The Heart of the Matter

This week the famous owner of the New York Yankees baseball team George Steinbrenner died.  Listening to people talk about him on sports radio was an interesting phenomena.  People couldn’t figure out how to characterize him.  They argued over his legacy.  For some he was a magnificent owner who brought the New York Yankees to enduring prominence.  For some he was a ruthless tyrant.  Some spoke of his accomplishments, but others focused on the means by which he brought about those accomplishments.

About Steinbrenner everybody had a different point of view.  I am sure that the man was dynamic and complex, but listening to these divergent opinions describing him as both deliverer and demon – they couldn’t all be right?  He was iconic in that everyone knew of him.  Everyone had heard a story that seemed to reveal either his competence or his treachery.  All the things said of him could not be co-equally true.  His celebrity gave rise to everyone having a suppositional opinion, but you wonder how few actually spoke to the truth of his character.

I think the world has the same issue with God.  He is referenced in almost every venue of daily life.  People speak of God with respect to the majesty of the mountains or the perfection of a newborn child.  Some thank God for their food.  Some acknowledge their desperate need of God in every area of their lives.
At other times people curse him in the face of natural disasters.  They question God’s sense of justice in the face of violent crime.  Some say the belief in him is the root of all wars.

Some see him as an evil task master.
Some see him as an absentee landlord.
Nietzsche declared him dead.
The delusional stand on street corners claiming to be God.

Everybody has a portion of conjecture about the character of God.

Our American lexicon now has a phrase that exemplifies this phenomena.   In many circles the deity is now referenced with the words, “God, however you see him”.   It is as if how we chose to see him defines who he is, rather than the truth of who he is being revealed to us.

The largess of God, combined with the limitations and inadequacies of the human mind have left God or the concept of God to be the repository of all of our hopes, our dreams, our insecurities, our terror and our fears.  Somewhere on this earth most every adjective and every invective, in every language has been used to describe the person and the character of God.

Having no concept of size or fear of ever meeting him, we have treated God as a community Christmas tree.  To which, every passer-by is invited to hang upon him the ornament of their own choosing.  Eventually the man-made adornments simply hang from one another both gaudy and gauche.  The majestic obscured by the mistaken, the malicious and the mundane.

The ever blind, but never mute, point to the ridiculousness of this convoluted and contradictory mess that man has made and declare that there is no God.  It has always been this way.  We mocked the idea that God would humble himself, come in the form of a man and allow himself to be beaten, spit on and abused.

Mark 15:29-32
29 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So!  You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days,
30 come down from the cross and save yourself!”
31 In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself!
32 Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”

For a time, God allows his character to be maligned.   We are allowed to pile on all of our misconceptions and fears.  We hang upon him our insecurities, our arrogance and our greed.  We have made such a travesty of beauty that we look for it everywhere but its source.

No truth can be found by adding to, or attempting to rearrange this repository of bad doctrine and cast aspersions.  You cannot reveal the original beauty of an image-marred by slathering on another layer of make-up.

We must look for the truth of God as a child opens a present on Christmas morning.  Tearing at the trifle of wrapping paper, bows and slick packaging.  Casting everything aside to reveal the gift.  Just as some children prefer to play with the wrapping paper and the box, so many of us placate ourselves with the trappings of half-lives or dead religion that few continue on to find the prize.

Each of us must look at the artifice we have used to assuage our guilt and fears, and begin to peel back the layers in search of the truth of the heart of God.  Why somehow does it seem easier to attempt to change God, than to allow ourselves to stand naked before him as he is found?  I fear it a greater reflection of our frailty than his.

We jettison the declaration of 1 John 4:8  that “God is love” as trivial, because he is also described by others as so may things that we fear.  If our hearts do not fail and we find the courage to peel back the layers will we find a tyrant or the highest concept of love?

Animation

All my life I have loved animation.  Several years ago, we visiting Walt Disney Studios and took the tour where you saw animators rough out sketch drawing of individual scenes, stop action slices of life.  Then there was the next process where people cleaned up the lines and made the drawing more distinct and then someone else added vivid color and detail.  Eventually all of these individual pieces were put into motion through the process of animation, into the cartoons and stories that were the joy of my early childhood.  

I have marveled at and I have been moved by their creations and yet all too rarely have I stopped to marvel at the one who has animated me.  I have been captivated by moving pictures that emulate life, but rarely have I been moved by the Artist who knit me in my mother’s womb.  Rarely have I sought to experience the One who breathed life into my soul, who moves the earth within the solar system or the tides along the shore.                     

C.S. Lewis wrote:  “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

God is the life giving animating force of the Universe.

We have built Him statues, temples, churches and cathedrals, but too often it seems that we have built these walls as an attempt to hold Him captive.  To define what is sacred space, to define the limits of our God.  In our efforts to understand God, we have had to belittle Him.  We somehow seem content to relegate God to the impotent role of a celestial butler.  A mythical servant who has no greater self-expression than to see to it that we get a pay raise, a new car or a good parking space at the mall.  We have labored to make God useful in the most pedestrian sense.  We have brought Him down to our intellect, reduced Him to the servant of our petty wants and desires and thus we are no longer captivated by the Animator of the Universe.

Acts 17:24-25
24      “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
25      And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

Is There a Rhyme or a Reason?

I just got a news flash:  The world is messed up!  Seriously!  We see it every day, we live it every day, our lives are messed up, our relationships are messed up, our homes are messed up, and so we escape to messed up jobs.  We give too much attention to our messed up bosses, because at least they pay us and it is easier to feel competent there then when we come back home to our messed up spouses and our messed up kids.  Then everything is even more messed up because we messed up again.  It is just MESSED UP!

We do not like to admit it, because it seems like a sign of weakness, but if somebody could just tell us what to do – we would like to believe that we would do it.  Even when we swell up and say that no one can speak into our lives, the truth is that we just haven’t found anyone trustworthy to speak into our lives.

Out of utter frustration every once in a while we jump on some horse and ride for awhile.  We go to self-help seminars; we go to doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists.  We have made anyone willing to say that they have it all figured out into instant millionaires.  We have flocked to Tony Robbins, John Gray, Stephen Covey, Oprah and Deepak Chopra. 

Sometimes we go to the church house, but guess what:  the church is messed up.  Some say one thing, some say another.  We have over 20,000 denominations and most of those are currently in a split.  In some churches, God is a capricious stern task master who only sings hymns from the 1700’s.  In others, God is just a “sing and shout” out of body experience.  For some churches, God is a cosmic ATM.  In some churches, God is just whoever you say he is, it is kind of “ala carte”. 

We have all but given up on hearing truth.  Today, people pick churches based upon who has the best youth group or music: tired or trendy.  Some come because you can wear shorts and some because it is important to dress up.  Most folks have just given up, seeing the church as irrelevant to the rhythm of life.

The mantra for today is: “you have your truth and I have mine!”

What about SCRIPTURE?   I would say that I put myself subject to the truth of scripture.  In principle, I see the bible as authoritative.  I have made the choice that the Bible is more authoritative than just what I think or feel.  Of course, this same bible is found in almost every “Christian” church.  Some of churches would say that our teaching is a quick trip to Hell.  To some, I would return the favor or at least say that they lead you away from God.

Not only are we capable of interpreting the bible wrong, but there is a snake in the grass.  There are forces working against us.  Satan teaches Bible class too!  Let’s be honest, Satan is a more effective preacher than I am. 

When Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the in the Garden of Eden, he didn’t do it with Black Masses and occult symbols.  Satan misinterpreted God’s own words them, convincing them that God was not looking out for their good.   Satan convinced the Israelites that if God wasn’t doing what they wanted him to, just sacrifice to a new god.  If it doesn’t feel like God is coming down from the mountain, create a golden calf and worship it.  In the New Testament, Satan tempted Jesus by misinterpreting scripture.  He convinced the Pharisees that God was just about keeping the Law.  Don’t do what it says don’t do, and then you have it slicked.  They misinterpreted the scriptures so badly that they didn’t recognize God when he showed up.  They judged him a blasphemer.  In fact they quoted scripture to put Jesus to death.

I am telling you it is MESSED UP!

We have always tried to make sense of this life.  Every society has tried to explain why deep down inside we know that life is not as it should be, that there is something bigger, something greater going on and we are out of step with it.

Every non-nihilistic view of philosophy declares that there is something that is true.  There is a rhythm to the Universe.  Although some say that it is too ambiguous or obscure, there underlies a concept that there is meaning and purpose to the Universe.  We believe that there is a right rhythm, a right way of things, if we could only get in tune with it.   

  One of the prevailing views of Eastern philosophy is the idea of the Tao.  “Tao” literally translations: ‘way’, ‘path’, or ‘route’, but it is thought of more loosely as a ‘doctrine’ or ‘principle’.  It is used philosophically to signify the fundamental or true nature of the world.  The Tao is thought to both precede and encompass all that is the Universe.  It is often referred to as “the nameless”, because it is a principle that cannot be expressed in words.

In Western Philosophy, Heraclitus around 500 BC put forth the idea that there was both a “source and a fundamental order to the Universe”.

Zeno of Citium who began Stoic philosophy in around 300 BC referenced the concept of an “active reason” that pervades the Universe and animates it. 

The Greek philosophers thought of this concept as “an impersonal force at the center of the Universe”.  This impersonal force had no-physical form and was perfect.  Although it was the source of the order of things being non-physical and perfect it was seen as the opposite of the physical life.  This concept was often categorized as “divine expression”.

Around 20 AD, a Jewish philosopher steeped in Greek culture named Philo of Alexandria began to talk about what he referred to as “the creative principle”.  This Jewish philosopher built on Plato’s concept of imperfect matter and the perfect idea.  He said that the perfect idea and imperfect matter can not come into contact with each other, and it requires “the creative principle” to span the gap, to find a way for the two to function.  He sometimes referred to this as “divine wisdom”.

Each of these Western Philosophers, Heraclitus in 500 BC, Zeno of Citium in 300 BC, and Philo of Alexandria, in 20 AD referred to this “source and fundamental order of the Universe”, this “active reason that both pervades and animates the Universe”, “this perfect and impersonal force at the center of the Universe”, this overriding “creative principle”, what the Greeks saw as “divine expression” and what the Jews saw as “divine wisdom” – They all referred to these concepts by using the same Greek word – the “LOGOS”.

To the Greek mind the LOGOS, was this perfect, impersonal, non-physical force at the center of everything.  It created, animated and gave order to the Universe.  It was the rhythm of things that could not be known.  It was “divine expression”.  The root word embodies the concept of oration.  Aristotle referred to it as what is “rightly spoken”.  It is where we get the word “logic”.

To the Jewish mind LOGOS was the “divine wisdom”:  The “creative principle” that emanated from the God who spoke the Universe into existence.  To the Jew, the LOGOS, the all-powerful and active spoken word of God that created Heaven/Earth was something to be reverenced with both awe and fear.

In our English Bible the Greek word “LOGOS” is translated in various ways: “word”, “saying”, “intent”, etc.  But more than just the word, it is exactly this Greek/Jewish concept of LOGOS that the Apostle John is referring to when he wrote these words in John 1:1-14:
1        In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word (logos) was with God, and the Word (logos) was God.
2        He was with God in the beginning.
3        Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4        In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
5        The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
6        There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.
7        He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.
8        He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9        The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
10      He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
11      He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
12      Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God–
13      children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14      The Word (logos) became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John’s words are an obvious reference to Jesus Christ, but he is telling us so much more here.  (Just for the record, so you won’t think that I am making this up, some Chinese bibles translate these verses, and the “Tao became flesh and made his dwelling among us”.)  Derived from the same root word, Gordon Clark actually translated this verse, and “the Logic became flesh”.

How would the first readers of John have reacted to such a claim?  To the Jew, the LOGOS was something categorically different from humanity; in fact an encounter with the LOGOS would mean certain death.  To the Greek, the LOGOS was the impersonal force behind the curtain.  It was the real answer, what gives logic – logic, the “source and fundamental order of the Universe”.

This would have been absolutely subversive to both cultures.   Greek thought paralleled the thought of Eastern culture.  The “Tao” could not by definition be understood, the “order of the Universe” was impersonal and unknowable.  The bible says that “the nameless” has a name – Jesus Christ.

It is subversive to the doctrine of some Christians.  In some theological circles, the idea that the Christ is the LOGOS is reduced to the rather simplistic idea that our bible as canonized is the Christ.  That Jesus is the word, and the Word is Jesus.  It is not a totally crazy idea, as in, God is truth and the word is truth, but John is not saying that God is these actual written words on a page. 

John is saying that there has always been a source, an order to the Universe; there has been an active reasoning that preceded the Universe, created the Universe and animates the Universe.  The mind of God, the divine expression – this LOGOS became flesh and dwelt among us.

There are two important theological points, Jesus Christ always was.  Christ was before creation, in fact, this passage makes clear that the Creation was made through Christ.  But secondly and probably more important for us application wise:  Christ is the embodiment of the mind of God.

Jesus Christ is the divine expression.  Jesus is divine wisdom.  John says there was always the mind of God:  the absolute power, the absolute justice, the absolute perfect, the absolute purity, the absolute holiness, the absolute righteousness.  The logic behind the Universe was embodied in Christ Jesus!

What both Eastern and Western philosophers thought of as the divine logic, the unknowable rhythm of the universe came down to walk it out on earth.

The logic, the heart, the rhythm, the reason, the meaning behind it all became flesh and walked among us.  Jesus is the embodiment of both the rhythm of nature and the purposes of God!  They are not separate!

What does that mean to us?  It speaks to the mess of my life.  It is not that there is a rhythm to the Universe that I cannot know, but rather there is a rhythm to the Universe that I can get in tune with and his name is Jesus Christ.  If I can’t figure out all of the fine points of doctrine, I can start with the life of Christ.  And quite frankly any doctrine that doesn’t line up with the life of Christ, I can jettison, because it is not in rhythm with the mind of God.

Colossians 2:2-4
2        My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ,
3        in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
4        I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.

Colossians 1:15
15      He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

          John says we gain understanding of the Father through the revelation of his Son:

I John 5:20
20      We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.  And we are in him who is true– even in his Son Jesus Christ.  He is the true God and eternal life.

Hebrews 1:3
3        The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.  After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

Jesus is the LOGOS, the source, the animating fundamental order of the Universe.  We can be in rhythm with the order of the Universe by being in relationship with Christ.

By trying to be able to speak comprehensibly about God, in our conversations we have stripped Him of his majesty, of his mystery – of the vastness of the One-True-Living-God.  We have made the Trinity into cartoon characters.  Someone we might choose, or choose not, to meet on the street.

We have lost the wonder of recognizing that God is the creative reason, the source and animation behind all that we would hold dear.  He is the LOGOS, the rhythm of the Universe and he was made flesh.  He drew near to us, that we might be able to draw near to Him.

A Bitter Bride

 

            I feel like I am in a fight with a friend.  I love her.  I do.  I’d do anything for her, but she keeps engaging in self-destructive behavior.  It is not even who she is.  I’ve seen her in better times.  I have seen glimpses of who she could be, but it is like she doesn’t want anybody to see who she really is.  She lashes out at people.  She plays hide-n-go-seek; lurching out like a wounded animal just to poke at people with sharp sticks.

She acts self-confident, but it all has the smell of fear.  She won’t listen to the wooing of her fiancée who loves her.  She says she wants to be more like Him, but grappling in her own strength, the two show little resemblance.  For a couple of years people walked around with wrist bands that said, “What Would Jesus Do?  I always wanted to get some really big ones made and drape them around churches.  The church is supposed to be conforming to the image of Christ, but it often seems to be conforming to the image of the Pharisees that Christ called a “broad of vipers”.   The church is supposed to be found in Christ, not having a goodness of its own, but a goodness that comes through faith in Christ. (Philippians 3:9)  The church was never meant to display its righteousness, but the righteousness, the grace, of the God who would forgive people such as us.

The qualifications for church are our acknowledgement that we are a mess and in need of a savior, not that having it all together we no longer need a savior.  Knowing who we are in Christ should foster barefaced honesty.  How can we look down our noses at our neighbor suffering from the same heartsickness that we have, lacking only the cure? 

What if we revealed something of the true face of Christ to each other?  What if we looked out (and in) at a world devastated by our choices and chose to lay our lives down?  What if our response to a sinful world was to lower ourselves, drop our pride and humiliate ourselves to do nothing other than reveal the love of the Father?  What if we come clean that we are naked, battered and broken, knowing that it is Christ alone who will clothe us in His goodness?

I love the church.  Not the edifice or the artifice, but the promise.  Set on the backdrop of the beauty of God’s creation, this world is still an untrustworthy place.  In moments of self-protection I can hurt those I love.  In need, others can hurt me.  Both leave me longing.  Longing for people, friends who have dropped the pretense.  Those who will laugh and cry without fear of how they look.  People who will enter into each other’s lives and reveal another taste of grace, another glimpse of the Father’s heart.

           “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.  Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.  Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God.  On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” (2 Corinthians 3:18-4:2, NIV)

Un Uncommon Community

     The concept of community is simple in theory.  The word “community” comes from the Latin communis, meaning “common, public, shared by all or many.”  Our churches are communities.  We purport to have a shared belief system.  Each church community also has a culture that is the byproduct of their “shared belief”.  However, all too often our church cultures do not reflect our stated beliefs, but instead seem to suggest that we actually hold other things of higher value. 

     We often castigate the smokers (as if the Bible taught on the subject) and elevate the greedy and the gluttonous to the positions of deacons and pastors.  We believe that the phrase “cleanliness is next to Godliness” is actually in the Bible.  We trivialize sin as only what offends us.  We rail against the “caught” and applaud those still hiding.

     We should remember that Jesus defined “sin” as a condition of the heart rather than an act of the hands.  This clarified that it is impossible for anyone to be more “worthy” than another and soon the Pharisees began plotting to kill Him. 

     What should be our Christian church culture?  What should be the culture of a group of people who hold in common the teachings of Christ?   Gratitude and grace!  We should recognize the value of other’s journey to faith.  We should uphold the weak, lift up the fallen and quit thinking that the actions of others could ever be an embarrassment to us compared to the condition of our own hearts.

     Our commonality is our fallenness and our need of a Savior!  Among believers, our commonality should be our gratitude for having been rescued.  Our culture should be reflective of those souls just pulled into the lifeboats, still drenched, who reach out with an open hand to those still lost at sea.  Our petty vanities and smug self-righteousness make a mockery of the cross.

     When we fear the reality of who we are we must hide.  When we realize that we have been accepted, we can actually be present in our relationships:  physically, emotionally and spiritually.  It is one thing to act fake and be liked.  It is a wholly more beautiful thing to be fully known, fully loved and fully accepted. 

     When we genuinely have faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary, we gain a new and residing hope.  This hope is in Jesus Christ alone for the salvation of our souls.  We no longer have to vainly attempt to hoard up for ourselves tepid substitutes for a life apart from God.  We can walk in confidence that God holds us and will never let us go.  We can “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)

     Based upon our faith and our hope, we should be free to love others in a radical new way.  We should be free to love others as God loves – with mercy and with grace.  The culture of our churches should reflect the reality of our faith and the truth of our commonality.  Our communities of believers, our churches, should be the safest places on earth to walk into, expect to be valued and have grace extended.  May we never withhold love from those that Jesus died to save.  Thankfully, modern day Pharisees can still call Jesus “a friend of sinners” like me.

The Passionate Life

Why do sports cars have brakes?  My dream car would be a 1965-1967 Shelby Cobra!  What I like about the Cobra is the purity of design.  When you look at a Cobra there is no mistaking what it was built for – speed!  Every element of its design was engineered to make it go fast.  Its throaty exhaust makes no excuses and the whole car begs you to take a risk.  For the lucky few who have gotten to drive one, it is a passionate driving experience.  I think that we were built that way.  I think that we were designed for passion.  I think that we were designed to be passionate people!

            When we’re young we try out a myriad of passions.  A lot of these passions return us pain.  Terrified that we won’t live through this time of exploration our parents, our church and other authorities in our lives might have tried to temper our passions.  Eventually, weary of bloodying our noses on bad ideas, we begin to modify our view of life.  Too often we make a terrible mistake.  We assume that the problem lies with our passion and we begin to deaden a part of us that seems inevitably to lead to pain.  But we loose something of ourselves in the process.

            In the film Braveheart, William Wallace makes the declaration, “Every man dies, but not every man really lives!”  What is it to really live?  What is it to get everything that we were meant to get out of life?  What is it to leave nothing on the table, to be “all in”?  Sometimes afraid that others can’t handle the passionate person that we secretly suspect that we are, we deaden our passion and search for addictions or distraction to buffer us from the blandness and banality of our existence.   What if we were meant to be passionate?  What if there are noble passions worthy of the whole of our lives?

            I have met a lot of men who would die for their families.  To be honest, it is a lot smaller number of men who are willing to live for them.  God doesn’t call us to experience less of life, but to a fullness of life.  Not to deaden passion, but to expand our passion.  To expand those noble passions God places within us that resonate, that have substance, significance and that are worthy of capturing our hearts.  The “rat race” is by definition unable to be won, but what if we found the courage to bust out of the maze and chart a new course for our lives and for our families.

            There is nothing about the life of Christ that should call us to be any less than the highest expression of who God made us to be.  There is nothing about a relationship with a risen Savior that should lead us to stay in the grave.  The Giver of Life calls us to live, to really live, and begs us to take a risk!

My Week, but He is Strong

I haven’t blogged much lately.  Two weeks ago I was out of town on a retreat and was away from my computer for a week.  It is not a terrible thing.  I had to survive on only a cell phone.  Next time I might leave it at home.

I came back to a busy week last week.  I would say that, “It was one of those kinds of weeks….”, but lately I’ve had so few of that kind of week that the phrase just doesn’t seem to fit.  It was a holy-wholly unusual kind of week.  My daughter needed her father.  My oldest son spent time with his dad.  My younger son and his wife gave us our first grandchild.  I looked into my wife’s eyes as she looked into the eyes of her newborn granddaughter.  It seemed so right and yet so unreal, because to me she is still that girl I first met on a beach in a red bikini (she not me).

If that wasn’t enough (and it was), God was just beginning to show off.  On Friday, Life Family Church closed on its new facility at 2271 Matlock Rd. in Mansfield, Texas.  For our little church, it is a miracle of epic proportions.  Built in 2004, the building has been vacant almost ever since.  As I walk through the dusty rooms, my mind’s eye hears children laughing, friend’s embracing, spiritual songs being sung, God praised and lives lifted.  I hear His children laughing.

I like to think that I am a complicated man, but I am not.  Yearning is not complicated.  It is possibly the most basic expression of life that there is.  I often walk with my head down, but my heart yearns.  I yearn for redemption.  I yearn for restoration.  I yearn for restoration in my relationships.  I yearn for God.  Because I know myself, I often walk with my head down; but because my heart knows God, I long to see Him move.

Last week, even through the fog of my personal battles with distrust and disbelief – I saw Him move.  I know what it is to say like King David that, “He is the lifter of my head”.  Humbly, my vision adjusted, I will take another step.

Maybe your pastor does not speak this way.  I pray that is because he is a stronger and not a weaker man than I.  I don’t tell you that God is real and that God is good because I am strong; but because He is strong.

What is Worth Knowing?

We are in what many call the “information age”.  The contents of entire libraries are at our fingertips.  University search engines provide every doctoral research paper instantaneously.  Second graders and seniors citizens alike Google each fleeting thought.  Television evangelist, both religious and political vie for our votes, our money and our minds.  Raw data is everywhere.  We have been deluged with input and stimuli, but rarely is contemplation encouraged.

Information is not just conveyed, it is spun.  The art of persuasion has given way to the tactic of spin.  It is now deemed learned to be able to make every statement as a propositional declaration to which dissent is a sure sign of a feeble mind.  Even what passes for dissent requires an insincere wink.  Thoughtful positions don’t make good sound bits and we seem to have the intellectual curiosity of gnats.  Public discourse has taken on the a Machiavellian nature.  Lies, overstatements and slight-of-hand have all become acceptable tools to cut through the milieu in order to sway the contemptible masses.

What if we were to attempt to preserve or restore our collective sanity?  What is worthy of the promise of human thought and creativity?  If we took just a moment to reflect and (dare we say) expand our vision, what is it that we might consider considering?  In the great narrative of our lives, what is worthy of our mental, intellectual, emotional and spiritual pursuit?

It would have to be something of a more affective capacity than the momentary news cycle, political season, fad or nouveau theology.  If we were going to stop and think about something for longer than the time it takes to delete the daily spam; if we are going to allow ourselves to feel something more residing than the last wave of nausea we experienced as we added up our monthly bills; then, it should be something of real significance.  It should transcend the moment and yet be relevant to it. 

It should be the kind of thing that stretches out for a ways in front of us.  It should matter.  It should be deeply relevant regardless of who controls the White House or the media outlets.  It should be the kind of thing with which philosopher struggle.  It should be the kind of thing that Jesus would ponder. 

Maybe a starting place is Ephesians 5:10, “and find out what pleases the Lord”.  Don’t dismiss me yet!  I am not talking about rules best suited for “gotcha” soundbites.  I am talking about the mystery found in the depths of relationship.  Finding out what pleases a God who came down from Heaven and laid His life down for the express purpose of being able to restore relationship.  The God who suffered the cross, specifically so that He would no longer count people’s sins against them. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

If He would suffer death on a cross in order to not play “soundbite gotcha”, what pleases Him?  If He fulfilled the law and paid the sacrifice, so that it would not be held against you – so that you could be reconciled to God – what now pleases Him?  We are called to walk in the Light of that knowledge.  Think about it…

God Makes A Way

Walking with God requires a dependence that I chaff against.  I know that spiritually I am dependant upon God, theologically I know that, intellectually I know that, but emotionally I always sense a breeze fluttering through my skirt that makes me nervous.  Just as Christ was sacrificed naked on a cross, for me to pick up my cross and follow Him has a feeling of nakedness.

To be clothed in His righteousness, my fig leaves have to fall away.  I have to trust in His covering and His provision.  I have to use the whole of the gifts and abilities that He has given me, but I have to set aside my determining will.  I seek certainty and find the need for faith.

But there is a reason that we call Him the Creator.  His creative power is matchless.  Although I often set my jaw against the prevailing wind.  He breathes new life. 

As I see how well worn this trial I am following is, I begin to have a new sense of anticipation.  He didn’t ask my permission, but God is doing something.  Just about the time I counted Him out and once again began to take things into my own hands, His guiding hand passes me on the path.  Once again I have underestimated the Creator of the Universe.  Once again He smiles and calls me to Him.

In Search of a Q-Beam

Psalms 119:105
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”

The illumenation of an Old Testament lamp is not what I am looking for.   I want a Q-Beam!  A “lamp to my feet” only allows me to see one step at a time.  Given the speed of light, I can run as fast as my feet will take me, but I can only see ahead one step at a time. 

I want a Q-Beam so that I can be a bigger part of the decision making process or to be the decision making process.  Let me see what is behind Door #1 and Door #2, and then I’ll pick.  But God seems more impressed with his purposes than my self-protective strategies.  That leaves me having to be dependant upon God.  I must run in the light, but toward a mystery.

It leaves me with only one “candle power”.

John 8:12
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”