Chasing Bubbles

Today was a wild day at the beach.  The wind was howling and  I was able to walk along the sandy expanse of the ocean floor exposed by the retreating tide.  The sun was still low in the sky and cast a shimmering glow over everything.  The water was choppy and the waves rough as they pounded the beach with foamy repetition.  The bubbly foam pushed up and down the beach by the waves.  As the waves retreated bits of foam and some bubbles were stranded on the wet strand.  These were blown sideways across the beach. 

As I enjoyed the wild expanse and watched the oncoming rush of clouds my dog, Oreo, ran wild.  We had the beach to ourselves and she ran here and there snapping at the wind and rushing at the waves.  But today her favorite game was chasing bubbles.  As she ran along, she would catch the movement of a bubble running across the top of the wet sand and would immediately change directions and attempt to grab the bubble.  As she pounced on or closed her jaws over the bubble, it would immediately burst and disappear.  She would pause for just a moment as if puzzled.  Then another bubble would catch her eye and she was off again.

As I watched this I began to wonder how much of our lives we spend chasing bubbles.  How many times does something catch our eye and we are off in a flash to get it?  We chase down our quarry and just as we close our fists on the object of our desire we find that it is not as substantial as we imagined.  We lay hold of it only to find that it does not deliver what we anticipated.  But, rather than learn the lesson we are almost immediately distracted by another opportunity, another thing that we can pursue.  Surely this one will be different!  Surely this time it will be the thing that makes us happy, eases our pain, gives us enduring pleasure, or fills our soul!  But again we find that it fails to satisfy.  Rather than stopping to wonder about the futility of the game, we frenetic pursue the empty spheres. 

We find that all around us others play the same game with subtle variations.  We have different preferences in our pursuits.  The bubbles we chase may be slightly different in size or color, but our perpetual idolatry is continually encouraged by our hungry flesh, the world around us, and the enemy of our souls.  God calls us to something different.  He calls us to walk with Him.  He calls us to rest in Him, to trust in Him.  He calls us to engage with Him.  He will fill our souls and leave us strangely longing for more at the same time.  He will give us substantial pleasures to enjoy as we walk with Him.  He is a wild and free Father and loves to give good gifts to His children.  Real gifts that we can sink our teeth into, the most important of which is God Himself.

Where do I get my magic sword?

A battle of epic proportions is raging around us.  A life or death struggle.  People have left their families behind, have suffered privation as they dedicate themselves to the fight. Every day people are paying the ultimate price in the struggle for victory against an ancient foe, laying down their very lives.  We listen for the orders from our commanders to plug this hole in the line, free those prisoners, or to take that distant hill.  We throw ourselves into the fight.  Some are the commandos dropped in behind enemy lines.  Some are the infantry slogging it out in the trenches.  Some are the stretcher bearers and healers.  Some provide air support or strategic planning.  But, all of us have a role in the battle.

My role these days is mostly air support or, more clearly, prayer support.  I believe that God has called me to devote myself to intercession.  It is difficult for me to watch the battle raging and to see the enemy taking shots at our people.  I once was down in the trenches and I miss the gritty day to day fighting.  These days I fight differently, in the quietness of my secret place of prayer.  Even so, I am filled with emotions: anger, distress, sadness, and rage as I see the enemy of our souls fighting against my compatriots.  I see his lies.  I see the way he tricks us into friendly fire, or ambushes us with the sins that so easily entangle.  I wish that I could grab him by the throat and throttle him.  I find the intangible nature of this warfare terribly frustrating.

In the stories, when a huge and nefarious beast appears on the battlefield, the hero reaches for his magic sword, strides forward into battle and slays the hell spawned creature.  I desperately wish that the spiritual battle was that easily won.  I want my magic sword.  I want to destroy the schemes of the enemy, to free the prisoners, to heal the sick, to raise the dead.  I want to see the banner of the Lord lifted high over the battlefield and to hear the righteous battle throng sing the victory hymn to Our Father, Our King.  Paul says that we do not fight as the world fights, but that we have been given divine weapons that demolish strongholds.  The problem is that I don't know how to wield these divine weapons.  I believe that I am learning, but oh how I want to learn more quickly and to wield the weapons more effectively!  I need the King, the Captain of the Host to train my hands for battle!

What to do

I find myself wondering what to do.  I have been burdened, terribly burdened lately.  Most of the burdens I have been bearing are not my own, but those of people that I love.  As a minister, I am involved in the lives of people, and most people, myself included, are broken.  Most of us are not tremendously broken, we manage to go on day to day just fine, we're just a little cracked.  But a few situations lately have led me into the valley of suffering with some friends.  They have been mourning and I have been mourning with them.  I also have tremendous opportunities to rejoice with those who rejoice, but recently there has been more mourning.

But lately I have been bearing another burden, a burden with not one name but with many names.  A burden about organizational sin rather than individual sin.  I have seen a creeping evil, an insidious foe arise.  It looks good, it feels familiar, and yet it is wrong.  I struggle how to name the it...institutionalism, deception, selfish ambition, quenching the spirit?  I'm not sure exactly how to name it, but it is clear as day when you see it.   It is like eating horse meat.  It looks pretty similar to beef.  I can't really describe the difference between beef and horse, but you know the difference when it's in front of you.  It is so similar, but it looks a little different, it smells a little different, it tastes a little different.

So here is my dillema...what do I do about what I see.  I have asked God to do something about it.  I asked Him to have others speak up.  They have...but it continues.  I asked Him to expose it, to let others see it.  They have...but it continues.  I asked Him to put a stop to it.  He did not...and so it continues.  Now I am wondering what I am supposed to do.  I know I am supposed to pray, and I am doing that.  I am wondering if I am to do something else, something more active.  Is there not a time to stand up and do something?  Is this such a time for me?  Would it matter if I did?  It's not that I have much to lose, but I don't see much point in investing myself in this fight if it won't do any good.  It is so draining to invest so much energy in intercession, only to see the cogs of soul numbing, God diminishing, machinery continue to chug along.  But how does the machine get stopped if no one stops it?  Is this my fight?

The more I pray about this, the more I feel like my role is more Moses than Joshua.  When the Israelites fought the Amalekites Joshua went into the valley while Moses went up on a hill overlooking the valley.  While Joshua unsheathed his sword and went into battle, Moses stood on the hill interceding for the armies of the Lord.  As much as I want to be down in the valley in the thick of the fight I feel like His call for me is stay up on the hill with my arms lifted in prayer.  So, here I stand, even as my arms grow tired. 

Emotions and prayer

In the last few months I have felt particularly burdened.  I am involved in the lives several people, and it seems that recently there has a been a lot of crisis lately.  I have found myself really heavy as I pray for my friends and for the situations.  At times, more often than I would like to admit, I have been moved to tears.  Not just the gentle tears rolling down my cheeks, but real weeping, wracked with sobs.  This is definitely not normal for me.

At first I was concerned, but as I have processed this and talked with good friends, I am beginning to wonder if I am not moving toward the heart of intercession.  My wife read me a quote that said something like, "real prayer starts when words stop."  In Romans 8, Paul tells us, "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express."  I am not sure that my weeping is exactly that, but I am starting to think that it is related.  I wonder if God is letting me feel a little of His heart for those I am praying for, or letting me bear some of their burdens.

There is a troubling aspect to this, because it seems to go against the peaceful feeling that prayer is "supposed" to produce.  I have often been encouraged to tone down my emotions, my passion.  I have been encouraged to be more like the meek and mild Christ, but now I am starting to reevaluate and to rediscover the emotional range available to us in scripture.  And let me tell you, when you start to read scripture with an eye for the emotions, there is a lot in there. 

The circles I run in seem to be concerned about your mental stability if you cry in church, or if you express anything beyond mild frustration at any time.  I wonder what they would make of Moses, Samuel, Elijah, David, Jeremiah, Hosea, or Paul, not to mention Jesus.  Jesus was sad.  Jesus wept.  Jesus was angry.   Jesus was so mad that he resorted to violence in the temple.  Yes, Jesus was also peaceful, joyful, and meek, but he experienced and expressed the whole range of emotions.  These were men following hard after God who also expressed a lot of emotion. 

I spent a lot of time praying through the Psalms today and I was amazed at the whole range of emotions contained and expressed as prayer.  It was wonderful to be able to pray the emotionally charged words of scripture back to God.  I just prayed my heart out today.  I am no longer going to try to censor my prayers to make sure that they fit into my, or anyone elses, preconceived notions of propriety.  Today I prayed with reckless abandon.  Interestingly enough, there was plenty of burden but no tears today.  Go figure.

Production and Patience

I find myself torn between two poles.  On the one hand I feel strongly that we are engaged in a battle and that we must be zealous and active in the fight.  On the other hand, I know that God is sovereign and is in control of all things. I was thinking and praying about this as I walked on the beach the morning.  I was feeling SO burdened by some specific situations.  I was moved by the immediacy of the problems and was interceding.  I was begging God to bare His arm and win the victory.  I was on the verge of despair that He could do anything, or would do anything, when I noticed the action of the waves.  The tide was going out, so the waves were not crashing, but instead gently rolling up and down between the rocks and over the sand.  I noticed that the rocks were well worn; some had taken on impossible shapes beneath the steady motion of the waves.  I saw the sand being pushed up and down the beach by the surf.  I saw small pebbles rolling around beneath the water, on their way to becoming sand themselves. It was then I was reminded of the inexorable coming of the Kingdom of God.

God is moving and His Kingdom is coming, but all in His own mysterious time and paradoxical ways.  I feel such an urgency an impatience for God to move!  I want His Kingdom to come and His will to be done NOW!  I don't think this is all bad, but I see that our sense of urgency and activity often leads us to make subtle choices that lead us away from dependence on God.  It seems that what we want is results, people saved, children fed, schools built, churches planted, families transformed, or cultures redeemed.  Being heirs to the industrial and information revolutions, we then set out to design and build systems that will efficiently and effectively produce the results that we need, that we believe God wants to see happen.

Unfortunately, our reliance on these systems and our efforts to perfect them often causes us to lose our way.  Ultimately our goal is not the production of particular results, good though they may be, but rather, as Jesus taught, God's Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.   The reign of God is massive!  It is much bigger and more complex than we can imagine.  We understand very little about the universe we live in, and even less about the God who created it all.  His Kingdom is mysterious and even paradoxical.  It has so many aspects, contains so many interactions, and has so many simultaneously moving parts!  It is organic and dynamic, it cannot be placed under a microscope and dissected to unlock the secrets.  When we attempt to do this, we reduce the movement of the Spirit to the distillation and application of principles.  We lose the life of the Spirit, but we gain the illusion of control and efficiency.

Oh, but we are an impatient people!  The movement of God sometimes takes much longer than we would expect.  The waves are an ineffecient way to shape stones and to make sand.  So, we devise machines.  We research, discover, and apply the laws of physics and harness what powers we can to accomplish our goals.  We are efficient and effective as we improve upon God's methods.  We never equal His grace and beauty, but no matter because we can do it faster.  Unfortunately, there is more to what God is doing with the waves than just making sand, more than we can possibly understand.

When we skip the process to achieve the end we end up missing both.  We can produce sand and gravel from stones, but that is only a small part of what God is doing; one small part of His grand design.  The marvelous interactions of all that is happening on the beach are part of an intricate dance that we can pick apart but never duplicate.  Behind it all is the hidden hand of God.  He calls us to enter in with Him and to take an active role, but also not to overestimate our own prowess or importance.  We are each like one wave on the beach.  We matter, we have a role, but it is all so much bigger than us.  So, we must take our part in the line of waves accomplishing the will of God by measures and asking Him to give us both the patience and the endurance to keep going.

Praying and cycling

I am starting to realize just how little I know about prayer.  It's not that I haven't read about prayer, or study the topic in the scriptures.  I admit that I have a lot left to learn cognitively about prayer, and even more left to understand.  But my need for knowledge goes beyond the cognitive.  What I am realizing is that I am only now beginning my journey in the area of prayer.

I feel like a man who years ago became interested in cycling.  I read books about the history of cycling.  I go to bike shops and talk to cyclists.  I read about the lives and experiences of great cyclists.  I even attend the odd cycling event from time to time.  But until very recently I never really got on to a bike, or at least never rode much.  I occasionally rode my bike down the street or around town, but never really trained, never devoted myself to it.  So, despite years of learning I am still a novice.

The real knowledge comes in the doing.  Years ago I had a mentor tell me that you learn about praying by praying.  I nodded sagely and asked him if he could recommend a book about that.  Recently I have redoubled my efforts at serious prayer.  I find that it is tremendously hard work.  It really is true that the learning is in the doing.  I devote myself to prayer and am left tired and drained, not unlike a novice bicycler who has not built up his stamina.  I am amazed at how exhausted I am after a time of intercession.  I feel like I have been carrying real physical burdens, a deep bone tiredness.  It is hard to push myself to continue to pray when I feel like I have "hit the wall".I have to remind myself that I have much to learn.  I want to keep learning and to find what is beyond the wall.