the smiling Christ
I am starting this morning's post with my reading this morning from "Reflections for Ragamuffins" (by Brennan Manning):
The smiling Christ heals and liberates. With newly discovered delight in ourselves, we go out to our brothers and sisters as we are, where they are, and minister the smiling Christ to them. Not far away from us, there is someone who is afraid and needs our courage; someone who is lonely and needs our presence. There is someone hurt needing our healing; unloved, needing our touching; old, needing to feel that we care; weak, needing the support of our shared weakness. One of the most healing words I ever spoke as a confessor was to an old priest with a drinking problem. "Just a few years ago," I said, "I was a hopeless alcoholic in the gutter of Fort Lauderdale." "You?" he cried. "O thank God!" When we bring a smile to the face of someone in pain, we have brought Christ to him.
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, Selah.
- Psalm 67:1
Yesterday morning I was taking my pneumonia-laden mom to run various errands. We ended up at a bank that I have never been to before. My mom was a little punchy from her medication, and so she was sort of giddy with the teller. The teller (Laquesha) didn't break a smile. She seemed annoyed and bothered to be there. I looked around her work station and saw various little saying and cards posted on the wall. I noticed one faded computer printout that read:
If God brought you to it, He will bring you through it.
In happy moments, praise Him.
In difficult moments, seek Him.
In quiet moments, worship Him.
In painful moments, seek Him.
In every moment, thank Him.
Ok, so it's a little oversimplistic. But sometimes, in an effort to be deep and profound, I think maybe I make things more complicated than they need to be. I told Laquesha I really liked that little writing. Instantly she smiled and said "thank you." I went on and told her how very true it is, and I thanked her for having it up there, because it was something that I really needed to be reminded of at that moment. I am sure she blushed. She seemed almost shy all of a sudden, as I asked her if she really believed what it said. She said that she did. I asked her if it would be ok for me to copy it down so I didn't forget it. She giggled and said sure. I grabbed a bank envelope and wrote down a rough copy, and we left. The Laquesha who had glared at us when we walked up to the window 8 minutes earlier was nowhere to be found ... instead there was a Laquesha who actually WAVED goodbye to us, and -- with a beautiful smile on her face -- told us to have a wonderful day.
Last night I did laundry and ended up washing that bank envelope. I discovered that as I was pulling clothes out of the dryer, and found several tiny shreds of paper. I tried to piece them together, but there were parts missing. Though I was able to recall the lines without too much difficulty, I did come across one part of that envelope that had a full line: "In every moment, thank Him." Interesting. Well, I was struck by those few moments in that bank, but they didn't really mean quite as much to me until today, when I read that devotional about how there are people all around us with needs to be met ... Somehow yesterday my life happened to cross with the life of a frowning young lady named Laquesha. And somehow God used me to bring a smile to her face. For moments like those, I thank Him ... and I pray that my life will be a fluid movement from one such moment to another.
I choose to love
I just got back from lunch. Lunch today = going to visit friends of mine at a rest home. I took my guitar and a light heart. Something is stirring up within me, and I can't identify what it is.
Today as I sat with this beautiful couple and watched them fight sleep, my heart HURT -- not because it was sad, but because it was bursting. I feel like God is bringing to life Matthew 9:17 in me. It's like my life is a wineskin, and He is giving me new sweet, satisfying wine ... so He will not use the old wineskin, because that would just be silly and it would leak out of the beat-up, cracked, weathered wineskin that I used to live in. Instead, he is giving me a totally new wineskin, and pouring that wonderful new wine into IT. Of course, it hurts a bit and I don't really want to give up my cherished, faithful old ways ... they are comfortable and I like them and I would like to keep them, thank you very much. But the funny thing is -- God's not giving me that option. Of course, He will not force the new on me ... He freely offers it ... but first I have to give up the old. Ouch.
But oh, what joy and refreshment I am finding already in this season. This morning as I prayed, I sensed a challenge to consider what my life is really about. Lately I have been focused on setting goals and on being disciplined. Good things, yes. Wonderful things. What better way to glorify God than to be the best steward possible of all the things with which He has blessed me?!?!? The only problem is that I have been focused on setting goalS. I determined today that I need to be setting secondary goals, but my primary goal -- the goal that overrides all that I do in my life ... that is to give myself to God with a VIOLENCE. Total and absolute surrender to Him.
At the end of the day, at the end of my life, what have I learned? I have no desire to be great in this world ... my heart's cry is to be great in eternity. I long to build my wealth in eternity, where it can't ever fade or dwindle. And the way to do that? The way to grow in the knowledge of God? It's in loving. I want my life to scream out love. I want my words and my actions and even my thoughts to be shouting out "I love you because God loves you." I saw that funky Christian movie "The Cross and the Switchblade" YEARS ago, and I will never forget that part where David Wilkerson tells the tough gang member guy, "you can cut me into a thousand pieces, and every piece will still say 'God loves you'". I want that to be true in my life. Can you imagine if Christians actually LIVED that way?????
I heard something recently that said that voluntary love is a violent reaction to our culture of lovelessness. I think there is so much truth in that! We cannot love passively. We cannot love neatly. It's not something we can manage easily, or keep from being messy. It's rarely ever safe, and quite often it hurts a whole lot. But there is no alternative. For all of us, death is a sure thing. We will all die, and we will all leave behind possessions, some more than others. None of that matters. What we do with our hearts, our responses, and our love ... those are the only things that matter.
The centrality of the Gospel message is about loving. It is about God loving us so much that He sent His Son to die for us. It is about us loving Him so much that we die to ourselves for Him. It is about us loving Him so much that we choose to serve our brothers and sisters and make them higher than ourselves. The greatest expression of love is servanthood -- it's what Christ modeled for us. If we want to really know God and to love Him, there is no place for floating along and dipping our toes in the water once in a while to see if the temperature is to our liking. We must dive in, and dive deep, and swim hard against the currents of this world. IT IS THE ONLY WAY.
The battle cry has sounded. What will you do now? You have read this and either you think I'm crazy or you think maybe I'm making some sense. Either way, what will you do about it? There are wars waging all around us. Each of us has a warring spirit, whether we recognize it or not. I choose to be violent and dangerous with my love. It is the purpose for which I was created.
who completes me?
Ok, so it seems like the pervasive theme of my posts for a little while is probably going to be about relationships. It seems to be a theme in my life right now -- I have friends who are struggling, I am going through some things too ...
I "stumbled across" this article this morning. I put that phrase in quotes because stumbling sounds so accidental, and I am convinced it was no accident that I found this article. Ok, so the intended audience is probably about 7 or 8 years younger than I am, but Gary Thomas is a great writer and this article is still worth the read.
Here it is. I wonder what other people think of it. I happen to think that he is right on target.
Thomas has a well-known book out there entitled
The Sacred Marriage. It caught my attention a while back, but I felt funny buying it (or even looking at it at a bookstore, or being in the "marriage" section in the first place) ... I felt like I was an impostor of sorts. But I am ordering this book. From what I've read so far, it seems also to be right on target. I wonder if there are people out there (specifically SINGLE men) who actually think this way. It seems like it's probably one of those things that's easier to realize once you're actually in the situation, kind of like a child who fights and fights going to bed, but once they actually crawl into the bed, they are grateful for its warmth and fall asleep immediately. Ok, maybe that's not the best analogy. Still, I have a feeling that a lot of people wouldn't think this way until they are already IN the marriage. Am I strange in that I think this way now?
Less of me talking, more of Thomas' thoughts ... from
The Sacred Marriage:
I found there was a tremendous amount of immaturity within me that my marriage directly confronted. The key was that I had to change my view of marriage. If the purpose of marriage was simply to enjoy an infatuation and make me "happy," then I'd have to get a "new" marriage every two or three years. But if I really wanted to see God transform me from the inside out, I'd need to concentrate on changing myself rather than on changing my spouse. In fact, you might even say, the more difficult my spouse proved to be, the more opportunity I'd have to grow. Just as physical exercise needs to be somewhat strenuous, so "relational exercise" may need to be a bit vigorous to truly stress-test the heart.
I didn't decide to focus on changing myself so that I could have a tension-free marriage or so that I'd be happier or even more content in my marriage. Instead, I adopted the attitude that marriage is one of many life situations that help me to draw my sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment from God. Lisa can't make me happy, not in an ultimate sense. Certainly we have some great times together, and she has been a wonderful wife, exceeding my dreams - but these great times are sprinkled with (and sometimes seem to get buried in) the demands, challenges, and expectations of paying the bills on time, disciplining children, earning a living, and keeping a house clean.
I guess what I'm after is a quieter fulfillment, a deeper sense of meaning, a fuller understanding of the purpose behind this intense, one-on-one, lifelong relationship. As a man who believes his primary meaning comes from his relationship with God, I want to explore how marriage can draw me closer to God.
There's another reason to stress this: Marriage, for all of us, is temporary in the light of eternity. The truth is, my and Lisa's relationship with God will outlive our marriage. Most likely the time will come when either Lisa or I precede the other into eternity. The remaining spouse will be left alone, no longer married - perhaps even eventually remarried to someone else.
For the Christian, marriage is a penultimate rather than an ultimate reality. Because of this, both of us can find even more meaning by pursuing God together and by recognizing that he is the one who alone can fill the spiritual ache in our souls. We can work at making our home life more pleasant and peaceable; we can explore ways to keep sex fresh and fun; we can make superficial changes that will preserve at least the appearance of respect and politeness. But what both of us crave more than anything else is to be intimately close to the God who made us. If that relationship is right, we won't make such severe demands on our marriage, asking each other, expecting each other, to compensate for spiritual emptiness.
Unfortunately, as a fallible human being I can't possibly appreciate Lisa the way God appreciates her. I can't even begin to understand her the way she longs to be understood. I'd get bored with myself if I was married to me, so it only makes sense that Lisa might occasionally be bored - or at least grow weary - of living with me. But God delights in both of us. God appreciates our quirks and understands our hearts' good intentions even when they might be masked by incredibly stupid behavior.
One thing is sure: Lisa can't look to me to be God for her. And even when I try to love her like only God can love her, I fail every time and on every count. I give it my best, but I fall short every day.
Sigh.
at first I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinkin' I could never live without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights
Thinkin' how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
I learned how to get along
Ok, admit it. At some point in your life, you have listened to that song. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It's the official "break-up song" or something like that. I don't buy it. Yesterday I spoke to a friend of mine who recently "broke up" (I hate relationshipese) with her boyfriend, and she was telling me that she had already listened to the song five times in a row (in the past couple hours), and she was starting to feel better, more empowered. That conversation was a good reminder to me of why I don't have too many female friends. I'm sure she wanted me to tell her that she WOULD survive, and that she would be fine, and that she was better without him. Well, I didn't say any of those things.
What I did say to her was that she needed to turn off the CD player and get outside in the sunshine. "I will
survive". What does that mean? According to Webster the word survive means to "remain alive or in existence" or to "continue to function or prosper". To exist or function -- wow what a thing to strive for. "I will exist". "I will function". How can you get out of bed in the morning with that mindset? How can you go to bed at night with that thought in your head? Why not STOP existing at that point? Isn't there more to life?
This is what I told my friend, and this is what I believe: we are called to do more than just survive, exist, function, remain alive, or even prosper. We are called to THRIVE, to CELEBRATE, to RUN INTO THE CRASHING WAVES WITH ALL OF OUR CLOTHES ON (or off, actually, if you're brave and/or in really good shape), to DRIVE WITH THE WINDOWS DOWN, even though we may have just spent 30 minutes doing our hair. We are called to overcome and to conquer, to jump out of bed in the morning ready to attack the world.
Sure, I go through difficult times and I get knocked down, but even in those I AM surviving already ... if I weren't, I wouldn't be able to go through those things in the first place. After I realize that I'm on the ground, it is then my chance to jump up and run even harder and push even further. God does not call us to be "survivors" -- He wants us to be "livers". He wants us to embrace this moment in its entirety, to breathe each breath as deeply as we can, to catch every last ounce of orange and red in the sunset, to slurp that chocolate (or in my case -- peanut butter banana ... yum!) milkshake even when the cup is empty ... He has created us and given us life so that we can enjoy the wonderment of it all, not to just drag ourselves out of bed, "put on a happy face", and take it "one day at a time".
Maybe I'm wrong, but I have this idea that the very reason for our being is to give God glory. How could He possibly be glorified (or even pleased) by us eking it through another day, barely making it through? What an insult that would be to the One who created us in HIS image.
What I long for for my friend, for myself, and for each of you reading this is MORE ... more than what we're told we should want, more than what we convince ourselve we should have ... I want what God says we should have -- life more abundant (or as Webster says: "marked by great plenty").
I conveniently neglected to mention to my friend that I do still own that CD myself. But I really can't tell you the last time I listened to it, or even thought about wanting to. I don't want to survive, I want to flourish ... thrive ... aspire ... LIVE.
