I woke up early this morning. As I lay there in bed trying to get back to sleep, I felt something. At first it was just a sort of vague curiosity. A sort of wondering feeling. It was so subtle that I only became aware of it as it begin to coalesce into a longing, a longing still quite vague. There was no distinct object of my longing, my desire. Then it morphed again from a longing to an invitation. That was when I began to awake to the source of the longing and the invitation. God was at it again.
I got up and headed downstairs with my journal and Bible in hand. I knew that I was hungry for God, that the hunger was from God. I knew that I wanted to meet with Him. As I opened my journal I saw that it had been many days since my last entry. I silently repented of my neglect of this, my most important relationship. It's not that I had not been praying, or even experiencing God in worship, contemplation, nature, or His children, but it had been weeks since I had taken the time to sit quietly with Him.
In that moment I realized that I was in danger of talking more about God than with Him. I was subtly sliding into a life about God but not with God. As I sat on the couch I was desperate for His presence. I sat quietly for a time and then began to write and pray. I wrote about my heart and shared with Him my thoughts and invited His input. I didn't feel anything except alone. The quietness of the sleeping house broken only by the ticking of the clock.
Gradually I began to be filled with memories and with gratitude. I remembered how far He had carried me. A growing wonder dawned on me as I realized anew the miracle of knowing Him. I tried to remember why the sins of my youth had seemed like a good idea. I praised Him for rescuing me and for healing the pain in my soul. I needlessly apologized yet again for spending so many years fleeing from Him, the Lover of my Soul.
Then I was filled by a desire to love. I felt a deep desire to be an agent of His love, for others to be healed, for others to experience the fullness of joy, the abundance of life, that I have found. I prayed for and wondered about those in my life. How could I love them better? How could I help them to find the blissful surrender to the Lover whose unrequited love for them never diminishes or fades. Then I was moved again to wonder and to praise at the fact of His presence in my life and the love that He has lavished on me.
As I closed my journal and reached for my Bible, I wondered where to read. I did not want to study the scriptures, I wanted to meet with my lover, the one who speaks through them. As the Book fell open on my lap my eyes fell upon Isaiah 35. From the first verse I knew that this too was a gift from my Lover, my Father, my Brother. He spoke to me through the passage about redemption and healing.
He met with me. He loves me still. He speaks to me still in the silence and in the scriptures. He awakens me. He woos me. He draws me to Him again and again.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Everyone wants to go to heaven...
The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel that endures the cross for the joy that is hidden on the other side. The cross precedes the resurrection. There is a death between old life and new life. I am reminded of a song by David Crowder, The chorus says, "Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. "How can we invite people to believe in a gospel that we don't believe in ourselves?
Every Christian I know wants the joy of the Lord, the fruit of the Spirit, the power of the resurrection in their lives. The irony is that as we long for these realities to manifest in our lives we do our best to avoid the pain, the suffering, the cross. The problem is that suffering is an unavoidable part of the journey. So, we veer off the path that would bring us to our desired destination. Death is interwoven with life and process of growth.
This was brought to my attention recently through my garden. I have never been a gardener. I mowed the lawn when I was a kid, but that's about as close as I have ever come to tending a garden. When we moved into our current house, we inherited a wonderful garden. It had been thoughtfully planted and arranged so that in every season there is something new blooming and sprouting throughout. It has been a wonder for me to observe, and a steep curve for me to learn how to care for it.
It is a very low maintenance garden, but still it requires some work from time to time. The most nerve wracking part for me is the transition between seasons. That is when the cutting happens. I am a far cry from a horticulturalist and have a hard time telling flowers and weeds apart. I can pick out the familiar ones but do get confused. Some of the weeds here actually have pretty flowers, and some of the flowering plants look suspiciously uninviting until they bloom. Then there is the real danger that I will kill a bush or plant when I am trying to help it. I might prune too much or too little and actually cause more harm then good.
We have now been here a year and I am please to see the results of the pruning that I did a year ago. It appears that I have only significantly damaged one bush, the rest of the garden is really healthy. Last summer when I was brutally hacking away at the garden I was pretty sure that I was doing irreparable damage, despite the guidance and advice of my expert gardening neighbors. When I finished with some of the bushes they were all knobs and bare branches. They continued to look ugly and bare for most of the year, but in the last month they exploded with life and are now full and beautiful. The new growth more covers for the old wounds and would never have happened without the cutting. The new blossoms push the cutting and death of the pruning to the distant recesses of my memory.
There was real cutting. There was real death. There were wounds and barrenness for a season. These painful realities where not only unavoidable, they were preferable. So it is with us. It is not by accident that scripture is full of agricultural metaphors. The life of the Spirit, in the Spirit, is organic. We must choose to enter into and endure the pruning, the suffering, the seasons of death in order to experience the joy that comes only on the other side. This requires an unnatural and patient faith. A faith that trusts the gardener and that looks beyond the season of ugliness, trusting that there is a purpose to the pruning and that beauty will follow brutality.
Every Christian I know wants the joy of the Lord, the fruit of the Spirit, the power of the resurrection in their lives. The irony is that as we long for these realities to manifest in our lives we do our best to avoid the pain, the suffering, the cross. The problem is that suffering is an unavoidable part of the journey. So, we veer off the path that would bring us to our desired destination. Death is interwoven with life and process of growth.
This was brought to my attention recently through my garden. I have never been a gardener. I mowed the lawn when I was a kid, but that's about as close as I have ever come to tending a garden. When we moved into our current house, we inherited a wonderful garden. It had been thoughtfully planted and arranged so that in every season there is something new blooming and sprouting throughout. It has been a wonder for me to observe, and a steep curve for me to learn how to care for it.
It is a very low maintenance garden, but still it requires some work from time to time. The most nerve wracking part for me is the transition between seasons. That is when the cutting happens. I am a far cry from a horticulturalist and have a hard time telling flowers and weeds apart. I can pick out the familiar ones but do get confused. Some of the weeds here actually have pretty flowers, and some of the flowering plants look suspiciously uninviting until they bloom. Then there is the real danger that I will kill a bush or plant when I am trying to help it. I might prune too much or too little and actually cause more harm then good.
We have now been here a year and I am please to see the results of the pruning that I did a year ago. It appears that I have only significantly damaged one bush, the rest of the garden is really healthy. Last summer when I was brutally hacking away at the garden I was pretty sure that I was doing irreparable damage, despite the guidance and advice of my expert gardening neighbors. When I finished with some of the bushes they were all knobs and bare branches. They continued to look ugly and bare for most of the year, but in the last month they exploded with life and are now full and beautiful. The new growth more covers for the old wounds and would never have happened without the cutting. The new blossoms push the cutting and death of the pruning to the distant recesses of my memory.
There was real cutting. There was real death. There were wounds and barrenness for a season. These painful realities where not only unavoidable, they were preferable. So it is with us. It is not by accident that scripture is full of agricultural metaphors. The life of the Spirit, in the Spirit, is organic. We must choose to enter into and endure the pruning, the suffering, the seasons of death in order to experience the joy that comes only on the other side. This requires an unnatural and patient faith. A faith that trusts the gardener and that looks beyond the season of ugliness, trusting that there is a purpose to the pruning and that beauty will follow brutality.
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