The God Who is not Superman

It's that moment when you're falling....the bottom's dropped out and your fingers try to grab onto anything close, but every ledge, every fire escape, rushes by too fast. The street below gets bigger and bigger. Any minute, you're going to hit bottom.

And then it happens....

You feel strong hands under your shoulders and behind your knees, the ground stops rushing up and you're swept instead into midair...safe at last.

Who else could it be? Superman.

Oh, I do like that moment....the feeling of rescue. The fear as it drains away and you wrap grateful arms around his neck. 

What is is about that guy, anyway? I'm pretty sure it's not the cape. It's not the muscles or that cute curl in the middle of his forehead. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know why the Man of Steel appeals so much, at least to me.


It's that in giving in to Superman, I'm admitting a secret vulnerability.
I mean really.
When was the last time any of us had to be rescued from anything? 
In general, we are capable, intelligent, and self-sufficient.  I don't fall off buildings. Bad guys don't chase me. No one needs to rescue me. Not really.

And a good thing too. Because Superman isn't real. I know that. *shrug*

But here's the rub. 
Sometimes I still feel like I need rescue. 

Everybody seems to be calling my name at once. The washer breaks on the same day as it snows 15 inches. Three of our children all get the flu at the same time and we don't have insurance. Somebody hits the only car we own. Somebody we love betrays. Somebody we love dies. 

I'm not falling off a bridge, but it sure feels like it. Superman may be fiction, but my feelings are real. I'm hanging alone at the end of my rope. I've done everything I know to do and I'm still going down for the third time. No man, super or not, is coming to help.
There's only one thing to do--and I cry out:

Rescue me, Oh Lord, 
Make haste to help me...
Free me from the snare they have set for me... 
Come quickly and answer me. 
Do not turn away from me or I will die...
Psalm 40, 31,143

And He does. God rescues.
Not like Superman. Not with cape and tights. But like God. 
The God Who is not Superman. 

And there's a big difference.

This is what God's rescue looks like:
When I prove my holiness among you, I will gather you from all foreign lands; and I will pour clean water upon you and cleanse you from your impurities, and I will give you a new spirit, says the Lord. --Ezekiel 36:23-26

He just doesn't fold us into His arms, carry us to safety, and then fly off to the next crisis.
God completes the job. He makes us holy.
He doesn't pat us on the head and let us straighten our skirt and go our way. He cleans us from the inside out.
He doesn't give us a pert little salute. He gives us a new spirit.

He has to and, better yet, He wants to.
Like Moses who had to take off his shoes before he could approach God in the burning bush, like the Israelites who had to believe God before they could enter the promised land, we have to be prepared. God's rescue isn't a one-step process.
He wants to reclaim all of us, inside and out, and that takes time.

That's real rescue. 
God plucks us out of danger by showing us our sin and guiding us to the firm ground of repentence.
God takes us to high ground by gifting us with faith and hope.
God puts out his hand, helping us stand every day in growing the fruit of His Spirit--kindness, meekness, self-control, and all the rest.

And, when He is done, He brings and keeps us near, made new in confidence in Him, leaning on His shoulder, depending on the only sure rescue there ever was and ever will be.
And there it is, the fear draining away as you wrap grateful arms around His neck...
Do not be afraid. I have ransomed you. I have called you by name. You are Mine.--Isaiah 43:1

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Who Are We, Anyway?

Someone sent me a mask for Christmas. It came from Italy, almost halfway around the world, and I keep looking at it. It wasn't until this morning that I started to understand why.

It started out on New Years Eve, and a talk about the lives we'd built for ourselves over these 50 or 60 years, and not our dissatisfaction with them, but our downright confusion. We've become, in great parts, what we've set out to be--capable, thoughtful, faithful in measures more than we'd ever expected--but now, well, now it all seems a bit silly and out of place.

Oh, we still mess up (and I did, spectacularly, later that same night) but that's not the problem.
We recognize our instances of falling short with ease. It's the instances of success that make us pause. Our successes haven't taken us where we know we have to go. In fact, they seem to take us farther from it.

That's where the mask comes in.
The mask reminds me that we are still trying to figure out who we were meant to be.
 You'd think that, by now, we'd have gotten farther in this basic truth, but well, we haven't. And this is why--

After spending our whole lives learning and building, it seems like our business now is to dismantle it--to take apart the entire construct we've worked so hard on, looking for that essence, that kernel of what's really important.

The mask doesn't represent something that's fake--it's the layers of our life. 

credit: www.miraclefruitusa.com

It's the good things we've made day by day that, suddenly, we don't need any more. In fact, they've become hindrances. It's the taking charge, the steadfast patterns, the suddenly useless knowledge that's beginning to weigh us down rather than propel us through our days.

It's God saying, 'I've shown you what I can make of you, but I'm not done yet. Now I'm going to show you what I've put in you.'

He warned us about this, you know.
I will put my Spirit in you...--Ezekiel 36:27 

Somebody asked me on New Years Eve for one wise saying to share to take us into 2016 and I, clumsy and self-conscious, said that God wants to show us that He is in us. What I should have done is gotten out the mask, because that's the whole point.

God has made us wonderful, but what we've had to do to build our lives has covered it up. 

credit:holdinholden.com

Now, it's time to strip all that away. Now, He wants to help us uncover the kernel He's deposited, that Spirit He's incomprehensively given and nurtured. He's asking us to take off the outer shell we no longer need, to pare down to the simple, unguarded core.

It's taken Him all our lives to teach us to trust Him. 
Now, He wants to show us who we really are in Him.

So they asked him, "What are you? Are you Elijah?" And he said, "No, I am not." "Are you the prophet?" He answered, "No." So they said to him, "Who are you so that we can give an answer to those who sent us? What do you have to say for yourself?"  He said, "I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, 'Make straight the way of the Lord.'"--John 1