In order to make this journey–you have to make it without baggage. You can’t carry loads of bags with weight on you in order to be free and Jesus gives you an invitation to come unto him. Now you have to come to him–you will not get rest from anybody else. If you go to anybody else you’re going to find more work.
– T.D. Jakes
I love toddlers. Honestly, it may be my favourite age. Yes, I mean the tantrum-throwing, independent, illogical, ill-informed munchkins between walking and reasonable conversation age, the ones who cause their exhausted parents’ hearts to melt when they stand over their kid’s sleeping adorableness before they head out to clean up the day’s mess.
I love to watch them learn. They are voracious readers of everything and everyone. They crave knowledge and are driven to courageously expand their universe, but at the same time want to remain at the center of it.
As a baby a little girl learns that when she hollers Daddy or Mommy come to her. As a toddler she learns the hard lesson that when Mommy or Daddy call she is supposed to come to them.
It’s not an easy transition for anyone concerned. Toddlers are also discovering free will. Anyone who has tried knows you cannot make a toddler eat, sleep, sit still, keep their clothes on or pee where they are supposed to until they decide to do it themselves. You can cut down their options, you can try to pick them up (as they do the floppy noodle) before they dash for the road, but you can’t make them keep the water in the tub or kiss Auntie Bertha or stay out of the Tupperware drawer when company is coming if it is not on their agenda. They will let you know when they have lost patience with your interference.
But I love them. I love the mileage they get out of a few words. I love the excited laughter when they discover how to open, or flush, or unravel something all by themselves. I love the way they imitate older humans and want to be like them. I love them because they are headed somewhere and every day they change. I love them because they don’t stay toddlers.
It struck me the other day that as new believers in Christ we are like a baby who needs milk, shelter, warmth, affection and our heavenly Father obliges. He provides a baby with everything she needs. She calls; He comes. She knows how the system works.
Then one day he doesn’t come when she calls. He calls and holds out his hands for her to move toward him. After she chooses to toddle to his outstretched arms and she is rewarded with kisses and hugs he takes another step back – then another and another. He is becoming more distant. The next thing you know he is withholding her sippy cup until she sits in the chair nicely – wearing a bib that is not of her choice. What a shock!
The toddler Christian is accustomed to feeling that God is there to fulfill her agenda. Now it turns out he has an agenda of his own. Now there is this obedience issue to cope with. It’s a tough transition to make, and that is why many churches are filled with people who never grow beyond two or three years maturity level. It can be fun, but it can also be a wretchedly frustrating stage of growth because it means taking ourselves out of the center of the universe and putting God there.
The Bible says Jesus learned obedience. He grew in grace and in favour with God the Father and with people. When he laid down his Godhead privileges to experience everything we have he also learned as a human child that he had free will. As an adult he demonstrated that he was not doing the works he did because he was incapable of doing otherwise, but because he chose to. He listened to his Father’s plans. From his baptism, to his following the leading of Holy Spirit into the wilderness, to changing water into wine at his Father’s bidding – and definitely not his mother’s – to his battle with his free will in the Garden of Gethsemane he did nothing he did not choose to do. I believe he understands our struggle because he sweat drops of blood before he could say, “Not my will but Yours.” In the end laying down his life at the cross was his choice.
“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10:18)
I’ve heard it said that being part of the family of God means never being led into the wilderness (times away from his felt presence to discover and establish our identity as sons and daughters); it means never seeking God’s agenda but brazenly declaring our own want list; it means never being driven by frustration with our old habits to plumb the depths of his grace that changes us, but instead it presumes on our own definition of “grace” that enables stunted growth and self-centered living.
There is power and provision for a hope that does not disappoint, but this is not it. Of course God still loves to give good gifts to his children and to respond to them. Maturity means changing the way we think until we realize it’s not just about God answering us when and how we want him to; it’s also about us responding to him when he calls.
I love toddlers because unless something has gone horribly wrong, they are people in process. If we, as those growing up in faith, never get out of our strollers, demand ice cream for breakfast and holler every time events do not go according to our desired design and timetable, we will not be loved any less and our needs will still be met, but we will miss the joy of mature relationship with our Father God.
I love toddlers because they teach me to keep growing.
I’m alone on my porch on a beautiful spring morning, drinking my second cup of coffee and watching the sunlight sift through the plum tree. It’s been less than a week since we stood in a downpour and committed my Dad’s body to the earth. Everyone has gone home, back to work. The flowers have wilted and the sympathy cards are stacked on a corner of the kitchen table.
Life goes on.
When I gave the eulogy at his funeral I talked to the children and told them about the great-grandfather most of them did not know before he had forgetting disease. We included all the children in our gathering because what better way is there to teach them about physical death and spiritual life than with a family member who loved the Lord, lived to an old age, and was longing to be present with the Lord and reunited with his loved ones? I spoke of all his fine qualities and the wonderful things he taught us. We do that at funerals. It’s about honour.
But there are things we don’t talk about. Like all human beings going back to Adam’s grandchildren he was the wounded son of a wounded son. He brought his deficits into our relationship the way I dragged mine into my own children’s nursery. There were seasons when I adored him and seasons when I avoided him for months at a time.
It was complicated.
I don’t think I had left anything unsaid before he passed away. He said he forgave me. I had certainly forgiven him and Jesus had replaced a whole lot of unwanted feelings with love and compassion for him, but there are a lot of things I can’t explain no matter how many words I use. No sympathy in form of visits or cards or flowers – or even therapy – can ever say, “I understand.” We say that to each other, but we don’t understand, not really. Every heart has its own sorrow. Every heart is alone in grief.
But we do not have to be totally alone. There is one who understands all our weaknesses. Unlike so many of the versions fed to us by angry unapproachable people of an angry unapproachable God who can’t bear to look at us because of our sin, Jesus approached us first. He, who was the perfect representative of the nature of Father God, chose to associate with those whose sins had become a part of their names -the harlot, the thief, the drunk, the hypocrite. He sat down right beside them. He was not disappointed in them because he never had any expectations in the first place. He had sympathy and compassion for them. He wept with them. He loved them. His joy in going to the cross was in knowing the freedom and new names they – and all who call on his name – would receive.
Since we have a great High Priest, Jesus, the Son of God
who has passed through the heavens from death into new life with God, let us hold tightly to our faith.
For Jesus is not some high priest who has no sympathy for our weaknesses and flaws.
He has already been tested in every way that we are tested; but He emerged victorious, without failing God.
So let us step boldly to the throne of grace, where we can find mercy and grace to help when we need it most.
(Hebrews 4:14-16 The Voice)
This morning an old song came to mind:
In the morning when I rise,
Give me Jesus.
And when I am alone,
Give me Jesus.
And when I come to die,
Give me Jesus.
You can have all this world, just give me Jesus.
He’s all I need. Because of him life goes on – eternally.
I want a lifetime of holy moments. Every day I want to be in dangerous proximity to Jesus. I long for a life that explodes with meaning and is filled with adventure, wonder, risk, and danger. I long for a faith that is gloriously treacherous. I want to be with Jesus, not knowing whether to cry or laugh.
– Mike Yaconelli
“We pray, ‘Lord, change me.’ To answer that prayer, He will often allow circumstances or people to offend us. Our fleshly reaction spotlights the specific area where we need growth. Thus, the Lord initiates change by offending the area of our soul He seeks to transform. He does not expect us to merely survive this adversity but become Christlike in it.”
– Francis Frangipane
I remember my aunt’s Kodak box camera that required her to look in the top at just the right angle or she would decapitate the heads off her subjects in the image. She kept her brownie box camera long after others had moved on to other cameras that used colour film. Photos were precious in her time – and expensive and time-consuming to make. Making up her photo album required my aunt to mail the whole camera away to have the film extracted and developed and then sent back. Kodak obliged.
This past weekend, my young granddaughter used my phone camera to produce a video of her little cousins sliding down the curved stairs at my uncle’s house. The same day I posted it on Facebook and friends across the country commented on it.
Changes.
This article from Holy Soup by Thom Schulz on “The Church’s Frightful Kodak Moment” fits with what I am sensing. Photography has taken off in the last few years. More people have better access (even on phones) and quality has improved enormously. It’s not left just to the professionals anymore. There is freedom to make mistakes and forgive ourselves by hitting delete or re-framing and re-lighting the experience with a photo editing program. It’s about seeing worth in the moment and making meaningful images we can enjoy and share in the future.
But Kodak missed it because it saw only one expression of photography. Nothing wrong with print. I still use Kodak paper but 99% of what I do is digital photography and artistic expressions using those photos on the computer now.
I feel something like this is happening to the church – something out-of-the-box is about to take off, improve in quality, be more accessible, offer greater grace to grow, and thrive in ways we never imagined, but we can miss it if we measure success in terms of sales of traditional product (aka bums in seats on Sunday morning.) I am meeting more and more people who love the Lord deeply but who are finding the current structures and expectations of the institutional denominational church-in-the-building are limiting their ability to pursue the desires God has placed in their hearts to know Christ, and to know who He created them to be, and to be placed in true family. There is more. I know it.
It’s about worshiping God, enjoying Him forever, making disciples – and loving one another.
I have not read the author’s books, nor have I seen his documentary (although I will probably be checking them out). We may disagree on what this out-of-the-box thing looks like. I don’t know. My attention was just grabbed by the comparison to Kodak and rather than feeling despair that church attendance is falling in North America, I am filled with hope that soon all the promises in Christ will become more accessible to the ordinary folks He loves – and they will know they are the church.
My faith has found a resting place,
Not in device or creed;
I trust the ever-living One,
His wounds for me shall plead.
I need no other argument,
I need no other plea,
It is enough that Jesus died,
And that He died for me.
Enough for me that Jesus saves,
This ends my fear and doubt;
A sinful soul I come to Him,
He’ll never cast me out.
I need no other argument,
I need no other plea,
It is enough that Jesus died,
And that He died for me.
(Eliza E. Hewitt)
I love to explore the breadth, height, width, and depth of God’s love. I love to read and discuss deep theological ideas, to go beyond the basics of the faith as advised in Hebrews, to experience various expressions of worship, to listen to stories of divine healing and miraculous adventures in the Holy Spirit and of the heartaches and victories of those carrying the message of salvation around the world. There are some crazy adventures out there. God is amazing.
But all of these things are an exhausting distraction if we have not found our rest in Him. In seasons of stress and grief we realize the necessity of returning to a place of rest; we search for our center.
I find it interesting that so many profound truths found in great old hymns were written by women who held no office in any institutional church. They didn’t need to. Like many of Jesus’ female friends and disciples their credentials were established by their relationship with Christ and they expressed that in ways that didn’t involve a pulpit. Eliza Hewitt found that resting place that some with greater recognition have missed – Christ-centered Christianity.
Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again – for me. Christ in me, the hope of glory. That’s all I need to know to enter His rest.
It is enough.
Charis: Subject to Change 