptizing several adults, he told them that they were mistaken if they thought that their newfound faith would make their life easier. "It will make your life harder." he told them, "Do it anyway." And he was right. Faith does make life harder. I no longer measure myself against other people to figure out how I'm doing. I have to measure my behavior and motives against a holy God. And I always, always come up short. The unbeliever just has to look around to see whether he's doing better than the next guy, and that's not too hard.

We've all seen them. The alcoholic who is absolutely convinced that he's in control of his habit. The mobster who has a good handle on his life by declaring that "it's only business." The serial monogamist (of either sex) who knows that her life is OK because she's 'not hurting anyone.' They are happy, satisfied, undisturbed. And sometimes, I am jealous of their comfort. I don't get to have that. 

Instead, I'm laying at the bottom of the wall in pieces, looking up at a God I just realized has given me the dubious privilege of seeing the true state of my life and thinking, "Gee...thanks a lot. I could have done without this, God." And I'm tempted to think that He's the one who pushed me over.

But He's not. He just helped me to see. And he follows that sight with an immediate solution. He extends his hand with a remedy, the same one Peter extended to the cripple in the name of Christ at the temple gate:
Rise up and walk.--Luke 5:23
The man had been a cripple his whole life. Sure, he knew that he wasn't like everybody else but, well, begging may not have made for a bad living. It didn't require much effort, and no one expected too much of him. In some ways, it made for a pretty comfortable life.

Then, one day, he discovers he's broken...and there was Jesus.
Imagine his surprise.

Humpty never did get put back together again, but we can be. In the instant we know the extent of our brokenness,we are reassembled not only as good as new, but better than new. The King Himself does what all His horses and all His men could not.  
See! I am doing a new thing--Isaiah 43:19
And behold! The new thing is me!

Taking off the Mask: Wearing Truth

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I'm a hypocrite.
I admit it. So are you.

This is why:
Every time I sin, I have lied about what I believe. I have lied to whoever has witnessed my sin but, worse, I have lied to myself.

Here's how it works: I say I want to do the right thing, that I don't want to sin. And then I do. How does that work? Is someone twisting my arm to take a third piece of cake? To snark at my husband? To spend time at work on the phone with friends? Really?
Even the writer of Hebrews knows:
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of death.--Hebrews 12:4

This is the truth--
I always do exactly what I want to do. 
Every time.
The devil never makes me do it. He can't. I have to cooperate. I have to agree. We all do.

Think about it. Imagine someone who is a compulsive thief. He says he loves God and wants to obey Him, but just can't seem to stop himself. We call this behavior an addiction and it probably is. Addiction is a real thing, but even an addict lies to himself and we often let him. Even given the physical pull of addiction, at some level the addict likes his behavior. He enjoys the thrill of cheating, the belonging of gossip, the comfort of the drug. They not only feel like they can't, but deep down do not want to give it up.

We choose our sin.

Here's a more honest approach. Just say it.
Adultery is exciting.
Gossip makes us feel important.
Food makes us happy.
Anger vindicates us.

Our faults and habitual sins are not mitigated in the least when we go to church on Sunday or read our Bible but don't change. Unaltered sinful behaviors do not characterize a Christian. They indicate a Pharisee.

There is a a relief, a kind of grace, in admitting who we really are. Try it sometime.
Substitute "I struggle with nagging, but can't seem to stop" with "I don't dare stop nagging him. Nothing will ever get done." Admit that we care less that nagging is wrong than about getting the garbage taken out.

God knows this is hard, but He wants us to examine our real motives:
I desire truth in the inner parts--Psalm 51:6

Before we can turn our true face to the world, we have to turn a true face toward God and toward ourselves.
What are we really afraid of? The Christian mask we are wearing will have to come off sooner or later. We might as well take it off now. The Christian truth lies underneath.

Linking up this week with http://christianmommyblogger.com/fellowship-fridays-22-link-parties-worth/

No Baggage, Not Even a Carry-On

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Pack light.
We get that advice everywhere, and not only for vacations. Did you ever try it? It's not easy.
Even Jesus gave that advice to His apostles:
These were His instructions: Take nothing for the journey except a staff. No bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals, but not an extra shirt. --Mark 6:8,9

Well.
Now that's something to think about.
Nothing to eat. Nothing to wear. Nothing to spend to get either of them.
Why would He tell them to do such a thing?
Not because they wouldn't need them. They would. They would need to eat and find a place to sleep and, eventually, change their clothes.
Maybe He told them not to pack anything because the things they brought would hinder them.
No baggage, He told them. You may bring no baggage.
Not even a carry-on.

They were going out on their life's journey, accomplishing the task Jesus set them to do.
Well, I'm doing that, too, aren't I?
Maybe I don't get to pack anything for the trip, either.
Nuts.
And I thought I was doing pretty good, limiting myself to a single carry-on for a vacation, one junk drawer, a half a clothes closet. Guess not.

Take nothing for the journey, Jesus says. It's only stuff. 
That's true, but I don't think He's talking only about stuff.  I think He's talking about other baggage--the crippling guilt from my past, a sad longing for childhood or where I used to live, a petrifying desire to regain what God has clearly removed--situations, friendships, jobs, even loved ones.
Leave them behind, He says. You'll be OK. Honest.

Let the dead bury the dead--Luke 9:60
See, I am doing a new thing--Isaiah 43:19
Don't worry about anything--Philippians 4:6
Consider the lilies...--Luke 12:27

So what do I need?--a staff and sandals. What does that mean today?
It means, I think, the stuff, both interior and exterior, that facilitates my walk.
It's not another pair of shoes or another book or even another Bible study or community event--it's what I get today that helps me gain a firm hold on Christ right now.

Christ has appointed a way for every one of us. What are our own staff and sandals? What brings us closer to our goal?
We need to figure this out, because we're not supposed to take anything else.
For one of my friends, her day care business is her staff and sandals. That is what takes her before the Lord, both physically and spiritually. Through that, she not only ministers, but is ministered to. Not only children, but entire families, see God's light through her.
Another of my friends, a widow, is putting on her staff and sandals by selling her house and moving closer to her grandchildren. There, she will finish the work Christ has so evidently begun in her as a helper, a mentor, and a companion, but also provide a platform from which she is loved.
Both of these women are leaving behind the freedom that comes with maturity and investing where God has pointed them. Both are leaving behind lots of easier choices, opening themselves up to a life over which they have less control, not more. In short, they are dropping what supports an old world, leaving each known thing behind and picking up an unknown. They are emptying their bags of stuff, both physical and emotional, and in the process, I watch them both being changed and changing the world around them.

And, in the process, what they get is Christ.
Leave it all behind, He says, and you'll still have me. 
Leave it all behind. Eventually, you won't even miss it.
I am a light burden. You can carry me in your heart.
 

Not Drowning in the Meaningless

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Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!--Ecclesiastes 1:1

Poor Solomon.
I always felt kind of sorry for him, but not so much anymore.
Actually, I've come to understand that he was right, but not in a bad way.
Everything IS meaningless, and that knowledge drives us to find a reason for living. This is a good thing. Understanding that most of what we do and accomplish doesn't last drives us to search for meaning, for a reason to take the next breath.
And that's where Solomon got into trouble.

His dad, David, also thought life was meaningless. He did.
David, like Solomon, knew he was a sinner. He was drowning in his sins, in fact. Like Solomon, he knew that after he'd messed up big time, his good intentions had failed. He'd done very little right. He'd tried, but was not a worthy king, a good friend, or a successful husband and father. Like Solomon, he'd messed it all up.
But unlike Solomon, he didn't sink into melancholy over it.
Unlike Solomon, he didn't lose his reason for living.

Why? In spite of all the wrong turns, God was not enough for Solomon.
But God was more than enough for David.

How can we tell? Look at the symptoms.
Frustration = lost reason
Fear = lost reason
Depression = lost reason
Loneliness = lost reason

Solomon had them all. David did not.
David had repentance and after repentance, David had God.
I must find God, too, if I am to find the source of a balance mind and heart and the source of all health. I must always know the only solid reason for my life. 

I will never leave you nor forsake you.--Deuteronomy 31:8

God will take me beyond this life into eternity. He endures.
It's OK if everything is meaningless. I have God.

Where is Our Comfort?

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Jerusalem. Herald of Good News. Fear not to cry out.*

It's not Christmas yet. 
There is no babe. There is no manger, no lowing cattle, no peaceful Mary pondering the mysteries of God in her heart. Not yet.
There is only a promise. And the desolation of the present.

A voice cries out: Prepare the Way of the Lord. Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God.*

Prepare. Get ready.
Aren't you doing it already? Buying gifts? Cleaning? Baking?
These are preparation of sorts--preparation of our home and for our family feast.
But they do not prepare our hearts.

A voice says, "Cry out!"*

This is our advent preparation. 
Cry out to God.
Then the Glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together.*

Prepare.
We will not find Christmas under the tree or on our dinner table or even in the smiles of our children.
The Glory of God revealed to us.
That is our comfort.
That is Christmas. 

*All scriptures taken from Isaiah 40.

Comfort Ye, My People--

Why You Can't Hurt Me Anymore

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Some days, I wish I wore shoulder pads.
I am tired of hurting.
It's the accumulation, I think, that piles up over long years, the catalog of hurts that comes with living.
What do I do with them?

I know this--I must choose my protection carefully.
I can put on shoulder pads, but not erect barriers.
If I protect myself too much, I will miss my life. I am going to have to endure some risk, and some hurt, if I am going to do any living at all.

The key is learning to recognize real danger.
Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body but not kill the soul.--Matthew 10:28
There is, after all, only so much another person can do to me. If I am to live at all, I will have to accept a measure of hurt.
My defense, though, is really a good offence.
I do have the power to kill old hurts and consign new ones to their proper place: it is the power to forgive.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.--Colossians 3:13
 
And how do I do that?
I do it by remembering that, to some degree, I hand people the sticks with which they beat me.
If I hold on to hurt, it holds me captive in return.
If I take hurt in stride, chalking it up to the brokenness of this world and the people around me, I can reach out to, and be consoled by the only consolation truly available.
The Lord will protect you from all evil. He will keep your soul.--Psalm 121:7

How to Hate the Sin

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We are supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner. 
We hear it all the time, but the whole idea produces more blank looks and shaking heads than almost any other. How in the world are we supposed to do that?
 Well, like any other biblical principal, maybe it's best to start with ourselves.

I sin.
So do you.
But do I hate my own sin? 
No.
And how do I know this?
Jesus tells me:
If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off.--Matthew 18:8

Did He really mean this? 
Well, He did, or He wouldn't have said it.
He probably meant it as a metaphor, of course, but the example serves to illustrate the force with which we are to approach sin. We are to hate it enough to cut off our own hand to get rid of it.

Jesus says to "take up your cross" (Luke 9:23) and "die every day" (1 Corinthians 15:31).
He leaves no room for excuses, no safe harbor while sin still reigns in us.
This is what He does say:
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.--Hebrews 12:4
This is how much we are to hate sin.

Does this sound cruel?
It is not cruel to insist that we put to death strong, sinful desires.
It is not cruel to deny that it's OK for either ourselves or anyone else to give in to what is clearly forbidden.
We are to love both ourselves and others with self-denial.

Examine your own strong desires.
Do you indulge, rather than fight them because it's just so darn hard and you know that God, in the end, will forgive you?
I do.

The hand I must cut off is the hand of strong, habitual, sinful desire.
And it will hurt. A lot. A real lot. I will scream from it. I will not be able to envision what is on the other side, who I will be without it, how I will live, what I will do without the emotional crutch.
But, if I believe that heaven, and freedom, await, I must whack away, doing whatever it takes.
And then, pointing with my own bloody stump rather than a filthy, still-intact, accusing finger, I can learn to truly hate the sin and love the sinner because I have done so with myself.

The Witness Between Us

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Why are Christians always arguing among themselves?
It's almost never necessary.
Really.
But we are so sure we are right and our brothers are wrong. 
Bah.

We should have learned long ago that we don't always see things clearly.
Way back when the Israelites first divided up the promised land, and settled on both sides of the Jordan river, they did  the same thing. The people of Reuben, Gad, and half of the people of Manasseh lived separated from the others, so they built an altar there, a copy of the tabernacle where the rest of their people worshiped, so that they would not forget God's faithfulness even though they lived separately.

And what did their brothers in faith say? Did they slap them on the back and say "Good job. So happy for your faithfulness!"  No, of course they didn't.
They said:
How could you break faith with the God of Israel? How could you turn away from the Lord and build yourselves and altar against Him now?--Joshua 22:16

They didn't get it at all.
So the Reubenites and Gadites set them straight:
The Mighty One! God! The Lord! He knows! ...It is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow that we will worship the Lord...--Joshua 22: 22,27

A witness between us and you.
To unite, not separate them.

More often than not, the God we worship is the same God.
Our sects and denominations are not supposed to separate us. They are incidents of upbringing and location. They are different flavors of the same Living Bread.

Some people like statues and stained glass, some a bare cross.
Some prefer loud music, some stately, some none at all.
Some dunk, some sprinkle.
It doesn't have to matter.

Though separated by differences that sometimes seem as wide as the Jordan, we need not destroy one another.
I don't always agree with my husband, but we almost always present a united front to the world.
Why can't Christians do the same?
Stop nit-picking your brother and put your arms around him.
There is one body and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all--Ephesians 4:4-5

Do you see it differently?
Do our denominational differences really matter all that much?

Learning from a Prostitute

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One of the tests of sanity is whether we know right from wrong. And most of us do.
Of course, knowing right doesn't always translate into doing right, but it could.  It's simple, after all. Just ask yourself one question:
Do  feel like I need to hide this?

Kathleen Norris tells a story about a monk named Ephrem who, when tempted by a prostitute, asks her to follow him to a crowded place then, once among the throng out in the open, gives her permission to do what she wants with him. He knows that her business is never done in the light, though, and she leaves him unmolested.*

We can put our own temptations to a similar test. Is what we are thinking a thought we can speak out in a crowd? Is what we want to do an act we can perform in public with perfect comfort?
The same reasoning applies to us as it does to the prostitute in Norris' story.
If we feel like we have to hide something, it's probably wrong.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy on me...then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.  I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," and you forgave the guilt of my sin.--Psalm 32: 3-5

Hiding does not work. The only free soul is the one who has nothing to hide.
If I cannot be transparent before men, I cannot live righteously before God.

*Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk, p. 278

The Temptation of Me: I'm Melting!

We all remember her...hunched, crabbed, and cranky. And that hand, reaching out with dark malice, all the while saying, "My pretty....."
Yuck. (shiver)
That's me. And you.
Ego. Self-centeredness.

There's no denying it. It's always in there, looking for every chance to show itself, and there's only one way to keep it down. 
Make it melt. Starve it until it shrinks to nothing.

And Jesus showed us how:
Again, the devil took Him to a high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All of this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.'"--Matthew 4:8-10

Satan, unapologetically full of himself, thought he could impress Jesus.
Duh.
He obviously didn't consider who he was dealing with.
And we are dealing with Him, too.

Jesus compared the devil to God, putting the old tempter firmly in his place.
We have to do the same with ourselves. 
How? We starve ourselves. We fast.

No, we don't stop eating, although self-control in this area might be called for.
But we all need to fast from something. and it's easy to identify where.
What do you like to do just a bit too much? What causes that slight nervous panic when you stay away a little too long?
TV? Sweets? Your cell phone? Coffee? A particular friend?
Me? I had to stop looking at my blog traffic...dumb, but true.
Be honest, and ruthless.
It is our egos we are starving, and we are doing it because we are not supposed to be looking at ourselves.
We are supposed to be looking at God, and we are getting in the way.

So, melt away, you wicked witch.
I am better off without you.

The Howling Dark of Sin and Chris Tomlin's Pale Grace

Got grace?
Well, of course I do, silly.
I am set free by it, washed in the blood of the lamb. I am saved, Saved, SAVED!
And grace is amazing.
John Newton says so.
Chris Tomlin says so.

But John knew something Chris appears to want to forget.
Grace needs sin.
Always.
Always.
The crime. The betrayal.
The howl of deep hurt forcing itself to be heard from torn heart of the person, and of the God, I said I loved, said I would never forsake.
And then did.
And I have to listen to it.
Ragged. Raw. Unrelenting.
And I am responsible. Only me.
I did it on purpose, because I wanted to, because I thought myself more important.

That is why I need grace.

Amazing Grace is not a hymn. John Newton did not sing it.
He wrote and recited it with his congregation as a statement of wretchedness.
The grace he described covered the sin because it could not make it disappear.

The minute we forget the sin, we can forget the grace, too.
We do not need it any more.

If we want to sing about grace, we'd do well to remember the sin that made it necessary.

Look into the horror.
You will need to be bold, but it's worth it, because that is the only place you will find real grace.

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find help in time of need.-Hebrews 4:16

The Rules of Forgiveness

I'm trying to understand the rules of forgiveness.
If the Bible doesn't contradict itself, and it doesn't, then how does this work?
God tells me to
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.--Colossians 3:13

OK. So, how does He forgive?
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins--Colossians 2:13
So, He forgave me before I repented.

But then He says,
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.-1John 1:9
In other words, I must repent to be forgiven. 

So which is it?

Well, it's both.

When Christ went to Calvary, He proclaimed forgiveness and freedom for all men, although most of them did not know Him, had not even acknowledged His godhead, much less repented.
He did it all, all He could do.
But men still have free will, the free will He gave them.
Jesus did all of his part.  Men were forgiven, but their relationship with Him was not yet repaired.
It takes repentance to do that. 
When we acknowledge and repent of sin, we restore our communion with God.

And that is how we must forgive.
We do what we can while the offender is still clueless, still dead in sin.  We forgive him as Christ forgave us.  Without recompense, without expectation.
Then, sooner or later, he may acknowledge and apologize, repenting for his sin.
That is when, as in Christ, are we restored.

Now Where Was I?

My husband does not want me to use herbicides.
But I want a perfect, weedless garden.
For 30 years, we have wrangled about this.
It needs to stop.

But how?  Nobody wants to give in.  We both think we are right and, from our own perspectives, we are.  After all, no biblical principle hinges on whether I spray Roundup on the creeping charlie.
Or does it?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.--Matthew 5:3,5
A man's pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor.--Proverbs 29:23
I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the contrite.--Isaiah 57:15

Think about it.
What makes us really humble?
Is it bowing and shuffling when someone tells me that I have done something well?  No.  That makes me secretly proud.
Am I humbled when I experience defeat after striving to do or learn something?  No.  As often as not, that simply spurs me on to try harder next time.

But obedience, now that breeds humility.
Doing what someone else wants, not what I want, when I know my idea or plan is just as valid as theirs.  Setting aside my own will in situations where all I sacrifice is me.
That's humility.

Of course, I should never set aside my holiness, my love and devotion to God, but all else can be well lost.

And it feels nasty.
Is not my opinion or desire of value?
Of course it is.  That's why setting it aside takes so much effort.
I am humbled by giving up my will not because it has no validity, but because it does.

Some positions are not important enough to fight over.
But they make great tools by which to learn holiness.

Obedience in these issues is how I push aside the extraneous parts of me, how I enter into the holy of holies, where my humanity takes a back seat to God's supremacy.

Humility was never about my position before other men.  
It was always about my position before God.
And, as it turns out, pulling weeds.
I am always with you.  You hold me by my right hand.--Psalms 73:23

Seeing Red

I can't get her out of my mind.
I keep thinking about that tender woman in the crowds by the lake at Galilee, bleeding out, slow drop by slow drop.
Weak, pale, outcast.  She crawled through the crowd, propelled by a faith born of desperation.  Desperation.  But it was enough.  She reached out.

Then, unbidden, with the touch of grace and power that He wrapped around Him like a sweet cloak, Jesus stopped her bleeding.
Facing His own passion, His own blood sacrifice, He spared hers.

Daughter, your faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.--Mark 5:34

That's the way it works.  Freedom is purchased by the blood of one for the benefit of another.  So it did that day, and so it does for us. Just as for all the blood shed for freedom through long ages of men, as it flowed from one, it stopped for another. 
The woman did contribute something, however.
She contributed faith.

Today, we remember that much blood has flowed for freedom and still does, but as it does, it causes us to yearn for a day when, like for this woman, another exchange for freedom awaits. The Lord of the universe promises an end to the bleeding.  Rather than life's blood, we long to offer faith alone and be freed from suffering.

His blood flowed once for all, but our blood continues to stain the world.
Someday, we will know freedom from that, too.