Present Tense

Sometimes I ride the bus to school. It's kind of a hassle to plan around, but it beats finding and paying for a parking space on campus. And, even though it's a hassle, it's sometimes really nice to ride the bus.

When I'm on the bus, I have to actually be surrounded by all the people I'd normally drive right past, too hurried to notice anything about them. I see that some people ride the bus so much that they've gotten to know the bus drivers well, and those people tell the bus drivers about their Christmas breaks and their families. And, when I ride the bus, I get to take a break from concentrating on driving and actually notice what's going on around me.

I get to just be right there, not so worried about how I'm going to get to where I'm going because someone else is taking care of it. It's a moment in which I can focus on the present, rather than on what's up ahead.

Lately, I've been reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. It's a collection of letters from one demon, Screwtape, to another, Wormwood. Screwtape gives instructions on how to steer a Christian away from following his faith. I always think of this book as "that book that people start but never finish because it makes them nervous." I can understand the nervousness, but the book really gives an amazing way of looking at Christianity.

One excerpt that stood out to me was the following. Keep in mind that "the Enemy" Screwtape writes of is God.

"The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present--either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiveing the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure" (75-76).

It makes me wonder about our need to always look so far ahead, to spend time imagining a life which is not yet ours, a future which may never actually happen to us. I think that so many of our anxieties and disappointments are tied to that habit of constantly looking forward to an unpredictable future while forgetting to spend our time appreciating the Present that we are currently living in.

Maybe that's why we're reminded in Matthew 6:34,

"So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

I agree that today has enough troubles. But, today also has enough beauty, and it has enough happiness, and it has enough love. Perhaps we will see all of those wonderful things, even amid the trouble, when we take the time to enjoy today without looking forward, with apprenhesion or excitement, to tomorrow.

High Fidelity

There was a time when I went on a carb-free diet. I ate a lot of cheese and meat and a smattering of vegetables. But absolutely no bread or sugar came anywhere near my mouth. On the upside, I lost a ton of weight in almost no time. But it was miserable. It was miserable because I absolutely love bread. In fact, there are few things that I like more than a nice chunk of tasty bread with maybe a little cheese, preferably something blue or smoky, to go with it.

My favorite bread is challah. It's dense but still soft in texture, a little sweet but nothing overpowering. And, because it's braided, a loaf of challah just looks beautiful.

Over the break, I learned to make challah. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I had a good recipe to follow, and it even gave me pictures to illustrate the whole process of braiding. But, even though it wasn't too difficult and even though the instructions were very clear, there was still some mystery to the whole process of making bread. I had to mix together all of these simple ingredients--eggs, water, oil, yeast, honey, flour--and expect that, simple as these things are, they would be transformed into a beautiful loaf of challah.

It seemed a little far-fetched to believe it could happen, and my patience and faith in the recipe were, of course, put to the test while I waited for the bread to rise. But it did rise, puffed up by yeast, only to be punched down, reworked, cut into four pieces, braided, coated with an egg wash, and placed in the oven. And, all of those simple ingredients really did transform into a loaf of challah.

The whole process is a bit of a mystery to me. I mean, there's a good explanation of the process of making bread, something that makes sense of how the yeast reacts to the heat and the moisture. But, making bread requires a bit of faith and a bit of patience. It requires careful consideration and attention to the weather, the humidity, the heat of the room. None of these things can be left to chance or the ingredients won't become what they're intended to be. If the dough is too sticky or too dry, it's difficult to braid, and then the beauty of the challah is lost, because it's in those confusing braided knots that the bread has its densest texture and its real aesthetic.

Even though I can appreciate the mystery of bread making, I'm not generally one who loves mystery. I like to understand things, to know the answer to things, right now. Sometimes this is a negative trait. I sometimes try, almost compulsively, to make sense of things, to understand things even when there is no ready explanation. This is a very difficult trait to deal with when one is thinking about God, and it was a trait that became apparent as I sensed that God was trying to get my attention.

When I say that I wasn't happy about returning to Christianity, I'm not lying. I was confused about what it meant to be a Christian, and I wasn't really sure I wanted to be one. I mean, I wasn't sure that I wanted to be one of those Christians for whom Christianity actually meant something, one of those Christians who really believed it all. There was a conversation that played in my head. Sometimes it was a conversation with God; sometimes it was a conversation with myself. But, it went something like this:

"Fine, I'll be a Christian. I'll stop doing whatever God says I shouldn't do. I'll start going to church. I'll pray. I'll believe in God, in Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. I'll say and actually believe the Apostles' Creed. I'll do all of those things, but I'm not going to believe that."

Whatever that was would change, depending on whatever it was that didn't make sense to me or whatever it was that I felt particularly strong about at the moment. That was not just one but many different things. That came up more than once. That came up a lot.

That, whatever it was, had formed a strong barrier around my heart, and it was working very hard to only let in those things which made sense to me, sense as I had understood it for so long. But, there must have been some cracks in this barrier. Because, as I began to pray and read my Bible and talk to other people (like those Christians who actually believed this stuff), that came to make less sense to me than God's Word.

And, somewhere along the way, I learned that I was believing all this stuff, not because I felt obligated to out of fear, but because I felt compelled to out of love. As Donald Miller writes in Searching for God Knows What:

"Jesus was always, and I mean always, talking about love, about people, about relationships, and He never broke anything into steps or formulas. What if, because we were constantly trying to dissect His message, we were missing a blatant invitation? I began to wonder if becoming a Christian did not work more like falling in love than agreeing with a list if true principles...What if the gospel of Jesus was an invitation to know God?" (46).

I love how he writes this because, though I really believe in those true principles, they don't make sense to me out of the context of love. And, when I found a love for God and a love for Jesus, I finally found a love for His true principles. The conversation in my head continued, but my protests were answered with, well, truth. I came to see God's love for me, for all of us, in His rules. And, when I started to see it as love, He started to show me answers. It's as if I, puffed up with all my understanding and intellect, would refuse to believe, only to be punched down and reworked. Allowed to become that which I was intended to be.

And, I think that is the mystery that we can't understand until we somehow find that love or, perhaps, allow ourselves to feel that love, to let that love come through the cracks in the barriers that guard our hearts. Because, when I felt that love, I didn't feel as if I was following a set of rules or believing a set of principles that had no purpose or made no sense. It felt more like accepting the mystery of God and His Word and asking Him to explain who He is to me, rather than me trying to tell Him who He is or trying to lean on my own understanding.

It seems that when we make it through the mystery, through the confusing times, while still holding onto a faith that God is true and faithful to His Word, that we move closer to really loving Him. We begin to understand that those confusing times contain the greatest joy of discovery, the greatest depth of truth. Sometimes it is when we hold onto faith through those most confusing times that we really learn to be faithful to a God who always will be faithful to us.

Another Confession

There are times when I think that all my beliefs are silly, that they could be easily disproved. There are times when I think that a few well-articulated arguments could explain away much of what I believe.

The strange thing is though, that even though I know that, it doesn't make me believe any less. It doesn't make my beliefs any weaker. In fact, it doesn't really affect them at all.

I know that sounds odd. I know that sounds as if I've given up on reason and rational thought. I really haven't.

It just seems to me that there must be an absolute, that there must be something that is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). It seems that for us to have any sort of chance in life, there must be some possibility of redemption, some hope for rebirth and renewal of our hearts and minds.

And somehow, despite all argument and reason, I know that absolute, that hope for the redemption of my life, is Jesus. Donald Miller talks about becoming a Christian as being much like falling in love, and I have to agree with him. Because, like falling in love, much of it makes little sense. There is simply an awareness of being pulled toward something much larger than yourself, and despite all protestations and all inner argument, there is no way to fight falling in love.

And that is why I don't really worry so much about the arguments. I can no more write up an equation for why I believe what I believe than I could write up an equation to explain falling in love. But, it doesn't make it any less real. Maybe it makes it even more real, as it always seems that we're more affected by that which touches our hearts and souls than that which appeals to our reasonable selves.

Isn't it in our hearts and souls that we need the hope of redemption? Isn't it our hearts which allow us to fall in love, to really know God and have a relationship with Him?

So, I haven't given up on rational thought, but I have decided to have an open heart, to realize that His ways are not my ways, to choose to believe and choose to love. Maybe I'm odd, but, as Flannery O'Connor said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd."

A Goodnight Psalm

I try to read at least one chapter of Psalms each day. I'd like to say that I read them because I'm such a dedicated Bible scholar, but I'm really not. I really just read the Psalms because they're soothing. I like to read them right before I go to sleep because they remind me that God is watching over me, that I am safe and loved. When I read the Psalms, I always fall in love with their poetry, but I also feel like, in reading them, the truth is being spoken to my heart and soul. And all of that makes me feel calm and ready to sleep.

So, tonight, I thought I'd post a Psalm that I read just a little bit ago. I hope that it gives you some peace and good dreams if you're reading it tonight, or that it maybe gives you the calm you need to face the day if you're reading it tomorrow.

Here is a Psalm for you.

Psalm 46

1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.

2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
Selah

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.

5 God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.

6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

7 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah

8 Come and see the works of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.

9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.

10 "Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."

11 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah

Ache

Lately, I've been listening to Sara Groves a lot, and, as usual, I keep coming back to just a few songs from the CD, playing them over and over, thinking about the lyrics, singing along. One of the songs that keeps speaking to me is "I Saw What I Saw." Here is the song and its video:



The lyrics that keep coming back to me are:

"I saw what I saw and I can't forget it;
I heard what I heard and I can't go back;
I know what I know and I can't deny it.

Something on the road, cut me to the soul."

When I think of those lyrics, they send me back to the words that Simeon spoke to Mary when he saw Jesus. Remember that the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that Simeon would not die until he saw the Messiah, and, upon seeing Jesus, Simeon knew that the Holy Spirit had been faithful. Simeon knew that he had, in fact, seen the Savior, and he thanked God for this gift. But then Simeon spoke to Mary saying,

"This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too" (Luke 2:34-25).

I think of Simeon's words because it seems to me that when we have an experience with Jesus, we know that there may be pain, that our souls will be pierced and never remain the same. That our spirits will be changed. That what logic and reason had once spoken to us will be transformed by the understanding of the Spirit, the guidance and comfort given to us by Christ.

Sometimes, when I think about religion, the word that comes to my head is "ossified." I think of the ways in which our flesh and hearts turn to bone, become hardened over time and unreceptive to the fact that our souls should ache on seeing the pain of others, the fact that our hearts should feel a bit broken.

Or I think of how we can become hardened against belief, becoming distrustful of the ache inside our hearts and souls, acknowledging to ourselves that this hole in us needs to be filled but never knowing or acknowledging that we have a God-shaped hole that cannot be filled in any other way but through allowing God to enter the parts of our hearts we give no one else access too. Because, it is in those places that we most need the love that only God can give, the kind of love that cannot be taken back, the kind of love that never leaves us or forsakes us.

It is this kind of love that lets us know that it is safe for our hearts to break for ourselves and for others because we know that we have a heavenly Father who will comfort us in our pain, who will bind up our wounds. William Barclay paraphrases the second Beatitude as,

"O the bliss of the man whose heart is broken for the world's suffering and for his own sin, for out of his sorrow he will find the joy of God."

It is a pain of the heart and soul which acknowledges a need for God. And, even before that need is acknowledged, God is there waiting, waiting to offer us joy.

I guess I should say that, if I'm really honest, none of this would have made sense to me a while ago. In fact, I would have thought that the author of these words was a little strange. And, honestly, that's being kind. I probably would have dismissed this as a bunch of overly-religious ramblings that had nothing to do with me, but, as in the song, "Something on the road, cut me to the soul."

Why We Do What We Do

When I was young, I prayed without really thinking about it. That is to say, I prayed with a belief that my prayers would be heard and answered, with a faith that God really was up there in heaven listening to me.

But, over time, my rational side won out. I didn't pray so much. I didn't see the point to any of it really. If God heard me, it didn't matter much to me because I never heard anything back from Him. None of it really made much sense. Didn't God know what He wanted for my life anyways, and, if He knew that sort of thing already, what sense would it make for me to pray?

And the prayers became fewer and fewer. Until there really were no prayers. But, sometimes when things got really, really hard, I would pray. I'm not sure why I would pray. There was some sort of desperation, some sort of finding myself at the end of my rope, at the end of myself, that compelled me to turn the only way I hadn't before. And that way was up, toward God, toward heaven and all those things I hadn't thought of much before.

And then I would pray. I would pray because there was nothing left to do, nowhere else to go. I would pray even though all logic and common sense told me I was foolish. I would pray even though it was a mystery, even though it made no sense to me.

Surely, I must do something. Surely saying a few words to a God I cannot see isn't enough. Surely there must be some concrete action I can take that would be more sensible than turning to God.

That's what I thought then, but lately it seems to be the actions that make the least sense which sometimes do the most good.

Awhile ago I was remembering a professor I had in college. He taught Philosophy, and I took a few classes from him. One day, like most everyday, he was telling us a story from his own life. When he was a young boy, he learned that a young woman who his family knew was going to become a nun. She'd spent much time in discernment and felt called to this life, and she was taking vows to become a cloistered nun. My professor, as a young child, wondered why a young woman, a woman who could have any future she chose, would choose such an austere life. After all, hers would not be simply the life of a nun, but the life of a cloistered nun.

He asked his mother why the young woman wanted to become a nun, and his mother simply said, "She's doing it for you."

When I think of that story, I feel the depth of that young woman's sacrificial love, and it makes me think that that sort of love, the love that doesn't make any rational or logical sense, is what the Christian life is about. That is the sort of love God has for us, the sort of love that would send a Son to die for our sins. As Romans 5:7-8 says, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

That's a love that doesn't make sense, a love too big to wrap my mind around. But, He was doing it for us.

And, in knowing this love was given to us, as undeserving as we were and still are, we can only respond in faith. It is that faith which compels the young woman to join religious orders, to spend her life in quiet contemplation of her God, to give her body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God (Romans 12:1). It is that faith which brought that young woman to daily prayer and devotion, prayers to God for people like us, people on the outside who may or may not have even believed. And yet, she prayed for us, undeserving as we might have been of those prayers.

It is that faith that causes me, when I come to the end of myself and all that I can humanly do, to turn to God. Not because saying words to the sky and air gives me a sense of peace, but because I have faith that there is a God who hears my prayers, that there really is a God who, like a heavenly Father, guides my path even when I can't see Him, even when I'm quite alone.

Like my professor, I used to wonder why people chose a spiritual life. I wondered why, when there were so many things on earth to do and see and worry about, people chose to look up to a God who may or may not have been there, to pray to Him and ask Him for help and guidance.

I didn't know then, but I understand now. All along, those people who chose the spiritual life, who chose to humble themselves and pray to God, knew God would be there for them when they reached the end of themselves, when they trusted Him and put their faith in Him. They turned to Him in prayer because they believed Him, because they loved Him enough to trust Him.

And, they did it for me.

New Favorite Song

Over the last couple of days, I have been loving the song "When the Saints" by Sara Groves. And I don't just love it because she's also a Sara without an "h." Although that does make it even better.

Seriously, I love the song for its lyrics, its passion, its meaning. But I also love it because of the story behind it. The story of what most inspired this song and the CD can be found here. Just scroll down the page until you hit the Biography section, and, in it, you'll read the story of a young woman, Elisabeth.

When I read Elisabeth's story, I thought of how we often spend so much time in regret, so much time wishing that we hadn't done something or dreaming of what our lives would be like had we made some other choice. And, we spend a lot of time wishing that many things, things beyond our control, had not happened to us. And, so often we bear the scars of our bad choices and of the harmful actions of others.

It's hard to not do that, but I wonder what our lives would be like if we really believed Romans 8:28? What if we truly believed "that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose?" Could we, like Elisabeth, look back on even the most difficult times in our lives and see God in them, see that there may have been some purpose or reason for that time in our lives? Some way that we can let God work through us and turn those difficult times into good?

It's a difficult thing to do. We want so much to have perfect lives, to have done things the right way, to have never made the wrong choices, to have never been put into harmful and hurtful situations. And yet, without those times, what would we be like? How could we relate to others who had similar hurts? Could we be the comfort to them that we can now be if we had never known such hurt? Can we see those difficult times as experiences we cannot waste, as experiences that can make us people who can speak to the hurts of others?

Because I love it so much, I'll leave you with the lyrics to "When the Saints." If you haven't heard it yet, you really must. I promise you'll love it too. And, when you listen to it, think about Elisabeth's story; it will fill you with hope and faith.

"When the Saints"

Lord I have a heavy burden of all I've seen and know
It's more than I can handle
But your word is burning like a fire shut up in my bones
and I cannot let it go

And when I'm weary and overwrought
with so many battles left unfought

I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars
And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them

Lord it's all that I can't carry and cannot leave behind
it often overwhelms me
but when I think of all who've gone before and lived the faithful life
their courage compells me
And when I'm weary and overwrought
with so many battles left unfought

I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars

I see the shepherd Moses in the Pharaoh's court
I hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord

And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them
And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them

I see the long quiet walk along the Underground Railroad
I see the slave awakening to the value of her soul

I see the young missionary and the angry spear
I see his family returning with no trace of fear

I see the long hard shadows of Calcutta nights
I see the sisters standing by the dying man's side

I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor
I see the man with a passion come and kicking down the door

I see the man of sorrows and his long troubled road
I see the world on his shoulders and my easy load

And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them

Being Religious

Donald Miller is one of my favorite authors, and Blue Like Jazz is one of my favorite books. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about something he says in the book. Miller writes,

"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather to have us wasting time. That is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God" (13).

I guess I've been thinking of this lately because I often use the word "religious" to describe myself, and I think a lot of us do that. It's a sort of shorthand really, isn't it? It's sort of an easy way to explain what we are.

But really, it doesn't explain it at all.

Because if I were really to say what I am, the word "religious" wouldn't make any sense. I guess I do things that would be seen as religious. I pray; I read the Bible; I go to church. And yet, there is a reason I do those things, and the reason is not that I do them out of habit. I'm not wasting time by doing those things. I'm not saying prayers that have no purpose just because I feel I should be saying prayers or going to church on Sundays because I feel like I have to be there or reading my Bible because I feel compelled to out of guilt.

I pray because I want to, because I can think of no better way to know God, to seek His will for my life, to find the answers to life's problems, to ask for help and guidance. I read my Bible for many of the same reasons and also because I'm constantly amazed at how poetic it is, how I can sometimes read something in my Bible and just find myself completely surprised by how beautiful its words are. That book had been sitting in my home untouched for years. Why did it take me so long to open it up and really see what was inside? And, I go to church because I find some strength in seeing other people, often older people, still learning more about God, still seeking His word and His teachings.

So, I use the word "religious," but I don't really mean it. Quite honestly, I don't want to be religious. I don't want to go through motions for no reason or be so entrenched in ritual that I forget to find God within it. What I want is what I think we all want--for my heart to engage with God.

I press on toward the goal...

At one point, I became a runner. Now, I never would have thought I'd say that. When I was growing up, my least favorite day of the week was Wednesday. At my school, that day was known as "Running Wednesday," as it was the day that all we did was run during P.E. class.

I hated it. Hated it.

There's no nicer way to put it. I absolutely hated "Running Wednesday." It wasn't even a good name, really. I mean, seriously, couldn't there have been something more clever, perhaps even alliterative? I suppose not, as there aren't any days of the week that begin with the letter R. Which is just fine with me. I just turned every "Running Wednesday" into a "Walking Wednesday" anyways. See, "Walking Wednesday" is clever, alliterative, memorable. Running Wednesday was just a beating.

Yet somehow, I became a runner a couple of years ago. In truth, I haven't been doing so much running lately, but I'm no longer scared of it or feel burdened by it. I no longer think of running as pure torture; instead, I think of running as something that I want to get back into, something that makes me feel good when I'm doing it, when I'm in the practice of running regularly. And since I haven't been running, I feel like there's something missing.

But, even though I love running, I don't really think of myself as a disciplined runner. I never wear a watch; I never want to figure out how fast I can run a certain distance. When I'm really into running, I want to run everyday, and I want to push myself to run just a little more than I think I can. But, I don't do that because I feel like I have to; I do it because I really want to.

I never thought I'd actually want to run. I guess I always just thought of it as something you did to avoid getting yelled at by a coach or to keep from gaining weight. It just always seemed that there was some sort of punishment attached to not running, and I never thought about what good things could come of running.

Similarly, I always thought of the negatives of not going to church, not reading the Bible, not praying, not following all the rules of Christianity. And those were always way worse than getting yelled at by a P.E. coach or getting fat. But I never thought about the good that could come from Bible reading and such, and I never thought of how those things could become a part of me, a part of who I am and who I see myself becoming.

I guess I mean to say that, at a certain point, I just fell in love with it all, like I did with running. And, that whole falling in love thing isn't something I expected. It's not even something I wanted, quite honestly. And yet, it happened. Because that's how love happens sometimes. It happens when you least expect it, often when you least want it. But I did fall in love with it all, and suddenly prayer and reading my Bible and going to church just made sense because I wanted to feel closer to God. I really just wanted to follow Him, to know more about Him.

There are times, in running, when what keeps me going is thinking of the negative effects of stopping--knowing that I'll feel like I've let myself down, knowing that I can't work off that last piece of chocolate cake if I don't run. But, that won't keep me going for too long. If there weren't some sort of love for running, I'd never put on a pair of running shoes and go outside. It just wouldn't occur to me to even do it. And, if there weren't some sort of love for God, I don't think it would occur to me to pray, to read my Bible, to go to church, to pay attention to any of the rules.

It is that love that makes me press on toward the goal.

Losing My Religion

If I'm honest, I'd have to tell you that there are plenty of things I'd have rather done than become a practicing Christian again. There were a lot of directions I saw my life headed, and none of them involved sitting in Bible Study or going to church or caring about what God thought about the direction of my life or doing an awful lot of praying.

I mean, somewhere in me I did care about those things for some reason, but I didn't care about them very much. Not enough to base my life on them. Not enough to make me change. Not enough to make me want to do anything that would be too hard or anything that would make me stand out or be weird.

I liked church sometimes. I liked the tradition. I liked the hymns. I even kind of liked sermons if they were uplifting and made me feel nice. I really liked religion. The very idea of it--the ceremony, the liturgy, the feel of a church. But, that was pretty much it. I guess I mean to say that none of this stuff really affected my life. Church was nice and all, but I didn't really see a connection between church and anything larger or any reason that what went on in church or what I had read in the Bible many, many years ago should really affect my life in the present.

So, what happened? I suppose I could tell some great testimony at this point, some story of one single moment in which I had an epiphany. But, I don't really want to give a testimony, and I didn't really have one moment in which all of this occurred. It didn't happen like that. Seriously, I wasn't Saul on the road to Damascus. I'm just a grad student who lives in the middle of a cornfield, and what happened is pretty simple.

I just realized it's all true.

I mean, that's it. Really. It's incredibly simple. I want it to be more difficult, more intricate, more...well...interesting. But it isn't. I just realized it's all true. And then I had no choice but to believe.

And, when I realized it was all true, I realized that I was connected to something much larger, and, suddenly, I realized that what I did with my life mattered, not just to me, but to a God who had allowed His Son to be sacrificed for me. And, when I looked at it that way, the cross meant more to me than it had before. Before, it was really just something at the front of the church, but I couldn't see it in that way anymore, and I still can't. Because it all became real. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And, that's the very simple story of how I lost my religion. Or, perhaps the story of how I gained a relationship.

Catching Up: The Christmas Edition

This Christmas has been really hectic, and there hasn't been much time to write lately. On the one hand, I always hate having less time to write, and I always regret not getting more reading done. On the other hand, I'm always glad to have time to see friends and family. I have to admit that I know there will be more time to read and to write and that I'd really rather take advantage of being home and being able to see all these people.

Plus, though I live in a cornfield, I never, ever have the opportunity to ride a tractor, and I've gotten to do that while I've been here. I've also gotten pretty good at driving a four-wheeler and pretty accustomed to stomping through mud in a pair of rubber boots while on the farm.

And, while out at the farm, I got to have two Christmas dinners. That's right. I feel pretty ridiculously stuffed, and the fact that I decided to learn how to make bread isn't helping that at all! So far, I've made a few loaves of challah, and now I want to branch out into the world of wheat breads...and then I can drop out of grad school and start my own bakery! ;) Okay, I'm pretty much joking about that.

Other than time on the farm, I got some big-city time in with a trip to Dallas. I visited some friends there and celebrated my friend Joanna's birthday with a yummy brunch and a nice, relaxing pedicure--definitely a change from the farm!

I also got to see how much Joanna's baby has grown. The funny thing is, I was (for one, brief moment) the baby's godfather. It's totally true. I stood in for the real godfather at the baptism because the real godfather had to stay home with his own babies! And so, I can say I was once a godfather.

I plan to write some more about the coming of the new year and all, but I have to say that that weird moment of being a godfather is one of the funniest moments of my life, but it was also a very happy one. To stand there and see this little baby and to think about the hopes that we all have for him, all the possibilities his life holds, it truly was one of the most special moments I've been a part of.

So, it is true that I haven't had time to read or write, but those things happen. There will be time to read and to write. I'm pretty sure neither reading or writing makes it into that passage from Ecclesiastes, but there truly is a time for every purpose under heaven, even those things we never thought we'd do!

A Post for Christmas

One of my favorite Christmas carols is "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." It goes like this:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

I love it because it's sort of melancholy and sad. It doesn't seem like most Christmas carols, and, according to my uncle, part of the reason for that is that it was written during the Civil War, a time when peace seemed so far from us all, a time when fear must have been the most prevalent feeling.

I know we don't often think of it this way, but fear is really a big part of Christmas. The fear of the shepherds, the wisemen, Mary and Joseph. Our own fear in confronting the thought of God taking on human form, the Word made flesh. That thought, that thought alone is enough to cause fear.

Though there is great strength in the coming of the Savior and the possibility of forgiveness, there is also fear. The shepherds knew about that kind of fear. As I learned in church yesterday, the Greek translation says they were "afraid with a great fear."

How fearful is that? Afraid with a great fear. Just to say it makes me feel for them, how scared they must have been. Afraid while standing in the presence of angels who were surrounded by the glory of God.

And yet, that is not the whole story. The whole story is that the angels brought glad tidings of joy. The whole story is that the shepherds, though fearful, were about to encounter the only thing that would bring them true and lasting peace, as they chose to venture away from their fields to seek Jesus.

I understand their fear and often have it myself. And yet, I know that there is peace, everlasting peace, peace that passes all understanding.

And it is that peace I pray for this Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas.

Wisdom and Love

One of my favorite Christmas stories is O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi." In it, he tells the story of a poor young married couple, trying to buy each other gifts for Christmas though they can't really afford them. The basic story is that the woman had sold her hair to buy a watch chain for the man, and the man had sold his watch to buy beautiful combs for the woman.

I think we can read it and think of how silly these two are, but I really think it speaks to the deep love they have for one another. O. Henry concludes the story by writing:

"The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."

You see, though their actions were unwise, they were the actions of love. It was love that caused both to give their greatest treasures. It was love that made them think first of the other and put themselves second. And, really, can't we say that it is the seeming foolishness of their actions that speaks the most to their love for one another? When we think about a self-sacrificing sort of love, it often seems quite foolish; it often seems unwise. Think of the father of the Prodigal Son. That sort of love, love for the errant child, often strikes us as foolish. And yet, it is love.

The other day, my friend Alanna wrote a blog, and she talked about the first Christmas. What surprises her, what makes her think that there's something special about that story, is the fact that shepherds came to the stable. That men actually left the fields and went looking for a baby. There must be something to that.

You know, we've heard that story so many times that we forget how amazing the various parts of it are. We know there are shepherds. We know they left their flocks. But, it fails to surprise us because representations of shepherds at Christmastime are about as common as wreaths or trees or any of the trappings of the season. Anywhere you go, you're bound to see a manger scene, and, in it, there will be a couple of guys with staffs standing to the side. No big deal.

But it is a big deal. Because, when we think about it, really think about it, we have to wonder what made them go to the manger. Why did they feel compelled to go? Who compelled them to act?

I agree with Alanna that the fact that shepherds showed up is pretty impressive. But, I suppose what surprises me even more is that a group of wise men followed a star. And, I guess what surprises me is that they were wise men.

These were men who should have known better. They should have known better than to believe that a star was guiding them to the Messiah. They should have known better than to even believe in a Messiah. They should have known better than to take a different route home to avoid the location of Jesus' family becoming known. In short, they should have been wiser men. But they were not. They saw a star. They followed it. And they believed. They believed in it so much that they risked their lives to protect this child.

This doesn't make sense, really. And, I wonder if there were times when they looked at each other and asked themselves why they were doing this, why they believed, why they followed. Did they ever fear looking foolish in front of the other learned men in their community? Did they ever worry that they would no longer be taken seriously because they had some ridiculous belief about a child being the Messiah? Did they ever think about how scary it is to have a belief, a deep belief, that would change their lives and run counter to the current beliefs of their community? I'm sure they did because those are the sort of questions I ask myself. I feel like I should know better.

When is comes down to it, this belief of mine seems pretty silly. It seems pretty silly to think that, though I can't see Him, there is a God. It seems silly to think that this God is a God in three parts--Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It seems silly to think that, many years ago, the Son of God came to earth as a baby so that He could grow to be a man who would be sacrificed, would take the weight of the world's sin on Himself, only to rise again so that we might have eternal life by trusting in this redeeming grace of the crucifixion. If I look, really look, at the Apostle's Creed, I have to admit that most of it seems pretty silly too, because, what is it if not a narrative of my silly beliefs?

But, something makes me believe. Something makes me set aside my own logic and reason to believe this story which, by my own human standards is anything but logical or reasonable. I guess the wise men had to do the same, and I wonder if for them, as for me, they felt in some way a sort of love that compelled them to their belief in this child? A sort of love which gave them hope for the future, a hope in the power of the resurrection? Wittgenstein writes of this sort of love:

"What inclines even me to believe in Christ's Resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought. --If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven. But if I am to be REALLY saved, --what I need is certainty--not wisdom, dreams or speculation--and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: It is love that believes the Resurrection" (33).

Perhaps that's just it. This love prompts us to believe, not because our minds tell us that it all makes sense, but because God, speaking to our hearts and souls, lets us know that salvation comes only through this faith. It is this faith that fills the hole in our hearts, that satisfies the needs of our souls, that adopts our sad selves out of this orphaned state and gives us the hope and blessed assurance of salvation.

Perhaps this redeeming love is what allows us to see that it really is not our speculative intelligence which needs to be saved but our flesh and blood. And, perhaps, these ideas which seem so foolish will become altogether wise to the heart full of redeeming love.

Road Trip!

Dear Friends or whoever else is reading this,

Well, I finally finished grading, packing, and some (not enough) cleaning. What to do after accomplishing all of that?

Drive 956 miles. With a small dog. Who insists on sitting in my lap. The whole time.

That's right. I just made the long haul to Texas, and Greta and I are still on speaking terms. However, I did realize that my dog needs a serious bath, and I do feel bad about giving Greta the silent treatment during the Arkansas leg of the trip.

Okay, I'm totally joking about that. Too much time in the car leads to really bad jokes.

The trip took about 16 hours, and I only stopped twice along the way--once in Missouri and once in Arkansas. Both stops are worthy of a short story, particularly the Arkansas stop. But, that's pretty much it. I'm back in Texas, and I've already been listening to country music.

Again, I'm not really full of surprises...Like, tomorrow, I'm sure I'll go get Mexican food. Shocking, right? :)

Anyways, here's hoping for safe journeys to anyone else who's traveling.

Love,

Me

Confession: It's the Same Old Song...

Once again, it's confession time. I suppose I could do this properly at church, but I thought I'd just do it right here on my blog. It's just more interesting to use my blog as my own not-so-private confessional, right? Right.

Not that this is going to be too interesting. At all. You see, I'm here to confess the same thing I always do:

I have trouble loving people. I have trouble loving God.

But, isn't that how it goes with confession? You confess the same thing again and again, not because you're an idiot who can't seem to get her act together, but because what you're confessing--what I'm confessing--is a struggle. It's not just something that goes away overnight, though that idea does have a certain charm. No, it's something that's a real struggle, and it takes real work.

In order to better understand love, I decided to head to the source, to understand what God says about it. I think 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 could be turned into a checklist for determining whether or not we love as God loves. It goes like this:

"4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

Now, another confession. I couldn't check off much of anything there. I got two checks, and that's only if you count verse six as two different things. I do not delight in evil, and I do rejoice in the truth. Check and check. The rest of that stuff? I got nothing. Wherever it says what love is or does, I am or do the opposite. And verse seven? Nope. Nothing there either.

Even more baffling to me, is the fact that God just loves us. As in, He just loves us no matter what. I mean, we can turn away from God, live our lives in complete opposition to God, but He still loves us. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more than He does right this second.

Now, certainly there are repercussions for our actions; our turning away from God doesn't go unpunished. And, if you want to know about all of those repercussions, I can tell you a lot about them. Suffice it to say, they're not at all fun. In fact, they are the total opposite of fun. However, that punishment does not mean we are unloved; it actually means that God, like a heavenly Father, is looking out for us, directing our paths, using the still, soft voice of the Holy Spirit to guide us. Though, if you're like me, you'll totally ignore the gentle prodding, and then it'll be time for the rod and the staff. And, no matter what twenty-third Psalm says, I do not find those at all comforting, at least not right there in the moment.

But, He does all of that because He loves us. He always loves us.

I'll be honest. This makes no sense to me--none at all. You see, I love pretty selfishly. I don't love like God loves. I love people when they are as much like me as possible--when we have a similar sense of humor, when we read the same kind of books, when we have lots of interests in common. But, that's not love as God loves. If it was, He wouldn't love any of us, because we spend most of our time acting as little like Him as possible. And yet, He still loves us.

Maybe that's why I have a hard time loving God sometimes. I just don't get it. You see, for a while, I thought it would be a lot easier to love God if He was more like me. I mean, I wouldn't have said it that way or even really been aware of the fact that that's what I was doing. But, I really did want to love a God who was just like me.

I wanted a God who wouldn't think it was wrong for me to spend a lot of money on clothes or to be obsessed with shopping or to be completely irresponsible. I wanted a God who loved all the same books I did and wouldn't find anything amiss in any of them, a God who would share my taste in music and magazines and TV shows and movies. I wanted a God who, much like me, needed a lot of alone time so that we wouldn't have to communicate too often and that, when we did communicate, it would maninly be me asking for things, as I wanted a God who existed to fulfill my needs without holding me to any standards. I wanted a God whose laws were like my laws, but, now I realize that if God's laws were like my laws, my God wouldn't really take a stance on much of anything because I didn't take a stance on much of anything.

Anne Lamott--whose writing I like, but who I disagree with on a lot of things--calls what I was doing "making God in our image." Well, that's what I was doing, though I didn't know it and certainly wouldn't have confessed it. But, here I am confessing it now!

You see, the real problem with making God in my image was that I wasn't really loving God. I wasn't loving God as God loves me. God loves me just as I am. Though He tries to direct me, He doesn't just reach down from heaven and zap me into submission, however much it might feel like that sometimes. He doesn't do that because that's not real love.

My friend Alanna says that to truly love people, you have to love them for who they are, not for what you want them to be. Sometimes I'm not sure what she's talking about. If people actually were what I want them to be, they'd be even better than they are right now. And then they'd be a whole lot easier for me to love. See? Everyone wins.

Except that nobody but me really wins, and when I apply that sort of love to God, not even I win. When I chose to love my version of God, the one created in my image, I failed to truly love God as He is. I loved a God who fit my values, morals, ideas of right and wrong. However, the God I'd created wasn't actually God as He shows Himself to us in the Bible; in short, my version of God wasn't God. So again I failed to love God as He is, choosing to love only what I wanted Him to be. But, if God is the source of all good, how do I create an understanding of good that falls outside of the parameters He's created? Where does my authority to do that come from? If I do not look to God as the measure of good and of value, then to whom or to what do I look? How do I say to God, "I'd love to have a relationship with You, but I only want You on my terms?"

I guess I have the free will to do as I choose, and yet, by forcing God to fit my mold of what I think He should be, I'm failing to love God just as He is. When I fail to love God or anyone as they are, I fail to love them at all. I'm merely loving myself because I'm creating a relationship on my terms without considering who the other person, even if that's God, is. Again, I'm failing to truly love God. And, when I fail to love God, I miss out on the possibility of a real relationship with Him, and outside of that relationship, I have no way to understand love as God has created love.

Perhaps the only way to understand love as God loves is to understand that who He is, is a God who always loves. But, having a relationship with God, like having a friendship or a marriage, requires a certain amount of fidelity; it requires understanding who the other person is and loving the other person as is, without trying to change them to fit my image of what they should be.

In the case of loving God, I guess I had to understand that God was very different from my version of Him. He had standards and laws and values that I didn't always understand or even want to follow, and yet, fidelity to Him means submitting to those things, because that is the nature of a relationship to God. It's a realization that I can protest all I want, but that God, because of who He is not because of who I want Him to be, is always the One who is full of truth. And, in admitting that, I go a long way in understanding how to love Him, how to begin to have a real relationship with Him. And, in turn, I begin to learn to love as God loves, because, in loving God, I'm loving One who cannot be changed, One who will be the same today as He was yesterday. I am changeable; I change often. But, to love God, I have to keep loving Him, knowing that I can never escape Him, that He will not change to suit me, but that I must change in order to love Him truly.

So, that's my confession. I'm unloving, selfish, perhaps even idolatrous. All manner of terrible things. Yet, I'm still loved by God. Try to explain that kind of love. Better yet, maybe we should try to have that kind of love.

The Law and The Light

Well, things have really slowed down here in the cornfields. Students have turned in their final papers, and they've headed home, leaving behind only us sad folks who have to grade those final papers. Having always lived in college towns, though, I have to admit that there's something nice about this time of year when nobody is left but locals and some grad students. It's this time of year that gives a little more space for reflecting on the semester that just came to an end.

There is one class that keeps coming up in my thoughts. In this class, we were studying language, something that I'm totally interested in. Specifically, we were discussing the relationship among language, philosophy, and education. I know, it's a pretty big thing to look at with a lot of different angles to be explored.

Well, toward the end of the class, we started discussing different ideas that the class readings had brought up for us, and, in the course of discussion, the topic of hate speech came up. It's a really interesting thing to think about in relation to this class because, when we hear people saying hateful things based on race or ethnicity about other people, we want to make them stop, and we want to think of a way to teach them to not do such things anymore. And it makes us wonder if there's any way that we can stop such thoughtless, mean-spirited language from happening. Of course, we turn to the law as a means of stopping hate speech. That's something that came up in class discussion, as we sort of wondered if there was a way to legislate against hate speech.

But, we were left with a real problem. You can legislate what people say, but you can't change their hearts, what makes them say those things.

Now, I'm usually non-political, but, when it comes to seeing people hurt or suffering injustices, I would love to make rules that make all of that disappear. I don't want to see people suffer the cruelties of racism. I don't want to think about children going to unsafe schools just because there is no other option in their area of town. I don't want to think of how many people live in domestic situations in which one or both partners are physically or emotionally abusive. If I could, I would change all of that. I would create laws that got rid of all of those things, because I know that the fact that these injustices and cruelties exist make all of our lives sadder, even if they aren't things that we personally face.

The problem is that, even if I created a law that spoke to all of these problems, even if I attached to that law the stiffest penalties I could, I wouldn't change the the hearts of people. I wouldn't change the fact that people would still do those things, not because they don't understand the law or the possibility of facing penalties if they break the law, but because their hearts have not been changed.

Because all I've done is give them a new law without addressing the real problem, which is that they have not been transformed by the renewing of their minds, that this change, according to the Bible, is possible only through the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. And, that is not something that can be written into the law because the Holy Spirit, being perfect in nature, is not subject to the law. Things like love and patience, the fruits of the Spirit, have no laws against them because they are, by their very nature, good. And, this goodness brings us light by which we can understand the darkness of our hearts and finally allow the Holy Spirit to bring light to the darkest parts of our being.

Without this light, we truly are in total darkness. As is written in 1 John 2:11, "But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes." This darkness stands in complete contrast to the light which Jesus spoke of when He said,

"When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness" (John 12:44-46).

And this is why we have the Holy Spirit. As Jesus warned in John 12:35, "You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going." But, if our only hope of light was Jesus, we would have no hope of light without His presence in the world; we needed something to guide us in His absence, and that something is the Holy Spirit. It is the light of the Holy Spirit that brings us out of darkness, allows us to see the darkness of our hearts, and brings us into the light of God.

And, it is this light which gives us the ability to love, to love as God loves. To love with a love that is not self-seeking, quick to anger, or rude. And, doesn't that sort of love sound like the only kind of love that would keep us from speaking hatefully of one another? I think this kind of love is the kind of love we need, as we cannot legislate against the darkness of our hearts but can only hope to be redeemed by the One who created love as pure and holy. It is what Wittgenstein refers to as "redeeming love," a love which believes in the power of the resurrection. He writes of the transformative power of this love:

"So this can come about only if you no longer rest your weight on the earth but suspend yourself from heaven. Then everything will be different and it will be 'no wonder' of you can do things you cannot do now. (A man who is suspended looks the same as one who is standing, but the interplay of forces within him is nevertheless quite different, so that he can act quite differently than can a standing man)" (33).

Perhaps it is time to take our weight off the world, to let ourselves be suspended by heaven. Perhaps it is time to let ourselves be transformed so that we truly can be the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Perhaps it's time to truly allow God to work through us so that we really can "love one another," so that His love can be made complete in us (1 John 3:12).

Mealtime Prayers

Whenever I'm home, I head over to Katy and Joe's house for dinner quite a lot. Katy's a good cook, and they keep more food in their house than what my parents do. So, it's a pretty good deal all the way around.

Before dinner, we always pray, and because they're Catholic, we always say the same prayer. It goes like this:

"Bless us, Oh Lord,
and these thy gifts which
we are about to receive from thy bounty,
through Christ, Our Lord.
Amen."

I really like this prayer a lot because it reminds me that the food we are about to eat is a gift from God, that we must give thanks for this gift, as our having food to eat is only through the goodness of Christ, Our Lord. It's a lesson in humility and gratitude, as we must remember that our having food on the table is not due to anything we have done apart from God.

I think it's easy to forget that. It's easy to say, "But, I was the one who worked to earn the money to buy the food that sits on the table for me to eat." (Suddenly, I'm reminded of "There was and Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," but I digress.) Anyways, sure. I did do the work; I did earn the money; I did buy the food. I even cooked it.

But where did my ability to do all of those things come from? I certainly, apart from God, have no ability to go to work, to earn a living, to buy my food, to cook the food, to then eat the food. Because, without God, I don't exist.

So that prayer before meals is an affirmation of how much we need God each day, at each meal. How God truly is our daily bread, both metaphorically and literally. It's that literal part that's hard to remember. I think it's hard to remember, in no small part, because it's humbling. It's humbling to admit that, without God, we have nothing, can do nothing. It's humbling to admit that, without God, we would go hungry.

My friend Alanna likes to remind me that none of us has ever truly lived without God. That, even when we turn from God or ignore Him, we have never actually lived without God because He's always there, even when we forget about Him. That even when we feel that all of our successes are of our own making, even then, they are not. They cannot be.

When Alanna first told me that, I didn't quite understand what she meant. I guess I felt that surely she was reading too much into God's role in our lives, but, when I thought more about it, I had to realize that she was right because, after all, where would I be if there were no God? When I thought more about what she said and talked more about it with another friend, I had to realize that God is, in fact, the author of my life, and that without an author, I have no story. No setting, no character development, no foreshadowing, no rising action, no plot twists. No symbolism, no local color, no metaphor. And, possibly saddest of all, no resolution.

No, as Alanna saw God, and as I came to see God, I had to realize that He was more than just a benevolent father-figure, looking out for us. He was, in reality, the One who started it all. And, because of this, I had to realize that it is only through Him that I live and move and have my being, and that through Him--and only Him--are all things possible.

Perhaps that's why I sometimes find myself randomly saying that mealtime prayer. At the oddest times, I'll start praying:

"Bless us, Oh Lord,
and these thy gifts which
we are about to receive from thy bounty,
through Christ, Our Lord.
Amen."

And, it's never before a meal or any time that would really make sense. I'll be heading out the door in the morning, standing in the grocery store, taking my dog outside. Then, I'll find myself praying that prayer. And, then it makes sense to me why I would say it. I guess I'm just remembering that it's not just before my meals that I'm receiving blessings from God.

It's all the time. It's when I see how beautiful the ground looks covered with snow, when I finish a paper I've been worried about, when I realize what a good conversation I've been having. And, even in those times that don't feel like blessings at all, even in those times when I'm sure God is further from me than He's ever been. Even then, I remember, as it says in Romans 8:28, "that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." And then I have to stand assured that someday a blessing will come from a time that seems anything but blessed.

Those are the hardest times to feel like blessings will ever come, and yet, I do believe that they come. I do believe that all things, even the really horrible things, even the really tough and painful things, will someday be used for the good of those who love Him. And, it is then that I have to remember the words of the prayer and know that these gifts truly do come from Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

Driving Through the Snow

The other day it started snowing, and it just kept snowing and snowing. It's really beautiful outside, and I've even been brave enough to venture out in the snow several times, including once to look at Christmas lights, which were incredibly pretty against the snow. Once you get used to driving in the snow, it's not so bad, and, for whatever reason, I have a lot of fun digging my car out of the snow in the morning, watching the ice melt off it while it defrosts.

Yesterday, my trip to and from church was pretty slow and steady, but I was glad to see that other people were venturing out in the snow, enjoying this beautiful time of year. While I was driving home, I sat behind a car that had a few bumper stickers. One of the bumper stickers said:

"Regime Change Begins at Home"

You know, I'm not really sure what kind of change the person driving the car wants. Maybe he and I would agree on a lot of things or disagree on a lot of things. Personally, I'm not really political, so, even if we disagreed, I wouldn't raise too much of a fuss. Of course, that could also be due to the fact that I avoid conflict like the plague.

But, I had to think that, even if we disagreed on everything else, I'd have to agree with him that any sort of real change begins at home, among family and those you're close to. You see, I've been giving a lot of thought to change and to ideals lately. I guess it's that we're in the Advent season, and this is a season that's all about change.

A change in the world, as Christ came in fulfillment of prophecy. A change to a new way of understanding the commandments. A change for all of us after the birth of Christ, as there would now be new hope for the atonement of our sins, a possibility of redemption.

The really strange thing, though, is that all of these changes rested on the birth of a baby, the entrance of a new life into a family. How simple is that? Babies are born everyday. And yet, that is how God chose to come to earth, in the form of a baby.

You see, what intrigues me about that bumper sticker is the same thing that intrigues me about how God chose to come to earth. In a real sense, Christ's coming to earth was the greatest regime change the world would ever know. He was God on earth, and yet, He didn't choose to come to earth in a form that anyone would expect. He didn't come as a king in the traditional sense. He didn't appear to people in a form that they would unthinkingly respect or venerate, like we might with royalty or the very wealthy. We have to remember that part of that was fulfillment of prophecy. As Isaiah 53:2-3 tells us:

"2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

But, I have to wonder why? I mean, this was God. God on earth. If He really chose to come to earth as a human, why would He not choose to make Himself the most powerful human on earth? Someone who could reach everyone? Someone who could force the allegiance of everyone? Someone who could establish a law and enforce it? And, I especially wonder, why make Himself someone like the person described in verse three--despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering? Again, He is God. He can do as He chooses. Why choose to enter the world as a child, as a part of a family?

I guess I have to go back to the bumper sticker because, really, where do the changes that affect our lives actually happen? I mean, surely our lives are affected by large governmental changes, but it seems that they're even more affected by the relationships we have, and, in turn, God is able to use us as agents of change when we are in relationships with both Him and others, when we are in a state of being real with people and showing them God's love through ourselves. Perhaps I mean to say that who we are is more affected by those around us than it is by the changing shifts in laws and regulations.

And Jesus came to change not just the law but how we interact with the law, to affect how our hearts and minds upheld the law, rather than just how our bodies were able to fulfill certain obligations or avoid certain things which were forbidden. You see, God gives us a standard of right and wrong. It's a standard that is absolute, and we are expected to follow it. But, Jesus didn't call for simple avoidance of the bad; He called for a complete change of heart. As the Apostle Paul would later write:

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will" (Romans 12:2).

But the renewal of the mind is not something that happens because I happen to read something that tells me one thing is right and another thing is wrong, or tells me to do the good one while avoiding the bad one. Knowing the rules only changes what I do, not what I feel or believe to be right or wrong. So, while I might be doing the right thing, it wouldn't be because my mind was renewed. It would be because I'm good at following directions.

So, I guess I'm back to thinking about why Jesus would appear to us in a form to which we could relate personally. Had he come as a ruler, we would have followed His commands out of obligation. Had he appeared as one who was charming or attractive, we would have followed His commands out of blind adoration. But, He came to us as a baby who would grow up to be a man "with no beauty or majesty to attract us to him." So, we follow His commands because He--in relation to us as a brother, friend, teacher--showed us that His commands are very good.

And, these commands are something that really seem to necessitate a family or a community of friends to help them to make sense. It's that sort of community that allows us to come together in love, in an understanding that even when we do have differences, we must turn to God to give us an answer to the dispute, to show us that it really might be that neither of us is right, but that He is always right. That's a hard thing to do.

We want so badly for our ideals to became reality, but we have to remember that it is only through family and community, a real not imagined ideal reality, that we can begin to let God change our lives and the lives of those around us into the ideal we long for. It is not through our own intellect or reason or arguments that change can occur; it is only through the love of God. It is only through the miracles and redeeming grace of God that we humans begin to recognize the importance of those around us, to see our relationships with friends and family as God's means of affecting change in all of our lives.

Regime change really does begin at home, in the relationships that help shape us into who we are and hopefully into who we were created to be. God grant us the humility to allow such change to take place through our lives, as we turn in constant reverence to His will.

Learning Lessons

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with a group of ladies. It was really nice to get away from school, from papers, from grading. One of the ladies had made homemade Chicken Tikka Masala, and, if there is anything that will lure me out of the house, it's Chicken Tikka Masala. In fact, if I ever seem hesistant about going out, you might just tell me that we're going to have Indian food, and that will turn my mood right around.

Anyways, the food was so incredibly good, and the ladies were, as always, great to talk to. In the course of our conversation, we started talking about prayer. Namely, we started talking about how we learn things through prayer that we never thought we could learn. And, in some cases, we learn things that we never thought we needed to learn. I'm not saying which of us learns lessons she never thought she needed to learn, but I will say that she's a PhD student, studying Philosophy of Education, and she may or may not make the best oatmeal raisin cookies in the whole world.

Okay. I confess. It's me. You who know me know that I hate, hate, hate admitting I don't know something. I will actually lie and pretend like I know what I'm talking about. Conversely, whenever people admit to me that they don't know something, I wonder how they get through life not knowing everything. You would think that as an educator, I'd be more open to being educated, but it just doesn't work like that for me.

But, I do need to learn things, and as the ladies were saying, sometimes the best way to learn things is to pray for God to teach you about them. However, the overwhelming consensus was:

Be careful what you pray for.

Sounds familiar, right? We so often say, "Be careful what you wish for." The difference is, our wishes usually just end where they started, in our own minds. However, when we pray--for guidance, for assurance, for help--we are actually praying to God, and He really does answer those prayers. And, sometimes, He may make us wonder why on earth we ever, ever wanted to learn the lesson we asked Him to teach us.

I'm just saying, when we pray for patience, we can expect that we'll soon find ourselves needing patience more than we ever have before. We may find ourselves waiting on things for longer than we've ever waited, standing in more lines than we ever thought possible, caught in traffic for what seems like hours. Will we learn the lesson of patience? Oh yes. But it won't be in the way we expected God to teach it to us. We expect that, like taking a pill or getting a shot, God will instantly change us. Or that He'll fill us with whatever virtue we feel like we're lacking.

You know, like when your car needs gas, you fill it up, and then it runs just fine. That's what we want. The problem is, learning lessons like patience shouldn't be like filling up the car. The car will eventually run out of gas and need to be filled again, but when we're asking God to teach us a virtue, we're asking for a complete life change, something that will alter the way we think and interact with those around us. And, that's just not something that can be done like a quick fill-up. We have to undergo times which require patience in order to develop patience, and that's how He teaches us.

And, that's why we ladies (half-jokingly) thought we should be careful about what we pray for. I've been thinking about it though, and I realized that part of the problem is that sometimes we don't even know what we're asking for. For example, I pray that I'll be more loving. Feel free to smile, laugh, roll your eyes. I do. Seriously. But, I do have an awful time loving people, and, quite honestly, I often have an awful time loving God, so that's what I pray to learn.

I think it's a good thing to pray about--not just to love, but to love as God loves. I mean, loving seems simple enough, really. Romantically, it's all about poems and candy and cards and stuff. Or, with friendships, it's about finding people who have the same interests and desires that you do and creating some little world based on those things, where you all get along because you share so much in common. Unfortunately, that's not love as God loves. And, when I think of how so many of us cling to those concepts of love, I imagine God looking down at us all, with our very shallow definitions of love and saying,

"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

Yes, in this image of God, He quotes from T.S. Eliot's poetry, but I can't think of anything better to capture what God must think when He looks at how we treat love, how we fail so miserably at times to be truly loving to those around us, because love, as God created it, is something quite different. And, when we turn to God for an understanding of what love is, I think we'd be surprised at how much it has to do with self-sacrifice. That definition of love is tough. It requires commitment and a total lack of self-interest.

The other day, I was reading something about God's love, and the author was saying that a true image of God's love could be seen in the way Jesus chose His disciples, specifically Judas Iscariot. Think about this situation. Jesus was God on earth. As such, He was omniscient, all-knowing. So, when He chose Judas as his disciple, He did so knowing that He would be betrayed by Judas. Now, we can easily say that Jesus necessarily had to choose Judas, as Judas played an integral part in turning Jesus over to the authorities and, thereby, leading to the crucifixion. That makes plenty of sense.

What doesn't make sense to me is that God would choose to fulfill the prophesy of the crucifixion in such a way that would necessitate Jesus having Judas as a disciple, someone who Jesus would interact with for the three years of His ministry, someone with whom He would speak and eat and just be friends. Only to be betrayed.

But, I think it almost had to be like that so that we could understand Jesus' love. Jesus' love is such that, even knowing the betrayal that would come, He chose Judas. He chose not to exclude Judas. He chose Judas to be one of His disciples and one of His friends.

And, again, I have to ask, "What am I getting myself into, asking to love as God loves?"

Because praying to love as God loves means asking for your heart to be opened in ways you never knew it could. It means feeling more than you ever knew you could. It means looking at people you never would have noticed before and wondering what their stories are, wondering what their hurts are. And, sometimes, you'd just rather watch TV or play Dolphin Olympics on your computer than interact with people. Because people are annoying and needy and sometimes, quite frankly, incredibly boring. But, then again, sometimes I'm all of those things too, and God still loves me.

So, it's true that you must be careful what you pray for God to teach you because He really will teach you the lessons you long to learn. And it won't be a short lesson, and it might not even be that pleasant. However, when I find that I just don't understand something, like patience or love or peace, I feel like there must be a need for me to learn that thing. And, in that case, perhaps I should be just as mindful of those things I avoid praying about. They may be the lessons I most need to learn.

Redemption

I really get into books, and sometimes I find myself connecting to characters and finding a bit of myself in them. Like, the first time I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, all I could think was, "Man, that Esther Greenwood is just like me. Except I'm not in a mental institution."

Another character I really relate to is the Prodigal Son. He has to be my favorite character from Jesus' parables. I guess I like him because I so often feel like him. He was so incredibly full of himself, cared nothing for anyone else, and ended up going in completely the wrong direction until he finally got over his foolish pride, humbled himself, and went home to ask forgiveness from his father. I suppose I'm not the only one who relates to the Prodigal Son. Really, aren't we all a bit like him?

The other day I was reading something, and the author was talking about how odd it is that Jesus chose to use parables to teach. Really, when you think about it, it is a little odd. As the author was pointing out, if you wanted to tell someone something very important, you would probably give it to them in a very plain form. That way, the listener would undertand you clearly.

That's a pretty simple trick from technical communication, like if you're writing a how-to manual. Consider the audience and their needs. What do they need to know to accomplish the task you're asking them to do? In what format will your directions make the most sense so that the audience can actually accomplish this task?

But, when you look at the parables, they're not clear cut. They don't give clear instructions so that an audience can clearly follow the rules and accomplish the task. In other words, if Jesus really wanted to give us a moral code that would take us even further beyond the previous law--a new law that would consider the state of our hearts, not just the ability of our bodies to perform certain tasks--certainly He would have just given us the rules straight up and plain. No messing around, no room to wonder what exactly Jesus might have meant.

But, that's not what He did. And, I have to think that He didn't do that precisely because this new law looked to the intent of the heart, precisely because Jesus wanted us to understand that sin is not just outwardly visible in the actions that we take, but that those actions we take speak to an inner state of the heart. He wanted us to see that sin affects not just our bodies but is far more pervasive, affecting our bodies, our hearts, and our souls. Because of the pervasiveness of sin, the way it works its way into all the spaces of our being, it seems the only way to truly convey that would be through stories.

Like in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the obvious story is of a young man who wants his inheritance early, asks for it, gets it, squanders it in riotous living, finds himself destitute and surviving on pig slop, wises up, heads home, and is greeted by a loving father who sticks a ring on the Prodigal Son's finger and has the fatted calf killed for a celebratory dinner. But, there's a lot more going on there. It's a story about repentance, forgiveness, redemption. It really is the story of a loving God forgiving the sins of a wandering child who finally woke up to the depths of his sins and decided to turn from them and go back to God.

But, I really have to wonder at how skilled a storyteller Jesus was when I think about this parable, because it's that image of the Prodigal Son--completely destitute, far from home, standing in this pig pen, eating pig slop--that keeps coming back to me. Really, it's the most powerful image I can think of to show what sin is really like and to tell us why we should never want to return to it, why we should distance ourselves from it and turn from it forever.

Seriously, I get this image in my head when I think about sin. This image of pig slop. You see, it's pretty tempting to return to our sins sometimes. If we're honest, we have to admit that they're sometimes fun and that they don't seem to pose much of a threat to our lives. But, if we think about sin in the way that Jesus talked about sin, we see that it's not just something that is visible in what we do; sin is an indication of the state of our heart and minds, an indication of our separation from God and our inner disregard for His commands. In this way, our sin speaks to what we are. And, what Jesus is telling us in this parable is that we have to see sin for what it is, to see that it is nothing more than a pig pen, and that, when we are in a state of sin, we are so far from all that is available to us at our Father's house, all of the wonderful foods, that all we can eat is pig slop.

That's right. Pig slop. Because there was nothing else to eat, the Prodigal Son ate pig slop. That is, he ate pig slop until he came to his senses and realized that not even the servants in his father's house ate pig slop. In fact, the servants ate very well. So, the Prodigal Son headed back to where the food was good.

So, in thinking about the lure of returning to sin, I have to think about the Prodigal Son setting down his dinner of pig slop and deciding to humble himself, admit the wrongness of his choices, and head home to beg his father's forgiveness. And, the thing I wonder is, did he decided to pack up some pig slop to take with him? Did he perhaps fill up a bucket with pig slop and take it along on his trip back home? You know, he obviosuly knew that eating pig slop was far beneath him, but what if he missed it someday? Would it be so wrong to take some for the road?

Of course he wouldn't take it with him. Why would he go on carrying a bucket of pig slop when he knew there was better food waiting if he just asked forgiveness from his father? He wouldn't.

But, isn't that just what we so often do? We may realize a greater need for God in our lives, but we still cling sins that keep us far from God. We rationalize our actions on our own terms, try to find loopholes, look for reasons the Bible is wrong. We refuse to admit the wrongness of our sins, to see how they have adversely affected our lives and the lives of those around us, how we are not greater than God and, therefore, incapable of knowing just how far-reaching and destructive the effects of our sins will be. We do all of these things, and, in so doing, we hold on as tightly as we can to a big bucket of pig slop.

Really, I know it sounds silly, but that's just what it is. We take it with us wherever we go--moving it from city to city, job to job, friendship to friendship. And, though we might be able to ignore it for a while, sooner or later we will catch a whiff of the bucket of pig slop because that pig slop has become a part of who we are. We can do plenty of things that make it seem like the pig slop isn't there--buy a nice car, move into a big house, drink a lot, dress well.

But, the thing is, the bucket of pig slop will always be there, until we finally let go. We really must set it down, turn away from it and toward God. We have to ask for forgiveness and for redemption. Without this admission and belief in our guilt, there is no real chance of turning from sin. And turning from sin is our only way to work toward a life in which we've surrendered all to God, a life in which we feel near to God. A life in which we return to our Father, after admitting all the wrongs we've committed, only to be met with love and true forgiveness. It seems well worth surrendering the bucket of pig slop to receive all of those blessings.

On Love

Sometimes people argue that we wouldn't know what joy is if we didn't know sorrow. Usually, I think those people are idiots. Well, maybe "idiots" is the wrong word. Perhaps they're more like masochists. Maybe they actually like pain, and, for them, pleasure is all about pain.

Whatever the case, I usually don't put a lot of stock in whatever those people say because, well, I don't like pain. Not one bit. I mean, on a much lighter note, there are people who wonder if Christmas feels less like Christmas for me because, where I'm from, there's no snow at Christmas. I always say, "Of course it feels like Christmas. I don't even know what a white Christmas is like because I've never really had one." In truth, there's no real comparison between these things. I just want to seem like a reasonable person, like I'm actually trying to understand the other side.

But, back to pain and suffering. The thing is, I don't agree with people who say that without sorrow we wouldn't really know joy because, when I'm feeling joy, I very rarely contemplate the immense sorrow that would be its opposite. I mean, I really don't sit there, in the midst of a joyful moment, and think about something really sad. I just enjoy the moment. That's all. In truth, I'm overjustifying because I feel like I'm completely wrong.

Maybe it's that I can't really speak to the difference between joy and sorrow. I guess I can really speak to the difference between anxiousness and calm. I'm normally a very anxious person. This shouldn't be a surprise if you know me, really. But, there are times when I feel completely at ease, completely calm. And, the thing is that in the midst of those calm times, I feel and really know that what I'm feeling is something quite different. I guess I can't answer if I would know what calm is if I didn't know anxiousness because there's never been a time when I didn't know what both of those feelings felt like. But, I can tell you that I know how good calm feels and appreciate it more than I would if I didn't know the feeling of anxiousness.

You know, it's that feeling of being completely aware of how peaceful you are at one moment and catching yourself in the middle of that feeling of peace. If you've known anxiousness as something that can consume you, you will never again take peacefulness for granted. You will seek it out. You will want to have peacefulness as much as possible because the alternative is, well, quite terrible and quite painful, causes much sorrow. Now we're back to the opposites of joy and happiness.

So, if I know how good it is to live without pain and anxiousness and sorrow, you'd think I'd try to maintain the good feelings and minimize the bad. You'd be right. Don't we all do that? I mean, save the bravado of youth that lets us feel as if we can plunge head-strong into situations that will surely lead to heartbreak, don't we all seek to minimize our pain, limit our suffering, keep ourselves safe? That seems a good enough plan. Why diverge from it? Why not keep ourselves as safe as possible; why not guard our hearts so that they will not be broken?

I guess the answer to that is that we just can't. And, in some ways, I'm not sure that we should. You see, it is when we are most vulnerable, most unguarded that we learn the most about ourselves and about others and, often, about God. It's only when we open ourselves up to the possibility of a little pain, a little lack of comfort that we really become able to love. In his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis puts it quite beautifully:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

And, it's true. When we shut ourselves off from people, we may be safer, but we fall victim to ourselves. Over time, our lives become focused on one. Our thoughts become focused on one. Our everything becomes focused on one. It may be that our hearts will not be broken; it may be that we are safe from the changeable moods of another person, but we do not have the possibility to love. We do not have the possibility to care, to interact, to see joy and growth in another person's life. And, lacking these interactions, we become devoted to one. Devoted to ourselves.

It seems that Lewis is calling us to understand love as selfless. And, knowing a bit about Lewis, I'm guessing his model of love is based largely on his belief in God and his belief in the redemption offered through Christ's sacrifice. If we think of love in relation to Christianity, it becomes something which requires sacrifice. Because if we think of the ultimate expression of love in Christianity, I think we always have to return to the image of the cross.

And, in turning there, we see that love really is a death of the self; it really is something that's represented in the ultimate gift of life; it is something that is open to pain and even welcomes it because it is through pain that there is the possibility for hope, for rebirth, for new beginnings.

So, I guess we can protect ourselves. Lock ourselves away and remain safely in some hermetically sealed and unreachable realm of the heart and mind, but I think we should not. After all, if we didn't know the pain of love, the ultimate heartbreaking sadness it can bring, would we really appreciate its joys? Would we really understand the redemptive love of Jesus if He hadn't died on the cross? I don't think we would. And, thank God, we'll never have to know what life would be like without that gift, without that love.