Inside looking Out

I remember unsteadily tip-toeing on the soft mattress of my bed; chin resting on the impossibly high window sill.  I peered through the green leaves of the rowan tree outside and heard the voices of neighbourhood children who hadn’t been called in yet. Their laughter and shouts punctuated the quiet of my room as the evening light lengthened. It seemed like I was being sent to bed in mid-afternoon.  It seemed like everyone else was out having fun but me.

Being single in the Church feels a little like that at times--like you’re on the outside looking in, or inside looking out, as the case may be--straining on your tiptoes to see what is happening for everyone else, before falling backward onto your pillow in isolated resignation to wonder at it all.  God seems like that immoveable parent who could set you free you, but doesn’t.  And, why doesn’t He?  That’s really the question.   Anyone who’s struggled with singleness has wondered, and we tend to wonder about it alone, because that’s the nature of situation.  Some people will grow frustrated with God’s apparently apathetic attitude regarding the passage of time and biological clocks and so forth; deciding to make their own disobedient plans.  These are sad stories overlain with bitterness at the apparent stinginess of God. God--who seems to lavish good things on the unworthy but withholds even the crumbs from me.

Here’s what I’ve learned walking this one road I always dreaded walking.  My faith needs testing because I don’t know where the chink in my armour resides.  The breach will come where the shield is weak.  It’s just that simple.  If you believe God is good and faithful and the source of all provisioning in every area save one--believe me--that is where the fight of faith will be fiercest.  That is where it is going to get bloody.  

Maybe it isn’t singleness. Maybe it is infertility, or feeling that God has laid something important on your life to do, but no matter how hard you try, every door seems not only closed, but quite possibly welded shut and disguised with the kind of enchantments used to hide the door to Moria.  You begin to think that God is a divine Joker--creating the desire for marriage or children or a particular path in you, and then laughing maniacally as you hopelessly try to dig yourself out of the well of desire.

The testing reveals--as these things always seem to do--that we don’t know God very well.  We don’t understand His heart or character or intentions toward us.  Why tell Abraham he would be the father of many nations if God wasn’t going to bring it to pass for a hundred years?  Wasn’t that just a recipe for disaster in which Abraham and Sarah began to think that maybe they had to come up with a way to bring about God’s purpose?  Wouldn’t it have been better if Abraham had just smothered the hope for children and legacy within himself until the angels brought the message about Isaac?  Clearly, though, that wasn’t what God had in mind.  He seems to think that there is something important in the longing of faith for answers that only He can give.

The fight of faith isn’t fought by smothering.  It is fought with a shield and a sword.  It is about strengthening the weak places.  It is about learning not to fear what you dread the most. It is about inviting the Holy Spirit to whisper over the weak place and shield you under His wings while the testing endures.  It is saying with only the slimmest of willingness, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

 Instead, we are like the disciples in the storm, waking Jesus in a panic.

“Lord, don’t you care that we are perishing?”

They didn’t know Jesus very well.  They didn’t know that the one who called forth the starry host by name was with them.  They didn’t experience the supernatural peace of Jesus’ presence because they were looking at the water rather than the one who formed each hydrogen and oxygen molecule and bound them together in their own micro-trinity.

True peace is far more bold than just an experience of tranquility.  It is the roof over your head and the fire in the hearth when a blizzard rages outside rattling the window panes with the wind’s uttered threats. Peace is the covering in the midst of the storm--not the abatement of the storm itself. Peace is the presence of God.  The storms--the bloody fights of faith--come and go.  Singleness. Marriage. Infertility. Conquer one to find that another one appears in due season.  But the presence of God is the Spirit of Peace that covers you while His grace transforms your fear of being alone, to one of going it alone without God.

(This article was originally published in the Nov/Dec 2016 issue of live Magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com)

Storming the Castle

I am not a hiker.  I don’t buy gear at places with words like “mountain” and “equipment” and “co-op” in the title; where they sell ice picks and grappling hooks like they are useful for something other than storming an enemy castle. I see the outdoorsy types shopping with certainty as they pick up their multi-tools and propane camp stoves and dehydrated food packs with confidence.  I see them and wonder how we live in the same city and have such vastly different expectations of the kind of day we might have. Some people expect mountains.  I expect a computer screen and a cup of coffee that is always going cold.  My childhood imagination is a little disappointed about this.  Grappling hooks seemed like an essential bit of gear in my earliest days, just as quicksand seemed like a more serious and ubiquitous problem than it has actually turned out to be.  Life as an adult is far more mundane. I don’t outfit myself for storming enemy strongholds and setting captives free.  I buy facial moisturizer.

Sometimes I get a glimpse how different my life would look if I took God at His word. 

Understanding flashes like white light on the crest of a wave that dazzles for a moment as water, light and perspective create a symmetry of brilliance; a divine ray of wisdom shining into the gloom of human understanding for a brief moment of beauty.  It disappears as the wave subsides, but the memory of the light is burned unforgettable onto my retinas.  One such revelation is that my childhood imaginations are closer to the truth than what my eyes can see.  There is a dragon.  There are enemy castles that need to be overthrown.   There are high walls to scale. There are many captives to set free.  

Not for nothing did the prophet Elisha pray for his servant who was overwhelmed at the size of the enemy forces arrayed against them, “Open his eyes, LORD, so that he may see,” (2 Kings 6:17)  Our battle is not against flesh and blood and it rages all the time. 

I do need a grappling hook after all.

Forgiveness is like a grappling hook.  It is the line we throw up into the dark that finds purchase and is strong enough to allow us to climb over the impossible divide of being sinned against.  It is a spiritual tool that we get from Jesus Himself, and we need to learn to throw it with accuracy.   Fortunately, (or, unfortunately) there are no shortage of opportunities.  We need to grow strong in the practice of scaling walls--we need to grow strong in forgiveness because this is our God-given tool to get behind the enemy’s walls and collapse his kingdom from within. God has given us these orders.  He has also equipped us for the task.  He commands us to forgive, and gives us His grace to accomplish it.   

“Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk,’?” (Matt. 9:5)

Forgiveness is a spiritual exchange and a testimony of hope that broken things: relationships, hearts, even bodies can be made whole--stronger, unconquerable through the grace of Jesus Christ working within us that which we could never manufacture on our own. 

Un-forgiveness is nothing less than rebellion and idolatry; giving precedence to our own emotions and opinions over the command of God.  We are the covert soldiers of Christ in an evil land. We cannot afford to hesitate and nurse our grievances.  We can’t climb the walls if we don’t use the equipment that God made for us.  And so here’s the inescapable fact--the dazzling flash of understanding that illuminates and blinds as the waves of circumstance crest into a parabola of conviction--forgiveness is an easy throw when you realize how much you need to be forgiven. This is the good news.  We forgive because we know how desperately wicked and in need of forgiveness we are.  We forgive because we’ve known the paralyzation of sin and longed for the healing of forgiveness.  We have seen the collapsing of the enemy’s stronghold around our own lives when the Son of God scaled the fortress of the kingdom of darkness and urged us to get up and walk.

(This article was originally published in the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of live Magazine.)

Spiritual Profiteering

“An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.”  (G.K Chesterton)

Rhett Butler, that rakish charmer in Margaret Mitchell’s, Gone With the Wind, claimed that there was just as much money to be made in the tearing down of a civilization as there was in the building up of one.  The problem, he explained to the disinterested Scarlett, was that “... most fools won’t see it and take advantage of the situation.”   It strikes me that Rhett is speaking a wider truth than a basic lesson in war profiteering.  Our downfall is not in what happens to us, but in our inability to discern the truth about the difficulties in which we find ourselves.

We want to be like Christ, but we expect that the process of change will be slow and gradual--glacial pace--with minimal discomfort.  We like Jesus as the One who adds to our lives, but we’re a little nervous about the One who ominously said He came to bring a sword.  We know that we will profit spiritually as the Holy Spirit builds us up--but we’re less adept at taking advantage of the destruction of our misconceptions about God.  When something terrible happens --or, something wonderful is denied--we tend to think the source of our pain is that God has somehow let us down, or that we have disappointed Him.  But this is a false dichotomy that regards God only in terms of reward or punishment. In destroying our faulty understanding, He has expertly ripped out a foundation built on sand because He knows it won’t hold up for long.  The thing about foundations--even faulty ones--is that they still usually require a pretty big force to demolish and then dig them out.

“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. (Hosea 6:1)

The process by which anything is transformed is painful.  The trials, temptations and disappointments that God leads us through so that He can remove the workings of the flesh and correct the misunderstandings we have about Him, often feel like hell on earth.  The tendency is to focus on how we feel about those circumstances rather than to look for what else might be hidden in them.  

Joseph’s continual obedience sent him on a downward spiral of betrayal, slavery, temptation, false accusation, prison and being forgotten. If he prayed that God would get him out of his terrible circumstances, each time God answered, it was to send him into a more difficult one.  But the purpose wasn’t in freeing Joseph from slavery, or getting him out of prison.  The purpose was transformation.  Not only had God developed the character traits that Joseph would need in his future position; but theologians have also regarded him as a Christ-like figure in the Old Testament, meaning that God was already conforming people into the pattern of His Son before Jesus took on flesh.  

“I’m going to come out of this war a rich man--because I was far-sighted.” (Gone with the Wind)

I have wrongly considered the problems that I have faced. I have looked at an adventure and seen a trial. I have seen repetitive inconvenience instead of an intricate spiritual obstacle course that was honing my abilities; teaching me to leap over walls, scale the heights, keep my balance and persevere longer than I thought possible. I have complained, been irritated and despaired, rather than watching and asking the Holy Spirit to reveal what He was doing.  

 “So I advise you to buy gold from me--gold that has been purified by fire.  Then you will be rich…” (Rev. 3:18a) 

The choice is always before us.  Whether we will make ourselves rich in the character of Christ through the hardships that will come--regardless of our choices or actions-- or choose the bitterness of long regret, instead.   It is in the refining heat of the furnace that gold is purified.  Spiritual change never happens with greater speed or depth than it does during the most difficult experiences of our lives; when our most personal fires are raging in the chrysalis of our souls and all we can see is a smoldering wreck of circumstances.  It is imperative that we begin to regard trials shrewdly; --as opportunities to be personally enriched--rather than just periods of time to be endured.  For it is possible, even as Christians, to survive the wreck and never gain anything; to come out of the war a spiritual pauper rather than a rich man.  But we are called to something better. We are the spiritual profiteers who reap beauty for ashes;  praise in place of despair, honour instead of shame; life over death.

(This article was originally published in the Mar/Apr 2017 issue of live Magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com)

Greater than Fiction

 All my best characters come to me fully formed. They are whole beings with attributes and histories and paradigms for understanding their (albeit) fictional worlds. Sometimes, as an author of fiction, I try to be responsible and follow the conventional wisdom of plotting out my story out ahead of time; drawing up outlines, character sketches and so forth. While this process is helpful in getting my mind to run along creative avenues, the details I painstakingly work out rarely end up in the finished manuscript. Why? Because true personality defies planning. Truth is more creative than fiction. 

The drawback of operating off of pure inspiration, however, is that my characters rarely do what I tell them to do. They often surprise me with their words and choices; travelling their character arcs at their own paces.  However, when I want my daily word count to climb faster, sometimes I’ll put words in their mouths and hustle my plot along by authorial fiat. But when I do, I find that all inspiration--all naturalness--disappears and what was once a vibrant character with all the mysterious affectations of a true personality suddenly grows lifeless as a puppet in my hands whose mouth I am moving with my own fingers. 

It is only as I have observed this trend in my own writing that I realize that I have done the same thing to God. Sometimes I put words in His mouth. I anticipate His thoughts and answers; His reasons and so forth.  And when I do, God is not God but rather a limp puppet in my hands. A crude idol of my own making who can only say words that I come up with; who has nothing to offer that I cannot offer myself; and has no profound wisdom greater than the thoughts in my own head. 

Truth defies manipulation and God is not a marionette who dances to anyone’s tune.  But humanity is always coming up with jingles for God to get into the rhythm of--agendas for what we think the proper actions of ‘God’ must be; for explaining away the uncomfortable and mysterious stuff about who He is, or what He has said in His Word that sometimes we just flat out dislike. We have trouble allowing God to be who He is; instead of who we might like Him to be. We become like the child who invites a grown-up to play with her and then proceeds to tell him exactly how he will play, what words he will say and when and where he will say them. But no one wants to be the place holder for someone else’s opinions.

If I’m honest, I think I give God my opinions because sometimes I’m content with the shallow end of the spiritual pool. I don’t really understand what it means to experience His presence because on some level I know that there in the light of Truth all things will be exposed. C.S Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, “It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.” Maybe I don’t long for God’s presence because I fear revelation.

So, instead I try to work for God. Like the speed cleaning that happens ten minutes before company arrives; I rush around in fevered activity so that I can hold my head up when scrutinizing eyes are on me. But even this is a dangerous conceit. It is the presumption of knowing what God Almighty is thinking, as well as agreeing with a pernicious lie in direct conflict with His Word which repeatedly affirms that there is no condemnation for those in Christ.

The great irony of it all is this: if I were enjoying God’s presence, I might actually get to know His character well enough to know when He’s being slandered. I might find that the only thing I can safely presume about Him is that He is always exponentially greater than all of my presumptions.  I might find that the condemnation I fear is nothing more than an impotent fiction.

(I think this article was published in the May/June issue of live Magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com)