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)

(In)Famous Last Words

“I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

Infamous last words.  A line we’ve all said and nodded knowingly to as we watch others commit a suicide of the soul unaware.  We agree because on some level we believe that hope is reckless, that good sense would dictate that it should be avoided, that it is only hope that causes the emotional plummet when disappointed.  It’s one thing to have events not go your way; it’s another thing to carry an unfulfilled hope.  Better not to hope at all.

Disappointment is hard to bear because of its accompanying feelings of grief and shame and humiliation.  Disappointment accuses us of foolishness; of unfounded optimism when cold hard pragmatism would have been an emotional shield from failure.    Something didn’t happen which you were counting on.  Someone didn’t come through.  Sometimes it feels as if God didn’t come through.  He didn’t protect you. He didn’t give you what you wanted.  Somehow, disappointment always feels like a betrayal.

As such, hope is a thorny word.

It is only human nature--our fleshly wisdom--to protect ourselves from disappointment because we imagine that we will be able to limit the amount of pain we will experience when the floor drops out from below.  We cauterize our hearts against hope believing that we are protecting ourselves. If I don’t hope, I can’t be disappointed.  If I don’t hope, I can’t be hurt.  We think we’re being pragmatic; facing life head on without wishful thinking.  We think that we’re being realistic.  We think we’re showing the wisdom of our experience.

We’re actually being deceived. 

 “It ain’t what you don’t know that that gets you into trouble.  It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Mark Twain)

The attack on hope is nothing less than one of the devil’s schemes; tempting us into a kind of resignation that says things like, “Well, whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless.”  Don’t hope. Don’t believe.  Don't risk yourself that way.  And so, we abort our hopes like unborn children and then try to go on as though we carry no phantom pain.  

The resulting repercussions are many.  Resignation is only one step above despair.

 Hope deferred makes the heart sick but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12)

Putting off hope is deadly.  Heartsickness is an ailing at the core of an individual.  An illness of body, soul and spirit.   We cannot live without heart.  It might limp along for a while, but when it fails, there is no alternative.  Hope is the antidote to despair.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Faith is the evidence of our hope.  It is the proof.  Hope is the prerequisite for faith that is essential for pleasing God.

“Without faith it is impossible to please God; because anyone who comes to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.”  

The rest of the chapter goes on to mention by name and detail the feats of faith of almost every major figure from the Old Testament.  

“All these died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar.” (Hebrews 11:13)

And yet, what they did see and receive was worth recording in scripture. 

"...who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight, Women received back their dead by resurrection..." (Hebrews 11:33-35a)

But those miraculous answers from God paled in comparison to the promise of what was still to come.  There is a dangerous tendency as Christians to limit our expectations of God because we’re neurotically afraid we might get something wrong and then maybe God won’t come through and our faith will be shaken.   We don't want that for ourselves and we don't want it for others either. 

And so we neglect encouraging others to hope--whether it is for healing, or a spouse, or children or a career path or ministry--lest that particular thing isn’t ‘in God’s will’ and disappointment sours faith into bitterness.  Better not to hope at all: Lower your expectations just in case we find God inadequate. 

God must be sick of our incredibly low expectations of Him already. 

"And because of their unbelief, he couldn’t do any miracles among them..." (Mark 6:5a)

When Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus that their brother was sick to the point of death, they were already His friends.  They knew who He was. They knew what He could do.  They knew that He loved them and that He would care about Lazarus’ desperate need.  You can imagine their hopes as they sent urgent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one that you love is sick.”

Lord, please come and heal him.

You can imagine as they waited.  Counting the days and the hours that might pass before Jesus could be reasonably expected to arrive to heal their brother.  Hours painfully ticking by as Lazarus grew weaker as his immune system lost the battle.  Watching through the night, counting on the Healer to show up in the nick of time and save his friend.  You can also imagine the crushing weight of disappointment that fell upon Mary and Martha when Lazarus died and still there was no sign or word from Jesus.

Disappointment. Grief. Four days past hope.  Four days overdue.  Four days interred in the tomb before word reaches the sisters that Jesus is near and Martha runs the two miles to meet Him on the way.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

But here is the moment when true hope reveals itself and fans into flame even the faintest flicker of faith.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  But even now I know that whatever you ask for from God, God will give you.”

She’s asking for a bigger miracle than healing.  She’s asking for a miracle that quashes the expectations of the possible.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

And Martha has the same questions that we do.  Jesus tells her that her brother will rise again and she doesn’t know if that is hope for the spiritual future or hope for the temporal; hope for eternal life or for a resurrection right now.  

Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.”

She knows about future hope. It’s the present hope that feels the most uncertain; but in Jesus, they are one and the same.

Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me, shall never die.”

And then He asks the crucial question:  “Do you believe this?”

“Yes Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

The question of our present circumstances is answered in the identity of Jesus.

Even now, even four days in the grave. Is there something you can do?

It is hope that causes the pursuit. It is hope in who Jesus is that causes Martha to run two miles outside of Bethany to ask Jesus for a greater miracle. It is the same hope that caused the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years to push through the crowd and reach out in faith.  It is hope that caused the four friends to take up their invalid companion and carry him up onto a roof and take the building apart in order to get their need in front of the One who could do something about it.  

Then Mary comes to Jesus and her words are drenched in the same disappointment as her sister.

“Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”  

And here come the most famous tears of all time when Jesus looks on their grief and disappointment and fear and weeps Himself.  He goes to His friend’s tomb and commands the stone blocking the entrance removed.  And Martha--precious Martha--of the hope beyond the faintest of hopes, lays out the practical realities of the human problem of death to Jesus.

It’s been four days. There’s an odour.  There’s decomposition.  That’s life--or rather--that’s death.  And Jesus answers, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

Our hope is in who Jesus is; in that fact that He is God. That He loves us.  That He can do something about our present circumstances.  And, that He wants to.

And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (Romans 5:5 NLT)

Jesus didn’t answer their request to come and heal Lazarus. It would have been strange if Mary and Martha had stayed disappointed after Jesus called their brother out of his tomb.  If they had focused their attention on the fact that Jesus hadn’t answered their call to come and heal their brother.  If they had made cynical statements about how Jesus might heal some sick and blind people but not the ones closest to Him.

Jesus waited to answer until all natural hope was lost; waiting instead for something supernatural to emerge in Martha, evidence of her hope in who Jesus is.  “But even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

Even when Lazarus’ body is starting to return to dust.  Even when there is no reasonable hope, there is hope because Jesus is here.  Each and every difficulty and lack faced in life is and opportunity to hope. Not the baseless, worldly hope that crosses its fingers and wishes for everything to work out.  Real hope.  Hope based on who Jesus is: The Son of God.  The Christ.  The Resurrection and the Life.   The Word made flesh.  Our living Hope.

This hope in who Jesus is, is the helmet of salvation. It is a critical component of the whole armour of God by which we are able to withstand the schemes of the devil.  

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  Therefore take up the whole armour of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand firm.  Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17)

The helmet of salvation is the part of our defences that protects our minds.  Our hope in Christ’s ability and desire to save is what protects our thoughts and emotions.  It is our hope in Christ that allows us to raise up our shield of faith in order to extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.

Martha answered Jesus, “Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

And even now--right now--You save.

Hidden in the Open

(Previously published in the Sept/Oct issue of Live Magazine www.baptistwomen.com)

“We know what we are but not what we may be.”

(Hamlet, William Shakespeare)

Some time ago I found a wad of twenties I had hidden in a small aluminum tin decorated with cats. Over the course of a few years, I had tucked away the periodic bill into that unassuming receptacle; amassing a tidy sum which I eventually forgot all about.  The tin sat ignored on the shelf amid well worn paperbacks and ceramic cat figurines. I got so used to seeing it that I ceased to see it all, let alone the money it contained.  Years passed with my treasure hidden in--well, not quite jars of clay--but a small cream coloured tin adorned with dancing felines. It wasn’t until much later when I was cleaning out my bedroom and having a stone cold truth discussion with myself about my girlhood cat decor fixation (and perhaps how it might be hindering my future) that I noticed the tin once again and vaguely remembered something to do with both it and money.

“How could you forget about four hundred dollars in cash?” my friend asked incredulously when I told her of my nifty discovery.  

How, indeed?

The thing is, I never knew that I had four hundred dollars.  I just had a twenty dollar bill that I tucked away here and there whenever I had more than one. I was ignorant of the wealth I had at my disposal. 

The greatest danger of tragedy exists when we don’t know what we should know.  It is for this reason that we often miss laying hold of by faith the attributes of Christ available to us as children of God.  We forget what we know by faith and habitually choose to rely on our own abilities and wisdom instead; valuing and regarding as true the conclusions based on subjective experience over what God reveals in His Word.   We need to remember what we know.

Virtue is discovered in affliction and developed into a treasure hoard collected one small victory at a time. The transformation of faith--of trusting the truth of Scripture enough to obey it--is like saving one twenty dollar bill at a time.  Sometimes it seems like a lot to save, a hardship; while in other moments of abundance, it is almost inconsequential.   This is the humility of faith, that we surrender the right to our own wisdom and trust God instead. 

Sadly, I think I have spent much of my life with the mistaken belief that by taking God’s view of things, I would somehow be impoverishing myself. Nothing could be further from the truth.  It is only in God’s paradigm of faith that His child can be pressed and not crushed by circumstances that would destroy anyone else.  The world and the enemy will do everything in their power to deform and mutilate us into their likeness, but we are being conformed into the image of God’s own Son. We are more than conquerors through Christ.  Greater is He who is in us, than he who is in the world.

But here lies the most deceitful trap of all: it doesn’t feel that way.  When hard pressed on every side and suffering acutely, I feel like I’m drowning, not conquering.  Trusting God when the stakes are mountain high has often felt like wishful thinking and a fool’s hope not grounded in reality.  My feelings--particularly my feelings amid the storm--cannot be trusted for they are generally based on reactionary emotions, hunger, sleeplessness and fear. It is in those moments more than ever that I need to cling to what I know to be incontrovertible truth.  It is the Truth that makes us stronger than we are; braver than we are; better than we are.  It is the Truth alive in us by faith that overcomes the world.  

I had four hundred dollars at my disposal but I didn’t remember it.  We have riches available to us that allow us to conquer in life but we forget we tucked them away in plain sight; one battle at a time.  We are made in the image of God who is eternal and while our bodies will wear out, we were made to endure, to thrive, to be victorious.  It is not our identity to be crushed when pressed on all sides but to retain the shape of Christ; to spring back into the form and pattern of Jesus no matter what the world or the devil throws at us. 

Resilient.

An Embarrassment of Riches

(Previously published in the July/August issue of Live Magazine. www.baptistwomen.com )

(This is not my church.)

My church split painfully in two when I was in the fifth grade.  Between one Sunday and the next all the girls my age seemed to evaporate into memory with only their family portraits in the pictorial directory giving evidence of their former presence.  While God had preserved a remnant of peers--my cousins and another boy our age--I was suddenly bereft for female companionship at church.  Potlucks were ubiquitous in the post-split period as the remaining members of the congregation drew together for a sweetness of fellowship that can only be attributed to the presence of the Holy Spirit; a balm to the wound of fracturing.  But for my pre-teen self, many hours were spent wandering through the empty Sunday School rooms while the boys played floor hockey in the gym (hitting balls disturbingly hard to my way of thinking) and the adults talked downstairs.  I wanted to be a part of what people were doing, but the gym was echo-y and downright dangerous in my tights and patent leather shoes and the adults were talking, talking, talking about things that only made sense to me in retrospect.

I wanted a friend like a parched plant wants water.  One Sunday while I wandered through our now roomy building, I found myself sitting in the balcony of our hushed sanctuary and crying.  I prayed that God would send me a friend at church. If God had sent me a friend the following week, I doubt I would remember my prayer or His answer.  Countless Sundays passed without the arrival of any families with girls my age.  In a desperate ploy against my total isolation, I pushed myself to understand and participate in the adult conversations. I got to know my cousins better and grew comfortable in Sunday school, and then youth group as the only girl among the boys who were all like brothers.  I invited my school friends to come on Wednesday nights, but the seas of adolescence are tumultuous and none of those friendships survived the raging storm.  Like Anne Shirley, I longed for a kindred spirit. 

(But these are my friends.)

 Five years passed as I watched for God to answer my prayer for a sincere friend.  I expected He would send a girl my age, but God has repeatedly revealed that all my expectations are too small for the kind of answers that He delights to give. God made me wait for my friends so that I would undertake the challenge of conversing with adults and befriending those more mature than myself; so that I would learn to appreciate the boys as cheerful and forthright companions; valuing the community that God had placed me in rather than the one I thought I wanted.   Then, He began to send His answers.  Friends came from corners I did not expect. These women were not my peers, but grew to be my dearest friends.  If I hadn’t had to ask and wait and stretch myself, I probably wouldn’t have been able to appreciate them, indicating that I wasn’t ready for the friends God had for me. The waiting years weren’t meant to be idly passed as time arbitrary ticked away.  Like waves on a shore, God has been faithfully adding to my friends ever since.  My little church has become an embarrassment of riches to me.  Just when I think that God couldn’t have answered that old prayer more completely, He multiplies His answer again.  

One of our most profound hungers is for that of connection, but our human nature desires it through the easiest of pathways.  I wanted a friend partly to occupy and shield me from having to exert myself in groups in which I felt uncomfortable.  By delaying His answer a little while, God grew in me a love and appreciation for parts of the Body of Christ that I might have ignored otherwise.   Many Christians have forsaken church for a gallimaufry of reasons.  As a result, they wander as exiles looking for a utopian community that meets all their needs, not recognizing that perhaps God showed them the gaps so that they could pray and see Him answer above and beyond what they could think or imagine.