What if I Could Not?

This is my niece Jocelyn. She's sitting here, a little over two years ago, between my younger son and her husband, and she's smiling.

She's not smiling today.

Today, she is dying. Not fighting for her life anymore....just dying. Her liver has failed, her other organs ceasing to function one by one, and her blood has ceased to clot. She's 38 years old.

She is more than 600 miles away. I can talk to her if someone holds up the phone, but she can no longer respond. Her mother says that she squirming with discomfort. She knows. There is no doubt that she knows she won't live much longer.

The problem is this: The ones who love her struggle not only because she is way too young for this to happen, but because she has, for at least the last ten years, professed to be an atheist. She is a young woman without hope for any future, any life beyond this one.

She and I have talked often about this. She was churched as a youngster, even tried to worship for awhile, but the contradictions in her church and the hypocrisy of the people who worshiped there became too much for her. She gave up. She just gave up. And, in recent years, although she would tolerate, even sometimes ask, for prayer, she still would not profess to any belief in God. She saw the contradiction, of course, but would not open her heart.

And here we are today. The end of her road.

And it is Sunday. This morning I went to church.  As I moved into the usual pew, and stood at the appropriate time to say, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty", I was struck nearly dumb. So simple a phrase, so easy. I've said it pretty much all my life...so often, it has become automatic, taken for granted as normal. But it isn't normal for everybody. What would life look like, particularly the end of life, if I could not? What if I could not honestly say I believe in God?

I can't imagine it, frankly. Unlike Jocelyn, who said that God made no sense to her, I can make no sense of a world without Him. And I am frozen by the enormity of it all...the vast implications of a simple phrase, the everyday working out of it in ways that have become so much a recurring part of my life. I marvel at the symbols that carry such heavy implication, yet are so ridiculously common-- pieces of wood and thorn, bread and wine. No wonder some struggle with belief.

We are seemingly given so little. Small, fleeting representations that are monumentally life-altering. Out-of-the-box game changers. Leaps of faith. A word in the right place or time that sinks to the core. A conviction that honoring my creator trumps all other endeavors. Loving for no other reason.

This is why, I'm thinking today, that just being good is not enough. It keeps us pinned to Earth. It does not provide for the God who explains everything we don't understand. It does not give us a reason for having lived. It does not answer the whys pretty much everyone seems to ask when their last day arrives. If God is not real, everything lofty and important dies in that last breath. Transcendence doesn't exist. Without Him, we are left to squirm.

I told Jocelyn this morning that she should trust now. Rest in God, and trust, and everything will be all right. Even now. Even when she has come to this. She can still open her heart and I pray that she does. God is loving and merciful. He will meet her there. This is the day.

And I will raise you up on the last day--John 6:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CRMbh8ViUI

What Food We Are Offered

The part of my house I like the best is the kitchen. Some years ago, I designed it with meticulous care, measuring up each cabinet and drawer with relish and precision, planning exactly what I would keep in them and sizing them for their specific purpose. And all the planning paid off--everything fits where it belongs, and I wouldn't change a thing.

I took great pleasure in this not just, I think, because of its order and beauty, which it has, but because it brought a fresh vision for what I would make there. And the space has rewarded me with many meals shared in fellowship with people I love. I wouldn't change a thing about it.

I can't leave behind the notion of the importance of food in our lives. Of course, in practical thought, we'd die without it, but most of us realize that food is more than fuel, more than filling our stomachs. In very real, maybe even mysterious ways, food is love. I really think so. Who doesn't have fond memories of  meals prepared and shared together? Of chicken soup, or turkey dinners, or birthday cakes made with loving hands? Food is life in many more ways than one.

My camera files are filled with plates of food I've made, either alone or with friends and family, arranged carefully on dishes or in bowls, and presented with satisfaction and anticipation. These are my offerings to the ones I care most about, or ones I want to know better. I want the food to say "I care about you" when words fail.

And I think sometimes of the food that God has offered us, our New Testament manna, His own body, presented to us on a plate as we gather to worship:

 

 "This is my body...."
The moment when food becomes something else--love of a very different kind. Sacrificial love given at a cost way beyond hours spent in the kitchen. That plate holds a promise. That plate becomes, for the moment it holds the bread of heaven, holy ground. That meal, on that plate, feeds us unto eternity.

And this morning I read,
And when the daughter of Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod, and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatever you will, and I will give it to you. And he swore to her, Whatever you ask of me, I will give it to you, even to half my kingdom. And she went forth and asked her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist. And she came in straightaway with haste to the king, saying, I want you to give me in a charger the head of John the Baptist.--Matt 14:22-24

Do you know what a charger is? It's a serving plate. A big serving plate. Chefs still call them that--chargers. But think of how it would look to any observer...could a plate bear anything more revolting? Death instead of life. Evil rather than nourishment, as though it were something we would actually eat:



The very place we expect to find something tasty and filling and sometimes even beautiful, we find instead....this. Death. Blood.

And so does God surprise us again. He turns, with the help of man-made evil, something beautiful into something violent. And He gives us a sneak peek at what to expect from Him in the future. It will be His death that He serves up to us soon. His sacrifice. His challenge to recognize what He's doing.

He's turning our world inside out.

Think, He says. Recognize Me. Even as John dies, even as I will die, I fill your plates with what you most need. See the faithful nourishment I provide. Body. Body and blood. Not always beautiful, but always perfect and always holy.

With Feet Firmly in Both Worlds

I'm confused. I'm a Christian, supposed to be freed by Christ. Then if I'm so free, why do I feel so bound? Bound, as is rooted in the physical world rather than liberated in the spiritual one. Bound. Caught. Confined. Limited. Anything but free.

Being stuck is not my favorite thing. And I'm stuck. But I know not everybody feels like this. I can tell.

Contrary to what my Christian friends sometimes say, people who absolutely don't believe in God don't seem stuck. They're pretty carefree, in fact. And why not? Nobody's judging their every move. They don't have to measure up to much. Just being as nice as the next guy is good enough. It's pretty easy.

And folks just as rooted on the other end, the ones you and I might call saints or seers, well, they live in peace, too. The physical world fades clearly into the background for them. The live pretty much on a spiritual plane unknown to lesser beings. They're happy. Oblivious, sometimes, it seems, but happy.

So it's easy to be ungodly and easy to be holy. But here in the middle--not so much. This is where the tension lives. And this is where we spend most of our time. The middle ground, where both sides tug at us, and we live here. With feet planted firmly in both worlds.

How did I get here? First, there's sin. What have I done wrong and not despised? What does God clearly forbid that still secretly makes me smile? Surely they're not as bad as the letter of God's law dictates. They make good stories, at the very least. What's the big deal? I don't do most of those things anymore. I'm better now. But that doesn't matter. What's wrong is still wrong.

And then, what do I love that clearly belongs to the earth? What pulls on me whose other end has no constructive place in heaven? Animals? My kids? Art or music? The doing of good deeds? Those aren't bad. I mean, even unbelievers help out other folks and love their kids and their dogs, and as much as we do. What I love may even cause me to think of and thank God. But even if they do, they're not God.

I'm thinking that the rationalizations we nurture and emotional and physical ties we retain are the milk of faith. They're presentable on the surface, but they're not helpful. They're the spiritual slack we cut ourselves, and they don't get us where we say we want to go.

If we want full view of God, we have to brush away whatever blocks that view. Somehow, we need to release everything to His care. Cut loose our deluded past and the excuses we make for it. Unleash our confused present and the comfortable talismen with which we block our clear vision.

Take a baby, for instance. Dang, she's cute. The way she smells, the sound she makes, the way she looks into my eyes. But what do I see when I look at her? When I reach for her, am I reaching for God? And if not, how in the world do I look beyond her? She's so there.

But if I do reach for her, and bask in the pleasure she gives, I've stopped short of what I might otherwise have. If I see past her, if I release the moment completely to God, then I miss this feeling, this satisfaction, this fun.  But then, if I aim for the pleasure of the baby, what's the difference between that pleasure and any other kind? Is it substantially different from sexual excitement or drug-induced euphoria? Plain pleasure, regardless of its earthly source, ties me to the earth.

Pleasure is a such a lovely stopping place,though. So nice, but not holy. People in all walks of life have had to give up pleasures to get where they so desperately wanted to go. Athletes, artists, folks on a diet. And then there are those looking for even more...missionaries, monks, Jesus Himself. They didn't live in pleasure. Instead, they find their victory amid privation, even misery.

And that has to be our road, too, if we are truly going to throw off the bonds of this world. We have to find what we want among the bones of what we might have had.

You will have trouble in this world.--John 16:33
Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.--John 14:1
No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of heaven.--Luke 9:62

In the end, we will continue to be bound to either earth or heaven. In order to gain heaven, we have to throw off the bonds of earth, even the ones we love and make us happy. If we want to be free, we have to throw off what ties us to this place. We are given so much. The challenge is to hold it loosely--very loosely, always ready to grasp instead what lasts forever.

image: saatchart.com

Why Daniel Didn't Die

The king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? Then Daniel said unto the king, O king, live forever. My God hath sent His angel, and hath shut the lion's mouth that they have not hurt me:--Daniel 6:20-22a

Good old Daniel. Don't you just love to hear this story? It pushes all the buttons--that gut-wrenching fear when we are faced with tragedy or trouble or doubt as Daniel is cast into the midst of a pack of hungry beasts all set to tear him limb from limb and lick their lips when they have finished making a meal of him; our admonishment from God to depend on Him, to pray, and to be confident that He will save us or someone we love as Daniel watches the lions approach--their hot, fetid breath, their plate-size paws taking step after step closer; and then the perfect working out of that confidence, God's ultimate rescue when Daniel is spared--our assurance that our prayers, too, will be answered.

But then I hear what Daniel says next:

 forasmuch as before Him innocence was found in me: and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. --Daniel 6:22b

Wait a minute. Daniel didn't need to be saved. He already was. He was already innocent before God and knew it. Even if he were chewed to bits, he knew he would simply be delivered into eternity and before the Lord he loved. Many of God's children had already done this through the ages. They had died in His service in the arena, at the stake, or beneath the sword. Why should Daniel expect any different? What was different about him?

Well, probably nothing.

So, why, then, did he live?

I suspect it was this, the king's reaction:
I make a decree, that in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God and steadfast forever and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and His dominion shall be even unto the end.--Daniel 6:26

As much as I like the end of this story, the saving of Daniel's life, I don't think that was the result that mattered. God loved Daniel. He'd created him for a purpose, and this was it. Daniel was about to fulfill God's will for him and, in his case, it was to live, to bear witness to His power before the king so that the king would believe.

But that's not true for everyone. It is not always the living that draws people to God. God had, and would, and will still sacrifice one life to save another. Remember Jesus? Oh yes, even Him.


Sometimes, it is in the dying that God's will is done. God will, without doubt, continue to either allow sacrifice or spare from it , to grant prayer or to refuse it, in order to produce exactly the result that His intervention with Daniel did: faith and salvation in an unbeliever. That is what God wants more than anything.

God can and does grant our prayers, but not when a greater good is produced by denying them.  As believers, we will still die, but God would have even our deaths accomplish something in His kingdom.

This is sovereignty. This is ultimate power over creation. This is what it means to be God. And somehow, even as we bow before Him, we have to understand that we are safe in God's hands--safe not as in the ultimate preservation of either our own flesh or the flesh of someone we love, but in His Everlasting Arms.


photo credits: pinterest.com, cocorioko

RIP: Samson and Suicide

We are so sure of ourselves as Christians sometimes, so reliant not only on the Bible, but on our understanding of it. And some of that's good, but we keep forgetting that even in studying God's word, that we don't have God's mind.

When we are faced with a suicide of someone we love, we encounter circumstances that ask us to make new sense of a principle we thought we understood, that it is not within God's will to determine our own end, that our death is God's province and God's alone. But it's not that simple.

This is what I read this morning from the book of Judges:
Samson was, as you know, a consecrated Nazarite from birth. His life was dedicated to God. And he lived with his family among their enemies, the Philistines, godless people with whom the Israelites were not to mix. However, "Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, 'I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me as wife.' But his father and mother said to him, 'Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?' But Samson said to his father, 'Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.'". 
 
Now here's the important part:
"But his father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for He was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines."
 
One sentence. One sentence in that whole story. God prompted Samson to do something forbidden for a reason that only He could understand. Samson didn't understand what was going on. Neither did his parents or anyone else. But God did.

How many times are we cautioned that we do not know the mind of God? Dozens. They didn't then. We don't now. 

As far as I'm concerned, we can only do the best we can with the circumstances we are given. But it is only God who is all-knowing, God who is sovereign. We do not, cannot, know what He is doing from first to last. 

We say we cannot judge a man's motives, only his action. But we need to remember, too, that God uses even actions that look wrong to us for His own ends. If we trust Him, we have to give Him room to work and not too harshly judge those who, hidden to us, He may have chosen to help Him. .

Finding My Way

There's nothing like getting lost in a strange place.
Talk about feeling vulnerable.
I'm 1800 miles from home and there are no landmarks, nothing familiar to look at and say, "Oh, yes... I know that intersection, that gas station, that tree." And it's dark. And raining. Almost midnight. And my phone has died. And I have to find my way back to where I started.

Now, if one is going to get lost, the mountains east of Seattle is the place to do it. Rough, quaint, and remote, it's a beautiful part of this world. And wandering is sometimes fun. But not so much last night.

After spending a delightful evening with someone very special who lives in this lovely region, and getting ready to make my way back to the friends hosting me here, I found that my phone, by whose GPS I made my way up here, had only 8% left on the battery, not nearly enough to guide me through the twisty mountain passes for the hour it would take me to get back. After a moment of short panic, my hosts did the most reasonable thing possible--they printed out Googlemap directions and, armed with two sheets of paper, no GPS, and no phone, I set out on my way.

My first problem was how to drive and read the map at the same time. It was dark, after all, and I kept hearing that little voice that always told me never to drive with the car's interior lights on. Well, that was out the question tonight. I clicked on the light. Well, well. I could see--not only the map but the road ahead. So far, so good. And I started driving.

While I was still in North Bend, it was pretty easy. I remembered the first turns from when I'd just taken them a few hours before....424th Street, Cedar Falls Way, North Bend Boulevard, Railroad Avenue. But then came the traffic circles and the roads I hadn't paid much attention to earlier because then, I'd had my graphic display. I had no graphics now, though, and had to find highway 202. I did. Whew.

Then I was supposed to turn on Ames Lake Rd. There it was, sign looming up suddenly in the dark. I took a hard right. No time for turn signals and no one to witness them anyway. Then a left onto Snoqualmie Valley Rd., another out-of-nowhere turn. I didn't see it until I'd gone past. U-turn and another right. The next turn was listed to be Woodinville Duvall Rd. Ok. There was the sign to Duvall, but no indication of Woodinville anywhere. Do I turn? Something said not. I drove straight by, instinct telling me that what I wanted was somewhere up ahead. Again, illuminated suddenly and for only a moment, the sign for Woodinville Duvall Rd. Another right. After that, it was easy. That final turn took me right back. Back to Kelsey Rd., which I knew, and after three more quick turns, back to the house.

Then I had time to think. There's a point to all this. There's always a point.

God brought me to this place, where I have friends but no roots, no frames of reference, and withdrew all my crutches. Lean on me, He said. You have no one else.

But He gave me three tools.

He gave me written directions.

Not a map, so not sufficient for a complete picture, but enough to set me on my way.

And He gave me light to see them by.
I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. --John 8:12.

And He gave me His voice in my ear, His prompting to fill in the blanks.
Whether you turn to the right or turn to the left, you will hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way. Walk in it."--Isaiah 30:21.

And I made it home. And after coming in the door, and dropping on my bed with a sigh, I finally got the message.

Far more confusing sometimes than the road to Snoqualmie and North Bend is life's road. My widowhood has left me a seeming orphan, lost and searching for a hand to guide me to the right path, but God doesn't do that. He hasn't left me groping. He gave me the tools. His Word, His Son, and His voice. If I use them, I will always make it home. 

Deadheading

When I brought you home, the apples still lay in bud and you were all crowned in bloom, a mat of color and life—purple and white and yellow so dense, I couldn’t see their bottom. You spoke bright summer over me then, fragrant and fertile, an easy, intimate beauty.

When I looked today, while apples, fully ripe, lay browning beneath the trees, half your blooms had withered and turned brown, shriveled without permission, exposing leaf and stem. I pulled off the withered flowers, the brown and dead, and there, just underneath, lay new buds, tight and closed. Sparser than the first, but firm. Small, but reaching for light.

I cleared the way for them, recalling the beauty of their forbears, putting to rest what was spent letting life have its way. Making room for promise.