THANKSGIVING

‎"We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is 'good,' because is it good, if 'bad' because it works in us patience, humility, and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country." - C.S. Lewis

"Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day." - Robert Caspar Lintner

GROWING STRAIGHT UP

Here's something I wrote back in 2005, unedited:

I was parked at someone's house the other night and saw a young tree (a sapling?) in their yard.  I saw that the slender, delicate trunk of the tree was being gently pulled by strings tied to stakes on both the right and left sides.  This is obviously done to cause the tree to grow up straight and not crooked.

I got to thinking about this, and realized that when you really think about it with a simple mind, the whole concept behind this is pretty odd.  In order to grow a tree straight and tall, you must pull it to the right and left?  Of course it makes sense, but it just sounds weird.

I think many times our lives reflect these young trees that are being pulled on both sides.  The Gardener surely does this to us, as we are yet young saplings that have a ways to go before we become grand trees.  Even the slightest winds in this world will cause us to tilt to one side, but He will not have it so.  So, with the strings of hardships, joys, comforts, peace, friends, devastation, heartbreak, and loneliness, and stakes planted firmly in grace, love, and mercy, He pulls us from all sides to ensure that we grow straight up and tall, allowing our roots to creep deeper and grow more firmly.

So, if any of us are experiencing pain and sorrow in our hearts, it is because we are in need of those in order to grow up straight up towards heaven.  If any of us are experiencing a time of great happiness and pleasure, it is because we are in need of those in order to grow straight up towards heaven.  These things are done to us because our Gardener cannot help but to only allow us to grow straight upwards.  He does not desire for us to grow in wayward, tilted spurts that would make for a longer and more delayed path to the sky.  The straighter we grow, the faster and more directly we head towards home.  We all want to go home as soon as possible, and when the Gardener seems to take us off that straight and narrow path with delays and obstacles, we must be patient and understand that it may not be as it first appears.  He may, in fact, be doing exactly what we want and need Him to do.

We may not understand it now, but in the end, when we become like the cedars of Lebanon, when our trunks become thick and strong and our branches reach out in glorious fruition, all to the pleasure of our Gardener, we will understand it fully.

DELUSIONAL RHINO

"Aw, that's cute...and sad."

That was pretty much what I said in my head when I first saw this picture.

A rhino running his tail off on a treadmill in order to eventually look like a unicorn --  his goal is understandable, his effort is valiant, but it's all in vain. He'll never become a unicorn, no matter how much he runs.

In this illustration I see a simple reflection of us. Though we may be loath to confess it, we spend much of our lives on some kind of treadmill working toward some kind of improved version of ourselves. Most times these endeavors are selfish -- even evil. We try to reshape ourselves in order to fit the constructs of expectations set by those around us or ourselves, for misguided purposes. The end goals may seem admirable, but it's all a poor use of the precious time and energy we're allotted on this earth. It seems to me that most of us are prodigal in these matters, spending inordinate portions of our lives chasing these unattainable or self-indulgent objectives that always end in vanity, destitution and new treadmills.

Sometimes, however, these endeavors are good -- even holy. We desire to become more faithful in certain aspects of our lives; we work hard at calibrating our souls to the moral compass placed in our hearts; we try our best to balance our offenses with sufficient atonement. But even in these things, we often become so focused on ourselves, our narrow visions and our efforts that we lose our way and find ourselves on the same treadmills again and again.

In both cases, we forget how worthless our sweat is.

But if there is comfort to be had here, it's that both of these wayward paths share the same correction: We must come to grips with who we are and accept what we need -- we must stop fooling ourselves. The poster is too modest, the treadmill too small, our starting point too bereft. Our eyes must be fixed higher, our souls must be rooted in what's been done for us and our hearts must embrace the promise of what will be. We are to work harder for loftier goals, yet lean less on what we do on the way there.

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - C.S. Lewis

Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. - 2 Corinthians 3:15-18 ESV

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. - 1 John 3:1-3 ESV

O LORD, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works. - Isaiah 26:12 ESV

WALK WITH ME

Here's something I wrote back in 2005, unedited:

It's amazing how five months of jogging for 20 minutes and lifting weights three to five times a week can increase your stamina and endurance! I was bored tonight, so I decided to go out and take a nice jog around the neighborhood.  When I last did this way back in September, I got winded after about the first four minutes, but tonight I felt like Forrest Gump...I seriously felt like I could run from here to L.A. with energy to spare.  I felt like a running machine! I passed by about four opportunities to take a shorter route home, but I didn't take any of them.  It was a glorious night.

Anyhow, I passed by two couples walking with each other on my run.  Seeing them was nice, and made me yearn for the day when I might walk side by side with my wife on a warm summer night when we are elderly.  As I was taking a shower, I realized the significance of walking with your lover.

When you see a couple jogging together, it's nice to see but nothing special.  But when you see a couple, young or old, walking side by side, it's somehow romantic and wonderful to behold, something that you envy.  There's just a lot more intimacy when you walk side by side with someone.  When you run side by side, you can't really talk with each other, you can't really hold hands, it's hard to keep the exact same pace as the other person, and there's always that subtle competitive tension...it's just impersonal.

But when you walk side by side with someone, you can talk as you please without being short of breath, you can hold hands, step in stride with the other person, and all fear of falling behind or going too fast disappears.  It's just so intimate.

I believe that it's the same in our walk with God.  I guess our tendency is to run (and in a sense, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9 and Hebrews 12, we must) towards our goal, but because we are yet such foolish and awkward creatures, spiritual infants, when we run ahead of our Lord's will we lose our way and stumble.  We encounter many situations and times in our lives when it seems that things happen that cause us to slow down, when bumps rear their ugly forms above the plane...a career path suddenly seems hopeless, a loved one leaves us, friends desert us, financial troubles abound...and I think many times this is the doing of our Lord, who wants to slow us down, pull us back, grasp our hand, and walk side by side with us again.

When we begin to run ahead of our Lord (in a completely metaphorical sense, of course, for who could outrun One who fills the universe, who is always behind and ahead of us at all times to push us and to pull us?) His voice becomes muddled in the wind, we let go of the guiding hand that has been leading us, and our pride begins to whisper to us sweet lies of our self-reliance and we begin to believe that God was only a heavy burden that slowed us down.

What we fail to realize in our slow times is that God wants to walk with us, side by side.  He wants intimacy with us, and when we complain and become frustrated because He has slowed us down for no apparent reason, we are blind to the true nature of our situations.  Many of our prayers for quick deliverance from our hardships are, in essence, asking for less intimacy, less love, less of Him, not more.

We know this, don't we? When we look back at the hardest and most trying times in our lives, don't we always see times of great intimacy with our Father? It has never been otherwise, and there is no reason to think that will ever change.

So, Lord, I guess I'm not asking for a quick and easy reprieve...I only ask that You would hold my hand tighter and speak wonderful things to me during this time, that You would walk with me through this valley as long as You desire, and that you would draw me ever closer to You forever.

"Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away." - Genesis 5:24

"Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God." - Genesis 6:9

"Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." - 1 John 2:6

"And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love." - 2 John 1:6

PART-TIME MAN OF PRINCIPLE

"You can't be a part-time man of principle."

HAND REMOVED

Here's something I wrote back in 2005, unedited:

I came to a red light in front of the Turtle Back Zoo today and I had the delight of seeing a mother crossing the street with her little boy.  He couldn't have been more than 2 years old.  His hand was in his mother's as he bounded across the street, hopping and taking his tiny running strides as his mother calmly walked beside him.  When they came to the other side the mother let go of the child's hand and immediately his spunk and energy seemed to leave him, and he walked calmly forward while his mother followed close behind.

He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

- from "The Screwtape Letters," by C.S. Lewis (written from the point of view of a devil uncle to his devil nephew)

ABSENT INTENTION

'If you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.' - William Law

UNBEARABLE

God, I find your love absolutely unbearable.

THE INTOLERABLE COMPLIMENT

Here's something I wrote back in 2005, slightly edited:

Smile! God Loves You!

 

I've seen two of these bumper stickers in the past week, and each time I've wondered at what this really means. Yeah, I'm probably making this short and simple phrase unnecessarily complicated...

At first I thought that these were cool stickers to see. I mean, yeah, God does love you, and if anything should make you smile, this should be it! But then I got to thinking what, precisely, it means and what is entailed when God loves me.

And I immediately remembered all the times of pain that I've been through, and the trying times I'm going through right now. Do they give me good reason to smile? Hardly. But when it comes down to it...yeah, they should. God's love, and all love, carries in itself the intrinsic objective to bring the loved one towards a better end...to make them more whole, more lovable, more perfect. In the end I wholly agree with this exhortation to smile at the idea and glorious thought that God loves you...but I think it takes someone who has been through great sorrow and heart rending to truly understand and fully experience this impulse of muscles around our lips.

It's quite a coincidence, but I read something C.S. Lewis had to say on this exact matter, and well, he puts it a whole lot better than I ever could:

We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the 'intolerable compliment.' Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life -- the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child -- he will take endless trouble -- and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and recommenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumbnail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less...

When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather then first begin to care? Does any woman regard it as a sign of love in a man that he neither knows nor cares how she is looking? Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved; his 'feeling is more soft and sensible than are the tender horns of cockled snails.' Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all...

You asked for a loving God: you have one...How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes.

- C.S. Lewis

(emphasis added)

RUNAWAY BRIDE(S)

Here's something I wrote back in 2005, slightly edited:

Jennifer Wilbanks.

Don't know the name? Well, if you've been anywhere but under a rock you'll recognize her story.

She's the real-life "runaway bride," the woman who faked her own kidnapping in order to avoid her wedding.

Yeah, people are pissed. She wasted countless hours and dollars that were spent by worried volunteers and police forces who could have spent their time on more worthy and necessary causes.

My first reaction was no different. I couldn't believe what she had done, and it made me angry. What made me even more angry, and confused, was hearing that her husband-to-be still wants to marry her! Is the dude stupid? Is he an idiot? He was just embarrassed in front of an entire nation...he will forever be the man who was such a loser that his fiancee went to such extreme measures to avoid marrying him...to the point of faking her own disappearance. I don't know about you guys, but if my fiancee did that to me I wouldn't take her back so easily...I'd be so embarrassed, so heartbroken, so discouraged, so dishonored, so angry, so bitter...


BAM


I am her.

I was to be married to the most wonderful, beautiful, perfect groom...and for some reason, I ran away. My wickedness drew me away from my Love and towards barrenness, loneliness, and despair. I embarrassed Him...I cannot bear to imagine what the Enemy must have been thinking as he scoffed and mocked Him. I made Him so angry, so heartbroken, so dishonored, that He wad driven to the point of death.

I left Him there on that altar...and it is on that altar that He sacrificed Himself, to show that He was not angry with me, He was not bitter, He forgave my stupidity and waywardness, once and for all.

And so, once again, I run back to the place I left my Husband...I run back to that altar...I run back to that cross, beckoning Him to take my hand in marriage again, vowing to never run away again.

And like always, He says, "I do."

"I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now." - Hosea 2:7

"For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ." - 2 Corinthians 1:20

REGULAR?

Here's something I wrote back in 2005, unedited:

My favorite gas station is the Gulf on Northfield Ave. in West Orange, hands down, no questions asked. They have the best pumpers. There's that one young kid who always greets me with a familiar "Hey" and a warm smile, and then there's this guy.

So it's Friday, I'm driving home from work to start the weekend, but I'm low on gas. That darned yellow light is on, yet again, and so I decide to stop by the Gulf on my way home.

I pull up to the pump, and the guy walks over to my car and uncaps my tank.

"Can I have $15 of regular please?" I says.

"Regular? This is Ferrari, man!" he proclaims with a smile.

"What? Are you kidding?" I says with a smile, slightly caught off guard by the unusually funny comment made by a man pumping gas. Then I laughed and he just smiled back.

"Regular? This is Ferrari, man!" I believe these are words that our Lord utters many times, though in more eloquent, divine, and true fashion.

We all pull up to the spiritual pump at least once a day (I hope), asking God to fill us up again. But what do we ask for? It seems that all to often we ask for things that may be good, but not the best. We ask for mushy love in the form of an imperfect person, when we have full love in the form of a perfect Lord and Savior knocking on our door. We ask for fleeting money that disappears just as water or sand does in our hands, when we have complete and eternal wealth and treasures that can never fade or flee awaiting our ever nearing homecoming. We unknowingly ask for immaturity and distance from God when we plead for pain, sorrow, and struggle to just be taken away, when we have maturity, fulness in character, and more intimate nearness to God waiting for us at the end of this short valley.

Regular? We're spiritual Ferraris, man!

Our bodies, hearts, and souls are no Kias, Hondas, or even Bentleys...they're so much better than that, and so, they deserve better than regular.

And yes, premium gas is quite expensive, but the currency we use is that of mercy and grace, and that is given to us in infinite measure by our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's stop settling for regular, when premium, when supreme, when the best is offered to us freely each and every moment of our lives. It is ours for the taking.

Thanks Mr. Gas Pumper...I will never get regular again.

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to come awake. Still more to remain awake." - C.S. Lewis

"The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best." - Oswald Chambers

SONNET

On hearing the Dies Irae sung in the Sistine Chapel:

Nay, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring,
  Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove,
  Teach me more clearly of Thy life and love
Than terrors of red flame and thundering.
The hillside vines dear memories of Thee bring:
  A bird at evening flying to its nest
  Tells me of One who had no place of rest:
I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing.
Come rather on some autumn afternoon,
  When red and brown are burnished on the leaves,
  And the fields echo to the gleaner's song,
Come when the splendid fulness of the moon
  Looks down upon the rows of golden sheaves,
  And reap Thy harvest: we have waited long.

  - Oscar Wilde

TWO

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?

- G.K. Chesterton

LOVE

"God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say 'seeing'? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a 'host' who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and 'take advantage of' Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves." - C.S. Lewis

BEHIND YOUR BACK

Here's something I wrote back in early 2005, unedited:

Isaiah 38:17

"Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back." (NIV)

Can anguish be beneficial? I think everyone can agree that yes, many times anguish does bring about good in the end. The King James Version translates this as: "Behold, for peace I had great bitterness". For peace? How can anguish and/or bitterness lead to peace?

King Hezekiah is writing this after a deadly illness he had, which the Lord had healed him from, granting him an extra fifteen years to live. Not only this, but God also promised to deliver Hezekiah and Israel from the hands of Assyria and vowed to defend the city.

Hezekiah's only hope to live during this illness was God. He cried out to the Lord and the Lord responded by healing him. Clearly, this was a humbling experience for him, to which he says in verse 15, "But what can I say? He has spoken to me, and he himself has done this. I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul."

It's strangely wonderful to be humbled by the Lord through distressing and harsh circumstances. They are quick and heavy reminders that we are powerless and futile when it comes to being masters of our own lives. In the end, regardless of how powerful you are, God is the one who can destroy or save you. And I think it is this very concept that Hezekiah realized on his death bed, and that caused him to say that it was for his benefit, for his peace, that he suffered such anguish and bitterness. For now he knows that God and God alone is the Almighty One who holds his life in his hands, and seeing how gracious and merciful he was in this one matter, Hezekiah had all the reason in the world to find peace, living in God's wonderful promise.

What caught my eye in this verse was the second half. It was not out of mockery, pity, or self-seeking pride that God saved Hezekiah from the grips of death, but out of love. When you consider carefully who Hezekiah was in relation to God (i.e. nothing) this is quite a big idea.

Oh, oh, oh, but did you catch it? Did you?

"you have put all my sins behind your back."

Once again, the Old Testament gives us a foreshadowing of what is yet to come.

In His love, the Lord kept Hezekiah from destruction, and in so doing was required to do something about all of his sins. Could he just overlook them? Could he just let them pass? Absolutely not. God's justice and wrath will not allow it. It's in His very character, His uncompromising essence. Something must be done about Hezekiah's sins...but what?

The Lord puts them behind Him.

When someone wrongs us, especially someone who is dear to us, what is the only way we can forgive them and move on? By "putting it behind you", by leaving it in the past, by turning your back and pardoning that one instance of hurt and harm. God puts Hezekiah's sins behind Him...both in this figurative and also in a very literal sense.

Jesus Christ bore a heavy cross that was laden with all of our sins. Absolutely all of them...small or great, open or hidden, known or unknown, they are all put on that cross. And what does Jesus do with that cross?

He puts it behind His back.

He puts all our sins behind His back.

In that one act of love, justice, and grace, God shows us that our sins are forgiven, that He no longer sees them, because His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, has cast them all behind His back.

The next time you look at a picture or movie depicting Christ's death on that cross, or the next time you think about it and picture it in your head, think about this as you see Jesus hanging on that tree, with His arms opened to you, and notice the fullness and significance of the fact that He is not facing the cross He is nailed to.

And it was all in His love...

And just like Hezekiah, we can proclaim that our lives lived in anguish and bitterness before we met Christ were for our benefit, for our peace, because we now live in the promise of the very God who has saved us from the pit of destruction. The contrast between our former and our present states is immeasurable and should invoke humility and eternal praise.

Praise be to the One who put all of our sins behind Him.
Amen.

TRUTH NOW, LAZARUS

I feel like I'm the closest to mental, emotional and spiritual "clarity" than I've been in a while, which isn't saying much, but I suppose it's a start. I've been reading the minor prophets lately, which is mostly dire, dark stuff, but strayed into the Psalms for a bit last night and was struck by Psalm 15:

    O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent?
        Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
    He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
        and speaks truth in his heart;
    who does not slander with his tongue
        and does no evil to his neighbor,
        nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
    in whose eyes a vile person is despised,
        but who honors those who fear the LORD;
    who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
    who does not put out his money at interest
        and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
    He who does these things shall never be moved.

I bolded the line that really stood out to me: "...speaks truth in his heart."

Through self-reflection and the exhortations of those God has placed around me, I've realized how much falsehood I've allowed to dwell in and sink into me. It's not that I've consciously embraced it, but I have done little to consciously combat it. This will change, with God's help. I'm going to immerse myself more in the Bible and prayer to do this.

Also, during my lunch break this afternoon, I realized how defeated I have been lately. While I accept and even embrace the notion that there are times when God demands silence and godly sorrow from us, our victory in Christ is never to be forgotten or set aside. I struggle with keeping that balance, but I'm sick of being so bogged down by fleeting burdens; I'm sick of slouching my shoulders as I walk beside the King, as His prince; I'm sick of living as if it were still those three days between the death and resurrection.

My troubles are temporary, but my victory is eternal. My faults are real, but my standing is assured. There is sorrow for me to taste, but my Savior has tasted my death -- and He's risen, and I with him.

As I prayed last night, I remembered Lazarus and our cell group's recent Bible study on John 11. For maybe the first time, I shifted my perspective and thought of what Lazarus must've seen as he rose from that slab of stone and walked, still dressed in linen, toward the tomb's bright opening. I wondered how he must've felt when he saw -- as he maybe expected to -- the face of none other than Jesus before him as the cloth was removed from his eyes.

I prayed that I would be Lazarus, that I would be made alive again, that the cloth would be removed from my eyes so that I might see my Love again.

I need God's help, of course. Your prayers would be appreciated as well.