A Story Unfinished, A Lesson Learned

“As a father of 3 daughters, I have experienced my fair share of fairy tales.  Whether it be watching the video (again), pretending to be any or all the characters, or mixing and matching storylines to suit the fancy of the Head Princess (that would be Grace, age 4 1/2), I’d say I am fairly fluent in the language of Fairyland.

I see and appreciate the morals of the stories.  Beauty, goodness, and bravery are commended above evil, wickedness, and selfishness.  In the end, good triumphs and evil is overcome.  Princesses find true love from princes.  And everyone lives happily ever after.

But it was something my wife did recently that brought it all into focus for me.  My fairy tale DNA providing the context for the following illustration.

Amy, my wife, was holding our youngest, Abby, who was semi-interested in holding an apple slice (primarily because her sisters were holding apple slices and she didn’t want to be left out).  Now, an 8-month old baby’s ability to maintain an effective grasp of an object they ARE interested in is unrefined to say the least (unless hair is involved for some reason).”

……and that is all that remains of what sounds like a really good story.  I wrote those words seven months ago, but can’t even recall why I didn’t finish the thought (to be honest I can’t even remember the thought itself or the incident that served as its genesis).

Now, as I run through my memory in a futile attempt to piece together the “Mystery of the Missing Story” (as Gracie would call it), I’m struck graciously by a second lesson.  Regret.

I’ve got some news for you (and me).  Last night as we slept, the world kept turning and time kept ticking.  Those hours aren’t coming back.  Life is dynamic.  It moves with ZERO regard for our preferences.  You can’t go back.  You can’t fast forward.  You can’t pause it.  But you can participate in it.  You can be present in the experience.  You can minimize the regret of neglect.

What I mean is this.  Writing, to me, is the greatest experience of joy outside of my family and faith.  It’s my answer to the question of what I would do if I could do anything.  Seven months ago, something happened in my everyday life that triggered the process in me of taking an experience and joyfully transforming it into a gospel-expressing gift that I could share with the world around me.  And now its gone.  Left unfinished.  That thing which thrills me most was interrupted, neglected, and forgotten.

God has hard-wired us each for certain joys.  Pause for a moment and just consider that sentence.  Your life and experience is not random, but designed, and your innermost make-up is built to run on 2 Double Joy sized batteries.  Additionally, that’s true for EACH of us.  There is no factory in China churning out a few million of you every week.  God crafts us each, one at a time, with intent and purpose.  When we discover that, living really begins.

So whatever it is for you (writing, singing, teaching, leading, ???-ing), learn from my mistake.  Don’t neglect doing it.  Don’t turn away from it.  Don’t set it on the back burner.  In fact, put a few things down that you currently have in your hands in order to get a better grip on it.  Your passion.  Your calling.

Seven months from now you’ll be glad you did.

Trust And Belief

A Weak Subtlety That Carries Profound Significance

I admit that the point I’m attempting to make is debatable at best on the surface.  But the treasured thought buried beneath is well worth the effort to dig it out and put it on display.

Like the saying, “There are two sides to every coin”, trust and belief represent two similar, yet unique ways to think about something.  Trust connotes the sense that something or someone will NOT act in a way that is harmful to me or mine.  It suspends any potential reason to fear.  I trust that the chair will not break when I sit on it.  I trust that I will not be hurt because the chair is sound.

Belief offers another perspective.  Belief carries with it the sense that something or someone WILL act it in a way that is beneficial or good to me and mine.  It instills a confidence beyond the mere absence of danger and conveys the surety of blessing.  I believe that my personal trainer is knowledgeable.  I believe they will lead me into a greater fitness level therefore I do what they tell me to do.

(Yes, I recognize you can trust the chair WILL hold up or believe that my trainer WILL NOT hurt me, but it still highlights that there are two sides to this coin.  I’ve just chosen to parse it out this way.  Let’s keep digging! :)

That’s Cute, But So Is My New Puppy.  What’s Your Point?

Trust and belief are two words that illuminate God’s character and my response to Him.  Trust allows me to stop running from Him.  Belief inspires me to follow Him.  Trust frees me from fear.  Belief frees me to worship.

God’s character can be described with many words and parceled into different attributes.

God is love.  God is merciful.  God is just.  God is powerful.  God is holy.  God is patient, forgiving, ever-present.  He saves, heals, carries.

They’re all true and they’re all good.  He is true – you can trust Him.  He is good – you can believe in Him.

Trust and belief are the two sides of the coin, and the coin is God’s love for us.  In the beginning, when God first approaches us, we tremble and fear.  And rightly so.  We are guilty.  He is holy.  This can’t end well, we think.  So God’s love extends to us like a blanket covering our cold bodies.  He has to soothe the fear to still the trembling.  And that’s what He does.

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.  We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4)

That initial moment can be pictured by the outstretched arms of God reaching towards you.  The look in His eyes is the reflection of the cross.  And the warmth that chases away the cold is His Spirit breathing new life.  You know He is trustworthy.  You know you can trust Him.

But then, after the fear is replaced by trust, His love engenders another element within.  Belief grows with every new experience and encounter.  We are encouraged and we begin to draw upon the past trustworthiness of God for a belief-filled perspective of the future.

“We have come to know and to believe the love God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4)

The depiction of this second side of love is His initially outstretched arms now drawing you into Himself.  Into His heart, which is where you have always been destined to be.  He brings you in to “abide” together.  You know He is good.  You know you can believe in Him for the rest of your life.

Flipping The Coin

The two-sided coin of God’s love is the deeper treasure we unearth as we think about trust and belief.  Turn it over in your mind however you will, but whichever side comes up, you will find that He has completely given the completeness of Himself to us through gospel of Jesus.

“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…” (Colossians 1)

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near…” (Ephesians 2)

Trust in Jesus.  Believe in Him forever.  Why?  Because He loves you.

Floundering Or Flourishing?

flounder: 1.  hesitate in confusion: to act in a way that shows confusion or a lack of purpose 
2.  be in serious difficulty: to have serious problems and be close to failing

flourish: 1.  be healthy or grow well: to be strong and healthy or grow well, especially because conditions are right 
2.  do well: to sustain continuous steady strong growth

Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

A fish flips its tail.  Contorts its body.  With vigor it flicks.  It flops.  It leaps.  What determines the progress of these movements?  Or the ease of  progress?  It is the environment, the place in which they take place.  What these movements are employed for or against determines their purpose.  The fish on dry land flounders.  The fish in the depths of the sea flourishes.  The difference is where it is placed, and why it struggles.

Strength is given to us for the pursuit of life.  For living.  To struggle against death is futile.  No man has ever achieved victory in a struggle against death.  Except one.

Jesus alone has displayed the strength to emerge victoriously from that fight with death.  It is in this, in Him, that we must rest.  Or rather, have our floundering transformed into flourishing.  Once we are moved from the wrong into the right, we soar!

Yes, we are to struggle.  But not against death.  In vain do any hope of winning that fight.  All men die.  All.  Die.  The outcome never changes.  The fact that we struggle shows that we truly are meant for life.  The fact that we all die shows, just as truly, that something is fatally wrong.  If that for which we all struggle is unattained by all, we must pause and ask why.  Our obstinacy is somewhat laudable.  But our fruitlessness should be revelatory.

We are to struggle towards life. For life.  Our deliverance from and victory over death is not within our ability.  But it is in God’s.  And it is this very victory that He accomplished in Jesus.

We can’t.  He can.  He has.  We must stop and be placed in the right context of movement.  Be placed in life.  Only then does movement produce progress.  It is redeemed from futility.  Now when we struggle, we fly.  Now we flourish.

The difference arguably is subtle, but it is significant.  Certainly to the fish.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Are your efforts being employed in the context for which they were designed?  Or do you sense immediate and imminent futility?

Consider your environment.  Are you the fish in the desert or the fish in the sea?  Are you floundering in the final throes of death or are you flourishing in the vast expanse of life?  The context of your existence will define how fruitful your efforts and movements can be.  We are all fish born in the middle of the arid dessert.  Instinctively we move, albeit without progress.  Inevitably we die.

Change of movement isn’t the remedy.  Change of environment is.  This is illustrated for us in the Bible when we read that being saved means that we have been brought out of one environment and placed in another.  The places aren’t desert and sea, but rather dark and light.  Dark signifies the original context of our existence.  Light, the place into which He brings us (see Colossians 1).

Keep in mind that the fish cannot flop indefinitely and eventually, by rigorous endurance, make it to the sea.  In the same way, we cannot dwell indefinitely in the darkness and stumble our way into the light.  Our time is limited and our journey is infinite.

Just as the fish needs an external help, we can only make it to the light by being brought by the hands of another.  Our environment is changed by the care and compassion of Someone else.  It is God who saves us from the dessert and brings us into the sea of life.

FOR OR AGAINST?

The other difference between the fish in the desert and the fish in the sea is purpose.  The intense movement of the first is consumed with one end in mind - survival.  Just not death.  The second has had the death situation resolved, so now all the effort it employs is not against death, but rather for life.  It’s end goal is not surviving, but thriving.

For what purpose are the movements of your daily existence employed?  Perhaps you find yourself wearied and tired from the struggle against death (in all its forms).  Perhaps you’ve known or seen in others a tireless, joyful pursuit of life.  The good news for you is that the latter are not doing anything differently from what you’re doing.  The difference goes back to environment.

When once you are picked up out of the environment of death (the desert) and placed in the environment you were meant to be in (the sea), the double blessing is that all your movements find their rightful place in life.  That former thrashing about is redeemed into a masterful stroke of beauty.  Effort once employed futilely against death now flows elegantly in life.  The dance is the same.  Only now there is music.

“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”  Colossians 1:13-14

“For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”  Colossians 1:29

Mirrored Audacity

We look and sound the most silly when we least understand.

Consider some of the things you’ve said or done over your life that can still make you cringe and/or blush today.  At some point we’ve all stuck the proverbial foot in our mouths.  Our words clearly expressing the fact that we don’t know what we were talking about, and now everybody knows it.

These experiences can cause us to develop a filter through which every word must pass before it receives permission to be spoken.  We turn our attention inward in an attempt to retain our dignity in the eyes of others.  This can be a good thing.

But if we spend too much time self-evaluating we may miss the reality of the universe-cracking truths that are all around us.  Sometimes it takes being offended or alarmed at what someone else says to make us aware of those truths.  We gain a new understanding of the fine line between the two sides of audacity.

audacity:

1.  boldness or daring: daring or willingness to challenge assumptions or conventions or tackle something difficult or dangerous

2.  impudence: lack of respect in somebody's behavior toward another person

OMG!

In Matthew 8/9, there are actions and statements that could cause some eyebrows to raise or palms to sweat.  Statements or demands made to/about Jesus that, when observed through the lens of what we view as “proper”, seem inappropriate and bordering on hubris.

They are made by people both foreign and common to Jesus.  They are made by friends, strangers, and enemies of Jesus.  They are all made in the context of approaching Jesus.  And they all provide keys to understanding.

First, a leper approaches Jesus.  This probably set some people on edge as it unfolded and is the most alarming aspect of the scene.  The audacity of a leper to make contact with someone else is alarming, “wrong”, even scandalous.  There were rules in place to govern what and where a leper could do or go.  This action is clearly not in line with convention.  Then comes the statement, “…you can make me clean.”  As clearly confident as his footsteps forward.

Next, a soldier, a foreign soldier, comes to Jesus.  Not as unlikely an approach, but a “marvelous” scene of boldness when we get to the conversation.  The soldier simply states that his servant is paralyzed at his house.  Jesus says he will come.  But the soldier redirects the course of events.  He basically says, “No, not that way.”  He tells Jesus how to heal his servant.  And in telling Jesus what to do exhibits a right-minded boldness based on a right-minded understanding.

Subsequently, the disciples find themselves in a boat on the sea in the middle of a great storm.  And they find Jesus…asleep.  They approach him with apparent faithlessness due to a lack of understanding.  “We are perishing!”, they say.  Jesus remedies their perspective by displaying a marvel of his own.  He talks to the wind.  He commands the waves.  And they obey.  Their jaws drop in order to facilitate that proverbial foot we mentioned earlier.

There are others.  Demons, speaking through men, seemingly dictate to Jesus what to do with them.  Religious leaders miss the point of the healing of one and a calling of another, so Jesus spells it out.  Wrong-headed questions from wrong-headed understanding.

 Stepping Towards The Mirror

All these people approached Jesus with an understanding.  Their understanding guided what they boldly did or said to Jesus.  And Jesus’s responses show us which ones understood rightly.  He serves as a mirror to which all come and discover the truth.

Those who approached Jesus with a right understanding are affirmed in their boldness by him.  The leper was healed.  The soldier was elevated as the epitome of understanding.

Those who approached with a wrong understanding were shown the faultiness of their misguided boldness.  The disciples witnessed how the voice of Jesus was the same voice heard at the creation of the universe.  They understood him to be less than He is, and He corrected their too-little premises.

So I ask you, which of the two do you relate with?  Which appeared more reasonable to you before Jesus lifted the cover and revealed what/who was truly right?

Our actions and words show upon what understanding they are based.  And in an attempt to fit in we often act and speak in line with the majority because its easier to be accepted than to be audacious.  However, if we stand before the mirror long enough we’re going to discover that God is not acting in a conventional way.  And the more we understand what God has done, we will find ourselves moving and speaking in ways that will seem silly to many.

The (Seemingly) Impossible Truth

It’s easier to believe with the unbelieving because what they believe is less grand than the truth.  And here is the truth.

It is impossible to approach God more boldly than He has approached us.

The leper’s approach and the soldier’s approach are not as out of line as might be thought on initial perception.  But they are completely in line with the language God is speaking.  They understood who Jesus was and what God was doing in approaching them (a rejected outcast and a resented enemy), and they mirrored Him.

God’s entrance into our lives is not a polite whisper dripping with syrupy politeness.  There is no etiquette or form that God abides by in His approach.  He is blunt.  He is direct.  He is audacious.

And if He, as great as He truly is, will blaze so bold a path to me, as ungreat as I truly am, then should I not reciprocate with as bold a belief?  Should I not lay aside my proud misunderstandings and be wholly grasped by true understanding?  Yes.  Even if it makes me look silly to most.

Because an understanding of the truth should lead to exhibitions of audacity.  Wondered at by some leading to their encouragement.  Ruffling the feathers of others highlighting their hubris.  Illustrating for all the marvelous approach of God to man.

Awakened In The Day

When Dreams Break Through

A sudden cry broke the stillness of sleep last night.  It wasn’t the scream of pain or the shriek of fright.  It was more like the moaning of disappointment or the recollection of past hurt.  My daughter had a bad dream, and her body reacted to what was going through her mind.

Doubtless, she was recalling some major minor disappointment from the previous day.  A toy was taken or not given.  Her way was denied.  And the conflict escalated to confrontation and crying.  Now she is reliving the moment in her mind, and she cries.

And that begs the question in my mind this morning: if my daughter can be awakened in the night by the fighting she has done in the day, can I be awakened in the day to do those things about which I have dreamt all night?

At Home In A Foreign Place

There are those things in our lives (or rather in our minds) that, even the mere thought of them, thrill the deepest parts of us to the highest of heights.  They are like a foreign place you enter for the first time, and from the moment you walk through the door you feel completely at home.  Or rather, you feel like you are returning home.

When once these places have been found, we never want to leave.  And even when we must return to reality we find that our hearts never truly leave those place.  Nor do they leave us.  They stay with us.  Within us.  You could call them the ‘desires of your heart’ (Psalm 37).

Every breeze now seemingly blows from that place, and quickens our minds to recollection and beckons us to come.  At some point, hopefully, we will find the draw of that place too powerful to overcome, and we will go.  No matter how great the cost to us or how outwardly small the reward, we will be there.

We will be there because it is not about ‘things’ any longer.  Being there will supersede all else.  We will be there for the place itself.  The place is our prize.  The prize of rightness.

Stepping Stones To Home

Paul knew well the breezes from that distant place.  He endured terrific opposition and trial, yet could speak of overflowing joy and indescribable peace.  He may have been here, but his heart was in that other place.  Every moment and occurrence in life was a stepping stone.  Whether or not his steps were popular or judged right by others was insignificant.  Paul was headed to his heart’s home, and every moment along the way was redeemed by the rightness of his ultimate destination.

Near the end of his life, we read some words he wrote to his friend and spiritual son, Timothy.

“…the time of my departure has come.  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”

That ultimate place of rightness with the Lord encroached backwards into Paul’s daily existence.  He found every place he entered made right by the land to which he was headed.

And that’s my prayer for us today.  May we experience the rightness of home in all that we do here.  May the recurring dreams of our hearts become the realities of our doings today and everyday.  May the security of God’s righteousness embolden us to live deeply and richly as we walk towards His voice.

Reversal

God’s word is weighty.  It is substantive.  Consider that all the things you will see and touch today are the congealment of God’s spoken word.  When His word comes in contact with something (like a mountain, see Zechariah 4 or Matthew 21) it is the ‘something’ that is moved.  There is nothing in all of existence that is of greater substance than God’s word.

This can (and should) be applied to our lives today.  The highest ‘mountains’ of wrong, fear, hurt, confusion, or ______________ that seem to span the entire horizon of our days are no match for the smallest word of God.  It doesn’t seem or feel like that should be the case, but, in true reality, it is.  God’s word holds the power of reversal.

‘Those’ days and ‘These’ days

In Zechariah, we encounter Israel facing the mountains of utter decimation and defeat.  They are captive, plundered, and forced to dwell in the midst of a conquering kingdom.  They are a byword and the punch-line to the jokes spoken in every foreign language.  Laughter, unfortunately in this case, is a universal languages.  They understand that things aren’t like they used to be in the “good old days.”

In ‘those’ days, men and women dwelt comfortably in a secure city.  The streets resounded with the laughter and shouts of boys and girls playing.  Long life was the norm.  You needed a good staff because your life was going to outlast your body (see Zechariah 8).

But ‘those’ days are long gone.  Only a few remain who remember what it was like to be among friends rather than foreigners.  Yes, ‘those’ days are gone because God spoke them away.  The people of ‘those’ days neglected to remember that all the good they knew and saw was the product of God’s word of blessing.  They fashioned in their minds that this good life was the life of their own making, and they turned their entire being away from God and His word.

So, in order that His people would be ever mindful of the power and character of His word, God spoke again: exile, plunder, and loss as the everyday experience.  Reversal for the sake of revelation.

This is happening again.

Into the mire of captivity and woe, a voice is heard.  Few are the ears that will recognize it, though it addresses all exiles.

“Return to me, and I will return to you…”

“My city shall be rebuilt…”

“Up!  It’s time to go home…!”

“Your captor becomes your plunder…”

“I will be your God, and you will be my people…”

Scandalous Sentiments

God then begins to return His people to Jerusalem.  He raises leaders in Nehemiah, Ezra, Zerubbabel, and Joshua.  The exiles are home.  But more than that their hearts are home.

God accomplishes more than the rebuilding of a city.  The city is simply a location for Him to put the people that he is restoring.  And, as great as this historical reality is, this whole movement is a sign, a reverse echo, of what is to come.

The reversal of the exiles’ situation is a foreshadowing of the reversal that Jesus affects in our hearts today.  It is a foretelling of the gospel.  But have you considered the full implication that the story holds?  There are elements to this reversal that can border on scandalous if I’m not careful.  I type with trepidation as I ponder them.

Although Israel physically dwelt in Babylon their true “captor” was not an earthly force.  They were living under the weight not of a foreign king, but of God’s Word.  They were where they were because God spoke.

Although sin is our experiential ruler, we bear the burden of the condemnation God decreed through His Word.  We are “captive” to God’s righteous judgment.  We are where we are because God spoke it to be this way.

God stands as our captor.  We lie defeated under the victory of His Word.

But God didn’t stop speaking.  His Word eventually became flesh, and actually dwelt among us (Zechariah 2; John 1).

When God spoke the reversal of captor becoming plunder for His people, He fulfilled those words for us Himself in Christ.  God, in Jesus, stepped into the place of captivity, and set us in the place of victory.  Here is where caution is warranted, as the gospel advances to new and seemingly scandalous (to me at least) depths.

Now, we did nothing to defeat or overcome God and His Word.  It wasn’t our blood shed in the struggle with our sin (Hebrews 12).  Don’t exalt yourself into that role.  That is blatantly scandalous and heretical.  But there is a  sense of God becoming my “plunder” that strikes a new chord in me.  Not that I capture Him, but that He ordains Himself to become my treasure by becoming the object of His own wrath and plunders Himself.  Then, gives that treasure to me.

Does this help to drive home the immensity and power of God’s love for us?  Or the extent of our salvation?  This gift of the only truly free Person in all existence taking on the role, the position of captive.  And this, for me.  In my place.

Reality And Illustration

Examine this scene:  Two prisoners.  Barnabas, who is guilty, and Jesus, who is not.  Barnabas stands in the place, as do we, of notorious guilt.  Jesus, alone, stands in the place of singular innocence.  And yet it is Barnabas, and we, who walks away a free man, and Jesus who is delivered over as a prisoner to be scourged and crucified.  (The only confused one is Pilate, the judge, who walks away guilty, yet declaring himself innocent by his own decree.)

Barnabas was a prisoner of the law, of God.  Guilty.  The plunder of justice and of God.

Jesus was the freeman of the law, of God.  Innocent.  The possessor of the riches of justice and of God.

There is no other explanation for this reversal of outcomes except that God’s Word has come into contact with the mountain of reality and the mountain has been moved.

Gracious illustrations are nice, but the reality of grace is scandalous.