God Revealing Himself

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Elizabeth

God, where are you?

We who live in this dark world are searching for the light.

We want God to show up in a big way.

We want the cancer healed, the baby conceived, the loneliness taken away.

We wonder why He won’t reveal Himself in all of His glory so that all will believe.

Why does He hide and make it so hard to find Him?

Why does He let us suffer when He could heal us all with just a Word?

We wonder why this world remains so dark.

Those at the foot of the cross wondered the same.

The chief priests mockingly wondered why He would not save Himself when He had claimed to save others.

The women weepingly wondered why He would not come down from the cross when He had healed so many others.

I begin to understand, but don’t want to admit it. So much suffering is contained in the answer.

If Jesus had come down from the cross in a blaze of glory, tens of thousands of angels at His side, He would not have gained love but would have become a tyrant.

If God were to reveal Himself in all of His glory, He would not have children who love Him for Himself but would have slaves who serve out of fear or compulsion.

God instead reveals Himself in the small. He shows Himself in the weak. His light shines through the poor, the sick, the hungry, the captive.

If we cannot find Him in the common, everyday miracle of life, we cannot love Him as Himself.

If He always arrived to take away the darkness, we would never learn to love Him. We would, instead, love the comfort of the light.

If He made it impossible to deny Him, He would be our dictator, not our Father. And we would be His cowering slaves.

He must forebear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world. ~ Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

So let us seek Him and find Him in the faces of the weak, and let us love Him as we stoop to serve the small.

This is Easter

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Elizabeth

Easter.

Spring.

New life.

It is an inevitable part of life that monochromatic winter begins to melt into spaces of bright color. Snow gives way to tulips and crocuses. Perhaps it is our necessary reminder that death is followed by new life. Our reminder of Easter.

It was our first Easter without Kristina.

On Easter morning, my eldest ran into the living room where we had left the figure of Jesus on the cross the night before, eyes wide with hope of resurrection. “Daddy, look! Jesus left us flowers that God made!”

Hope and joy at the end of sorrow and pain. This is Easter.

On Easter morning, gathered with our Family, we sang, “The greatest day in history, Death is beaten, You have rescued me. Sing it out, Jesus is alive! Endless joy, perfect peace, Earthly pain finally will cease. Celebrate Jesus is alive! Oh, happy day, happy day…”

During a celebration after tragedy, hearts swell and overflow with emotions that at first glance seem to be at odds. We feel both joy and gratitude, sorrow and longing.

On Easter morning, the joy is easy. Jesus is alive!

Sorrow and longing, though, those are things that are more difficult. Yet they are real and, although hard, they are what should be.

We all suffer. We all love and therefore all suffer because in our broken world, love means suffering. Those who do not love much do not suffer much. I would not grieve so deeply had I not loved Kristina so much. God loves our world and therefore God Himself suffers.

Such sorrow was felt over our first Easter without Kristina.

We acknowledge that all of this, this pain and death and sadness, is not how it was supposed to be. None of this existed before we rebelled against God.

And so we sorrow.

Our longing is for that day of redemption and transformation. The day when earthly pain will cease and death will be banished for all time. We desperately wish to be gathered into Jesus’ arms and told that all is now well.

And so we long.

Sorrow and longing.

At second look, we are reassured that these are what we should feel. After all,

Our kind, heavenly Father has provided many wonderful inns for us along our journey, but He takes special care to see that we never mistake any of them for home. ~ C.S. Lewis

At the end of it all, however, our hearts must return again to gratitude.

On that Easter morning, as we worshiped together, we sang, “You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust. You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of us.”

Just as we did in the middle of our ugly places, our hearts cry out “Why?” Yet this time, it is a vastly different sort of why.

This time we ask, why do You love me that much?

You went to the cross to allow us to become children of God. Wasn’t that more than enough? Why would You now also work so very hard to make beautiful things out of the dust that we are? Why would You pour so much into molding us into people who look like You?

Let us fall on our knees in joy and with gratitude for such lavish love.

On Easter morning and beyond, let our hearts swell with both sorrow and longing, joy and gratitude, knowing that Jesus is truly alive, knowing that He has defeated death.

edited from the archives

art credit: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise by Benjamin West; heaven picture; cross picture by Asta Rastauskiene

Terrible Love

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Elizabeth

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

When Praise is a Sacrifice

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Elizabeth

Sacrifice is hard.

I suppose that is clear from the very definition of the word.

The idea of a sacrifice of praise seems a strange sort of concept. We tend to view praise as spontaneous, as rising from our rising and joyful emotions. How can such praise be a sacrifice?

: Easy to praise

That sort of praise is not such a sacrifice. But what about the praise that comes from a woman who has just lost her child? What about the praise from a man who does not know how he will feed his family? What about the praise from Christ-follower who lives every day in fear of torture or death because of Who he follows?

Through Him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name. (Heb. 13.5)

The praise of the one ravaged by cancer, the praise of the one dying inside from loneliness, the praise of the one who isn’t even sure that God is really there…these are a sacrifice. These are that sacrifice of praise.

: Steph – Suffered years of illnesses and still chose to try to praise God

: Kristina – died of cancer, leaving her husband and baby behind, yet still sought God while alive.

But how? How is it even possible to praise God while living through such circumstances?

Through Him

Through who?

Look back just one chapter.

…looking to Jesus…who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (Heb. 12. 2-3)

How? By looking to Jesus. By looking to the One who was able to offer up His own sacrifice of praise while enduring the physical pain of the cross, while enduring the emotional shame of the cross, while enduring the heartbreaking separation from His own Father.

: Jesus – crucified, humiliated, abandoned, yet still offered praise to God

By keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, and therefore off of ourselves, we are given courage and strength to do what we think is impossible. We are kept from growing weary and fainthearted.

By fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, we are able to continually offer up a sacrifice of praise. An offering of praise that endures all time and all circumstance. An offering of praise that is beautiful to God.

Art credits: Sunlight through tulips photograph by Kirk Sewell Photography; photograph of Jesus carrying the cross sculpture by Asta Rastauskiene

Still Following the Signs

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Elizabeth

I sit in the early morning, looking out the window at the wind making shimmery the leaves of our cottonwood, and remember Kristina. It is the third anniversary of her death, and it sometimes still feels as though we are stumbling through the dark. So much hurt and fear back then, so much hurt and fear all around us now. In this world, it will always be so. There are glimpses of light that keep us going, slight breaths of a hope that keeps our eyes searching the gloom for that bright and beautiful future that is promised, but it is easy to get distracted by the ugliness all around. I am drawn back to a post I wrote soon after Kristina’s death.

In the middle of this pain common to all of us who live in this world, as we sit surrounded by those who love us, it is tempting to add a veneer of softness, to speak in clichés that turn raw, ripped-open pain into a lie. Sometimes this is even encouraged among those of us who follow Christ. Yet to do this denies that we are real, that our hearts can be ripped in two, that our pain and loss can suffocate and almost overwhelm us. To do this denies that Christ is real, that His body and heart were also ripped apart.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

When God seems not to place much importance on whether we are free from pain or suffering, it is difficult not to live in a state of paralysis. It seems a formidable task both to acknowledge the depth of pain we feel and also to acknowledge the depth of God’s love for us.

We see this pain in the world around us. We see it all throughout the Bible. Abel. Abraham. Joseph. Moses. Uriah the prophet…murdered for prophesying while Jeremiah was allowed to live. John the Baptist…Jesus’ cousin. All of the apostles…Jesus’ closest friends.

Understanding why Kristina had to die is hard. I might never know the reason.

God’s purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is…Faith is this unwavering trust in the heart of God in the hurt of here.” ~ Ann Voskamp

What can we do when everything inside of us wants to turn tail and run from the painful possibility of God’s loving best? Can we truly trust in the heart of God?

We often learn best through story. One story that helps to show us what to do is written in C.S. Lewis’ story of Narnia, The Silver Chair. Two children (Jill and Scrubb) and one Marsh-wiggle (Puddleglum) are given by Aslan (the Christ-figure) four signs with which to find the lost prince of Narnia. They completely botch the first three signs which leads to their imprisonment with a madman who is chained to a silver chair. The fourth and last sign is that someone “will ask you to do something in my name, in the name of Aslan”. The madman entreats the three travelers to free him, who says:

“Once and for all, I adjure you to set me free. By all fears and all loves, by the bright skies of Overland, by the great Lion, by Aslan himself, I charge you –”
“Oh!” said the three travelers as though they had been hurt. “It’s the sign,” said Puddleglum. “It was the words of the sign,” said Scrubb more cautiously. “Oh, what are we to do?” said Jill.
It was a dreadful question. What had been the use of promising one another that they would not on any account set the Knight free, if they were now to do so the first time he happened to call upon a name they really cared about? On the other hand, what had been the use of learning the signs if they weren’t going to obey them? Yet could Aslan have really meant them to unbind anyone – even a lunatic – who asked it in his name? … They had muffed three already; they daren’t muff the fourth.
“Oh, if only we knew!” said Jill. “I think we do know,” said Puddleglum. “Do you mean you think everything will come right if we do untie him?” said Scrubb.
“I don’t know about that,” said Puddleglum. “You see, Aslan didn’t tell (Jill) what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he’s up, I shouldn’t wonder. But that doesn’t let us off following the sign.”

That doesn’t let us off following the sign.

We aren’t guaranteed that anything here on earth will turn out all right. We try so hard to grasp at that security, to bring it into existence, but it simply is not there. Instead, if we have nothing else (and we do have so much else!), if we can turn to and trust nothing else, we have the cross.

After his wife of only four years had died of cancer, C. S. Lewis said, “If only I could bear it, or the worst of it, or any of it, instead of her…But is it ever allowed? It was allowed to One, we are told, and I find I can now believe again, that He has done vicariously whatever can be so done. He replies to our babble, ‘You cannot and you dare not. I could and dared.’”
And so we find that perhaps, after all, it does not matter why. It does not matter whence came the hard thing or even that it may be painfully hard. If God ever had to prove anything, at the cross He proved His love, His promise to work for the best of all He created.

It is not a bad thing to seek for the why’s and how’s and from where’s. God is able to handle our questions, our fears. Yet if we never get any answers, if we never know the reasons, if we never understand, then we who have chosen to follow Christ, who have allowed Jesus to be the Lord of our lives, we who have embraced His sacrifice of love…

We aren’t let off following the signs.

Sketch is Rembrandt’s The Three Crosses

The Day God is Dead

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Elizabeth

Holy Saturday.

The day God is dead.

The day we lose God Himself.

Don’t miss this. Don’t rush through it. On the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, God is dead.

One part of the Trinity, yes, but God nonetheless.

The Word of God is gone. We can no longer hear Him.

Linger in this day. Does the earth feel different? Somehow vacant?

There is, for this day, no possible way to reach God.

And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

No Most Holy Place where the high priest could meet with God.

It is finished.

He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.

No Word of God in whom we can see the Father.

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

Remain in this day as long as you can. I don’t understand how, but somehow this day exists on which we are completely isolated from God.

Breathe in the horror of this day. God is dead. He is, for this day, unattainable. Can you catch even a glimpse?

The disciples did. They lived it for what must have felt like an eternity.

We’d rather skip past this day, this Saturday that contains Christ’s body in the tomb. Yet we must linger if we are to grasp the power of Easter Sunday. We must dwell here awhile if we are to be allowed to hold the joy of Easter Sunday.

When the Son, the Word of the Father is dead, then no one can see God, hear of Him or attain Him. And this day exists, when the Son is dead, and the Father, accordingly, inaccessible. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar (theologian and author)

Can you feel the terror of it? Do you sense the incomprehensible void that stretches before us on this day? What does it even mean?

Do not rush too quickly past this Holy Saturday on your way to the miracle. You may miss the deepest part of the gratitude and joy that are to come.

The deepest gratitude and joy that come only when you understand what was absent, and understand that it was only for a day.

Art credits: Preparation of Christ’s Tomb by Vittore Carpaccio; Tomb of knight Philip Keerman in Flanders, Belgium; 1912 photograph of Jerusalem Garden Tomb by Dwight Lathrop Elmendorf; Side view of Garden Tomb by Deror Avi; Jerusalem Garden Tomb by Berthold Werner

I Cannot

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Elizabeth

I hate admitting that I cannot do something. I have experienced quite a few tragedies that occurred because I was unable to swallow that thing inside of me that rises up and prevents me from asking for help.

The one notable exception is raising children. I am all about seeking out advice when it comes to my children (which is its own problem because too much advice leads to indecision which invariably leads to paralysis). This is not by any particular virtue of my own, rather it is because I am completely terrified of irreversibly messing up another human being.

Messing up my own life, however, is fine, because whatever the thing is, I can do it.

Even if I cannot.

This causes a definite problem, however, when it comes to my faith. I want to be able to be good enough, to make myself righteous enough, to climb up the ladder and reach God all on my own.

I would have done well in Babel.

I want to do it myself so that I can then take credit. I want to be proud of my own accomplishments. I want, in short, to seek and worship myself.

God, however, is quite clear. We can never rise up to Him, so He, in His infinite mercy, came down to us.

This is folly and this is scandal. It cannot be understood by our own reason and intelligence. This is offensive. It offends our pride to know that there is nothing for us to do.

God is too high and holy and our sin is too deep and depraved for us to be able to reach God.

Our souls become crippled and cramped by trying to rise to the highest height. The end is despair, or a self-righteousness that leaves room neither for love of God nor for love of others. ~ Emil Brunner

It hurts as a crucifixion always does, but I must crucify myself and admit that I cannot reach God. I cannot be good enough and I cannot make myself righteous.

So God descends to us at Christmas and finishes His descent on Good Friday. What is His goal and where does He end His descent? He ends where we belong. In Hell. Our rightful place is separation from God, which is hell, and God descends down to hell.

Jesus experiences our separation from God and despairs of loneliness from God so that we can be free of it. He descends all the way down so that He can lift us out and reconcile us to God. It is the only way.

If the only way to receive God’s Spirit and nevermore to be separate from Him is to admit that I cannot do it, I will crucify my pride every single day and bow my head to the ground in worship and thanksgiving.

I will confess: I cannot.

Art Credits: Construction of the Tower of Babel painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger; The Three Crosses by Rembrandt

The Dangerous Grace of Lent

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Elizabeth

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I am only beginning to explore this journey that is Lent. This season was not a part of my faith tradition growing up, but it seems to be growing more popular among evangelicals these days.

This long season of Lent is not a frivolous sort of giving up as it appeared to a fairly oblivious teenage self (fasting from M&M’s anyone?) but a giving up for the purpose of giving away. It is a period of self-denial in order to become more unified with the Spirit of Christ.

It is a difficult thing to be unified with Jesus. Gazing into the eyes of Christ for too long has frightening consequences. When you stare at the cross, you find yourself looking at your own death, at your sin and its just consequence. You come face to face with all of the spiritual deformities that are in your own soul and find yourself tempted to turn away from the harsh reflection.

When you gaze at Christ crucified for these forty days that are Lent, you are pulled close to the grace and forgiveness of your death finished for you. But it is a dangerous grace. This grace is one that does not leave you unfinished. It is a grace that purges and renews.

The purpose of Lent is to awaken in you a sense of your own sin, your guilt for your sin, and your sorrow over your sin. The purpose of Lent is to awaken “the sense of gratitude for the forgiveness of sins. To (awaken) or to motivate the works of love and the work for justice that one does out of the gratitude for the forgiveness of one’s sins.” (Edna Hong in Bread and Wine)

This grace can only be approached at the end of Lent. It is a long journey, these forty days. It is a necessary journey, one that fights the apathy and smugness of this world in which we often find it easy to spot deformities in the souls of others and find it also easy to turn away from the crippled places of our own souls.

Yet we do not travel this path of Lent alone. God’s Spirit Himself travels with us, maneuvering us down this steep path that ends at the foot of the cross. As we stand at the foot of the cross, stripped of our illusions about ourselves, we gaze at the battered and broken body of the One who came to rescue us. This body of Jesus that is our grace. This grace that brings fire. This fire that purges and cleanses and does not consume but instead resurrects us into a new self.

It is beautiful, this amazing and dangerous grace.

When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie
My grace all sufficient shall be your supply.
The flame shall not hurt you, my only design
Your dross to consume and your gold to refine.
~ How Firm a Foundation

Credit to Edna Hong and Walter Wangerin in Bread and Wine for many of the ideas in this post.