I Wouldn’t Answer Me Either

“He does me double wrong that wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.”

 

-William Shakespeare, Richard II,  (Act III, Scene II)

I think that sometimes I flatter God more than I worship Him. 

This has been a disconcerting revelation to say the least, because truly, I want to worship God as He deserves. I want to offer guileless praise without being hamstrung by self-consciousness or rendered somnolent and mute by cold heartedness. And surely, there are times that I do,—but far too often I approach God as my benefactor, or as the just adjudicator of circumstance rather than as my intimate beloved for whom I am wholly His and He is mine. It’s wrong and I know it; and I keep trying to find my way out of this mixed-up view of God. 

I will linger with a sunset until the last flash gold dissolves into purple beyond the horizon without then describing the sunset to itself and requesting that it send some work my way. I’ll draw near to the intricate unfolding petals of a flower without complimenting it for its ecstatic colours and then asking it for direction. No, in such moments I just behold the beauty for as long as I can and marvel at the God who thought up such fanciful things and gave me the ability to revel in their glory. 

Yet day after day, my prayers are more reminiscent of giving God a shortlist of my unchanging problems than they are of sitting in His presence and beholding His majesty just for the awe and wonder that such a seat affords. Instead, I feel frustrated and powerless to change any thing at all. My Benefactor isn’t cutting the cheque that will make me feel like I have a harvest in the earth. My just and righteous Judge has other files on His desk of greater importance. Prayer feels like I’m leaving a voicemail that no one wants to listen to. I know it isn’t supposed to be this way and vaguely I know the remedy has something to do with true worship, so I’ll throw in a few compliments to Almighty God hoping to soften the whole heavens-are-like-brass feeling.

Geez, when I put it like that, I wouldn’t answer me either.

Entering his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise isn’t a say-the-password scenario. The more I ponder it, the more I discover that I keep learning the same lessons over again—deeper and deeper—like drilling downwards to the core of the matter but always circling the same territory. This new life in the Kingdom of God isn’t about having correct theology or doing the right things. It is about intimacy. It is about knowing Him and being known. I don’t just want to know who God is to all Creation; or who He is to His enemies;—I want to know who He is with His beloved. The Biblical ideal for sexual intimacy is the verb “to know”. Adam knew Eve and she conceived. Not to make our relationship with God weird or anything, but the notion of an exclusive and enthralling romance that conceives new life is the picture that we’re given. Don’t blame me, blame Song of Songs.

The moment I veer wildly off-track, however, is the moment that the circumstance or problem takes preeminence over my intimacy with God;—when I vacate our dynamic of “I am my beloved’s and he is mine”. In that instant, I begin to worship my problems; mesmerized by all their complexities; lingering in their attendant anxieties. I go on and on about them with purple prose and then flatter the Lord with a few niceties and wonder why He seems so far away and disinterested. It never even occurs to me that I may have wounded Him with my inconstancy.

Intimacy is never about procurement; even of good, altruistic things that would be of benefit to others. Feigning intimacy in order to obtain something from another person is seduction. Seduction always involves deceit about the intentions of the heart. But my Beloved isn’t after feigned intimacy. He isn’t going to enable me to play the part of a spiritual gold digger, no matter how good the things that I am after are. He wants to be loved as I want to be loved. Genuinely. Unreservedly. He longs to reveal the hidden things of His personality to the one who sees His beauty and delights in Him. He’s wants an intimacy that conceives and brings forth new life. He’s just waiting for me to want it too.

A version of this article was published in the Sept/Oct edition of live magazine. Check them out here.

The Meaning in the Stone

“There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.”               

       Marie Antoinette (attributed)

This spring when my hometown was still digging itself out from under a blanket of snow, I visited some friends in Europe. Germany was already bursting out with nature’s first gold—that nearly neon green of new life budding on every branch—; a place where the weight of history is felt and seen everywhere. Castles built in the twelfth century loom over the switchbacking turns in the Rhine. Cities with cobbled streets and historic architecture retrofitted to the needs of the present bustle with the lives of its people. The new and the old; the present and the past mingled together everywhere. It’s impossible to wander through a park without encountering a moss covered monument to what has gone before. Some good events, some certainly bad—many of which I didn’t recognize or understand. 

“When your children ask their fathers in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you had passed over, so that all the people of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.’” (Joshua 4:21b-24)

Perhaps one of the most powerful and perplexing abilities of the human mind is our penchant to forget. In purely material terms, we process inordinate amounts of information constantly. Paying attention, for example, to the height of a step just long enough to walk without tripping, yet forgetting almost immediately the small sign of warning about the existence of a step once our need for that information has passed. If we had fallen down and bruised a knee or twisted an ankle; we would certainly remember. We remember pain in order to avoid more of it in the future. And yet, we forget the information that prevented a potential injury in the first place. We deliberately forget; moving on to our next moment; often only remembering what has hurt us, and not what has saved us. We are contradictory creatures, ruminating on that of which we ought to let go, and abandoning what we ought not to forget. And, knowing our failing, we erect memorials for the future in order to remember the past.

Yet time weathers stone and monuments get hidden in lichen as new generations of life erode the words that would remind us what the stones mean. Always of twin purposes—a warning and a reminder. Don’t forget what you knew at this moment. Don’t forget God’s miraculous provision. Don’t forget what He spoke. Don’t forget what was revealed here. Take it with you. Witness it for a generation yet to come.

Even without monuments of stone, we each have our little ways of remembering. We write lists. We set reminders. We keep mementos as witnesses. Souvenirs—to remember. We write down events and thoughts and prayers in journals; or at least, I do. Filling notebooks with the good and the bad, the warnings and the signs, the desperate needs and the miraculous provisions. I’ll write it all down and then abandon it in a box in a closet; forgetting what I need to remember as I move on to the next moment. What good is a memorial if I forget what it showed me? What good is any of it, if I don’t take it with me? 

It is a choice for forgetfulness to dismiss the miraculous signs and denigrate God’s wonders as close calls and lucky coincidences. Why should only our bruises be honoured with remembrance while the acts of God are treated as so commonplace so as to be unworthy of recall? Questions worth asking, whether I can bear the answers or not. What have I etched in the stone of my remembrance? What do I speak when I’m not trying to be good? What do I write when I’m writing for me? Do I record God’s voice speaking to me; His miraculous provision or even our inside jokes? Or, is it only my complaining sighs as I count up my scars? 

“How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have done among them?” (Numbers 14:11)

Undoubtedly, the most powerful monument is the story that I repeat to myself. The perspective from my past that informs what I believe for the future—especially about God and others and myself. And so, I’ve gone back; examined old notebooks and journals;—not so much for my own words, but rather looking for His. Tilting the pages this way and that for the holographic appearance of Jesus to be revealed in the midst of circumstances that were clouded with pain. He’s there. I just have to remember. 

This article was originally published in the May/June 2023 issue of live magazine. Check them out at baptistwomen.com