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Monthly Archives: October 2014
Terrible Love
It is Thanksgiving time and there is light.
They sit around the table laden with food, this family bound together by blood. There is light and laughter, talk of sports and of God, there is caring and kindness between generations. There are eyes shining bright, shining with love and with joy in the company around them.
And there is darkness.
There is one who is recently bereft of the comfort of spouse, struggling to find what is normal. There is one who sits heavy with the weight of marriage that is harder than expected. There is one who wonders if anything they do will ever seem good enough.
There is one who struggles with getting older, one who struggles with trouble at work and money that slips through the fingers, one who wonders if there is anything good coming when they can’t see what lies further down the road.
There is darkness in all of us. It is a part of being human to feel the weightiness of the absence of God. And there is an absence of God in this world. The Bible we profess speaks of it. The prophets and psalms all speak of Him who is not there when He is most needed. The author of Hebrews strips all of our pretense away when he speaks of Noah, of Abraham, of Gideon and David and the rest who “all died without having received what was promised.” It is the anguish of glimpsing the briefest glow of the light of presence without being allowed to bask in the sun.
It is a terrible love, this love of God for us. It is a love that means His absence as often as it means His presence. It is a love that Jesus speaks of when He utters in His darkest moment the piercing cry of Where are you, God?
You who are in heaven for us, why are you not down here in hell with us?
It is a terrible love that speaks of carrying our own cross, that utters the truth that all ye labor and are heavy laden.
It is a terrible love that wounds, or allows the wounds, before the healing can come.
It is a terrible love that weeps at the death of a friend, of Lazarus. They are tears that speak of the absence of God. Of the part of God in the very body of Jesus who would not save the life of His own friend.
This is, after all, the Gospel. It is terrible before it is beautiful. It is darkness before it is light.
We all labor and are heavy laden. We work so very hard to pretend that it is not so, but even when we are appalled at the darkness, we cannot help but listen to Jesus because we see in Him not only the darkness of being without God but the glorious light of what it looks like to be with God.
It is out of the absence of God that He becomes most present. It is out of the whirlwind, out of the storm that God first speaks to Job, answering Him not with answers but with Himself. It is out of darkness that we first begin to perceive the light.
Paul says that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are”, and he points to “the apparent emptiness of the world where God belongs and to how the emptiness starts to echo like an empty shell after a while until you can here in it the still, small voice of the sea, hear strength in weakness, victory in defeat, presence in absence.” ~ Frederick Buechner
The cross itself is a symbol of defeat before it is a symbol of victory and it, too, speaks of the absence of God.
When the absence is all that we see, when we are tempted to see in it a well of doubt that could lead us into atheism or at least into becoming agnostic, there is yet something else to see as well.
It was out of the darkness and absence that God first spoke. “In the beginning…the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” And darkness is upon our faces as well, a void that sinks deep into our hearts. And perhaps it is necessary for the reality of this darkness to fold itself around us for us to be able to glimpse the reality of the word that God spoke into the darkness, “God said let there be light, and there was light.”
It is a terrible love that is offered to us, and perhaps we must face the truth of the terribleness before we are capable of accepting the love.
Art credits: Three Crosses sketch by Rembrandt; Supernova photo by NASA
The Artistry of God
Revel with me in the artistry of God.
Be amazed at the depth of His creativity.
Look with wonder at variation beyond number.
Ponder the beauty of difference.
Of large
and small,
of smooth
and warty,
of single color
and multi-hued.
Praise the loveliness of His artistic diversity
in all of the people and pumpkins around you.
Outside the World
We stand outside the world.
We dance and dream and die, and through it all we long.
We long for something else, for something more. We long for something bigger, for something more real.
Some understand what they long for and others do not. We long for what is true. We long for a world that is fully real.
We catch breaths of the morning air, fresh and clean and pure. We catch glimpses of the morning light, startling and bright and glorious.
Yet we stand outside the world and these hints of morning air do not change us. We do not become pure or glorious.
We stand outside the world and we hear a Word. We hear a Word that spreads a rumor.
It is a rumor that this shall not always be so. It is a rumor that one day we will be allowed to walk through the door and stand on the right side. On the inside.
It is a rumor that one day we will finally be changed by the Morning. Through the Morning Star we will become pure and clean, bright and glorious.
We will be as we were made. We will become as we are remade. Remade into the very image of the Word.
And by moving through the Word we will be allowed to stand. To stand in desperate gratitude. To stand covered in another’s glory.
We will dance and we will dream, but we will not die.
We will stand inside the world.
Piety or Knowledge?
I have written before of the battle between holiness and justice. Some say we are to focus on our own moral purity, on becoming more like Jesus. Others say we are to focus on social justice for others, on being Jesus to those around the world.
When describing the wickedness of Israel, Isaiah says “He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.”
It seems that one of the Deceiver’s favorite ploys is to take a set of discipleship practices, a pairing that works best when done in concert with each other, and separate them, throwing them into battle with each another. In doing so, he not only diminishes the efficacy of both practices but he also divides the very body of Christ.
Clearly both holiness and justice are important. We should not focus on half of God’s commands to the exclusion of the rest.
Another battle I’ve been trying to understand is the battle between piety and knowledge.
Is it better to obey God, to act on His behalf, or is it better to learn about God, to know what it is He commands?
Some would say that knowledge is too dry, that the life of the mind is on par with selfishness. It brings to mind ivory towers and keeping oneself unsullied by the realities of the real world.
While it is true that focusing solely on knowledge and learning would keep one from ever actually helping this world of hurting people, modern church culture seems to lean too heavily in the direction of anti-intellectualism. There is a growing spirit of pragmatism in our churches. A spirit whose first question about an idea is not “Is it true?” but “Does it work?”.
“Young people tend to be activists, dedicated supporters of a cause, though without always inquiring too closely either whether their cause is a good end to pursue or whether this action is the best means by which to pursue it.” ~ Rev. John R. W. Stott in an address at the Inter-Varsity Fellowship Annual Conference