Category: Black and white

Wrestling with God

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, nature, Photography, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Genuine trust involves allowing another to matter and have an impact in our lives. For that reason, many who hate and do battle with God trust Him more deeply than those whose complacent faith permits an abstract and motionless stance before Him. Those who trust God most are those whose faith permits them to risk wrestling with Him over the deepest questions of life. Good hearts are captured in a divine wrestling match; fearful, doubting hearts stay clear of the mat.

Dan B. Allender

I’m a verbal processor. This, plus a tendency to take up causes before I have all the information from all sides, has landed me in more trouble than anything else. A verbal processor says things right out Ioud that they may toss away later. They are on the way to something else, but for people who don’t operate this way, it’s hard to tell what’s process and what’s conclusion.

I was thinking out loud in the presence of someone who not only did not understand my struggle with an issue, she did not understand why it should even be an issue, nor why I was saying such disturbing things.

“Why do you have to ask so many questions? Why can’t you just believe?”

I looked at her sweet face and said nothing. What I wanted to say was, “Because it matters. Because this is a piece of the puzzle that other pieces labeled “choices” need to make connection to to understand who God really is. Because who God really is what really matters.”

I’ve heard people say that they can’t be bothered with doctrine (which, ironically, is a doctrine in itself.) For some it’s true that deeper study is not necessary. I think of a lovely friend with Down’s syndrome. Her entire theology could be summed up in her statement, “Jesus loves me and I love Jesus.” True and beautiful. So why can’t I just believe everything I’ve been told? Why have I gone through periods in my life when I need more?

I believe it’s about relationship. One of the ways I connect with God is when he gives me a puzzle or presents a question I can’t answer. I had a dream once where I was a child sitting on the floor with a kind person who was helping me connect shaped metal puzzle pieces into a mat about a meter square. I thought we were done and congratulated myself by clapping my hands like a preschooler. Then he started building the puzzle pieces upwards into an incredibly complex cube. I protested. That was entirely too hard and too much work. He looked at me kindly and said, “Stop thinking in two dimensions.” I recognized him at that moment. It was Jesus. Then he disappeared.

I’ve been in a time of puzzling with God lately. It feels too hard. There are too many pieces, too many levels, too many parts that have been forced to work when they don’t really fit and that could throw the structure off balance later. I’ve also been talking out loud a lot as I wrestle with this thing. Sweet people look at me with the same expression as the impatient woman who said, “Why do you have to ask so many questions? Why can’t you just believe?” (Now that I think of it, she wasn’t asking for my answer. She had no questions that sent her running to God in frustration and an answer without questions is just another boring lecture.)

When I read Dan Allender’s quote, I realized I am one of those who is called to wrestle with God. I know I can never comprehend his vast majesty with my tiny mind. It’s like a microbe in a match with a universe of galaxies. Wrestling is about engaging. It’s about responding to an invitation to join him on the mat and play a demanding, frustrating, multi-leveled complex game that’s probably going to trigger some anger. Maybe a lot of anger.

He comes quietly, almost silently beside me, then flips my entire perspective and triggers overwhelmingly deep and difficult questions. Then he asks if I want to play.

I say, “Are you kidding? This is way too hard for me.”

“I know,” he says. “Your move.”

Honouring the Noble Broken Generation

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Photography7 Comments

This is a week of remembering. Yesterday would have been my Dad’s birthday. His birthday came at the same time as the end of the school year. There was always a picnic. Today is the anniversary of my Mom’s passing. My husband’s mother also died this time of year. The picnics those years became “refreshments” in hushed community halls instead. It’s a season of contrasts.

I’ve been thinking about our parents’ lives. I am grateful for them and the generation that rose from the ashes of poverty and famine in the 1930’s and World War in the 1940’s. They knew tough times.

Poverty brought poor nutrition and lack of medical care. Poverty meant that when Dad was five-years old two of his siblings died of illnesses easily treat now. Poverty left him as an only child of grieving parents for several years. Grandma told me that one day she found him playing in the dirt. He was burying matchboxes like the boxes they buried his little brother and baby sister in. He would bury them and dig them up repeatedly telling them to wake up.

My Dad was bullied for being the only boy from an English-speaking family in a school where the other children were refugees from persecution in Russia. The family lost the farm after another crop failed and his father became too ill to carry on. As an 18-year-old my father was preparing to go to war when armistice brought an end to conscription. Lots of young men from the area had already died, so he knew what it meant to be sent overseas.

When Mom was five-years old, her mother died. The family could not afford a doctor. They had already lost several children to diphtheria and other childhood diseases. The crops had failed that year and the money-lender took several sacks of what little wheat they had managed to glean to feed the family over the winter. They were also grieving the news from the Red Cross that no friends or family left behind in The Crimea had survived Stalin’s cruelty. In his grief, her father turned to alcohol. Later, my mother and her younger brothers suffered bullying at school for coming from a German-speaking family in a country that was at war with Germany even though their older brother was fighting for the allies in the Netherlands.

My husband’s parents also grew up in harsh environments. His father lived with immigrant parents in a tar-paper shack on a farm during the dust-bowl famine years. He joined the air force when he was old enough and flew reconnaissance in enemy territory at an age when kids now go to college.

My husband’s mother’s house in Rangoon was bombed by the Japanese and she and her mother and sister barely escaped being sent to a concentration camp by fleeing to India. She spent her teen years inside the walls of a compound there because the people on the outside hated her kind. Since she was a biracial child in the East, she lived in fear as she experienced soul-crushing racism from both sides.

Our parents, and many others of that generation, had amazing perseverance, but they also had deep scars. It’s hard not to dismiss the influence of either the noble or the broken side of the previous generation on our generation (or the trickle down effect on the next). We see the good side or the bad. We tend to idolize or denigrate. I don’t think we can properly honour our parents (or grandparents or great grandparents) without acknowledging how far they came in their lifetimes. That means both the acknowledgement of how devastating the circumstances of the times could be on mental health and the acknowledgement of how hard they worked toward building a better future for their children.

By the time they passed, both my parents and my husband’s parents had faith that God loved them. They were trusting Jesus to finish the healing that began here. It will be wonderful when we are all together and we are all completely well.

I honour them and say thank you for having a vision that extended beyond your lifetime. Thank you for your sacrifice.

Love

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Just folks, PhotographyLeave a comment

Recently I met a refugee family who has demonstrated love in a way that goes beyond the usual experience in North America. They come from a country where it is illegal to change religions or influence anyone to change religions. When approached by two young men who were looking for an understanding of God, a Christian man gave them Bibles to read. After they read about the God who loved us so much that he let his son die and overcome death so that if we believe in him we will have eternal life, they chose to follow the God of love. They found new life in Christ.

The consequences of assisting at the birth of this new life were dire for this man and his wife and children. They faced serious death threats. Even after they fled to another country, they were incarcerated, the mother and the children for a short time and the father for five years.

Conditions in that prison were appalling. The father endured great stress. The mother and children knew great hardship as well living without him in the home. And yet everyone in the family says their love for God grew most during this time as they experienced his faithfulness and provision. They are truly beautiful people, and the love of God shines through tears as they tell their story.

Today I thought about the way love takes the risk of birth. My granddaughter asked me if childbirth hurts.

“It does,” I told her, “But the reward is so great that most women who have given birth once choose to give birth again because they know the joy of seeing new life and that love is greater than pain.”

My mother nearly died giving birth to me. I heard the story many times. The physical consequences for her lasted a lifetime. And yet she chose to give birth to my brother even when a doctor warned she could face problems again. She did it out of love for someone who would not understand the significance of her willingness to suffer for him until many years later.

As I think about it, I realize that the greatest force in the universe is love. It was love that motivated Jesus to suffer, die, and overcome death. It was love that sent my new friend to those men knowing that he could suffer and even die for doing so. It was love that sent my mother to the delivery room for the second time knowing she could suffer like the first time, or even die.

It is love whenever someone is willing to extend themselves beyond a low-risk comfort zone to make it possible for new life to begin and grow. Only the love of God is strong enough to overcome the fear of suffering or even death and cause a person to know they are loved even in the middle of severe trials. We can love because God loved us and gave us first mortal life, then the opportunity for eternal life through Jesus Christ.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV)

Creative Meditations for Lent, Word prompt: Love

Freedom

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, PhotographyLeave a comment

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;[
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…

Isaiah 61:1

Not all captives are bound in chains. Not all prisoners are held behind bars. Jesus came to set us free from many things that keep our hearts and minds oppressed. Shame is one.

Guilt is feeling like I did something wrong. Shame is the sense that I am something wrong. To be shamed is to be rejected. Christ did not come with more condemnation, more impossible standards, more reminders that we don’t measure up. He came to reconcile us to the Father, and to set us free.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:6.

Creative Meditations for Lent, Word prompt: freedom

Fly!

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Just folks, Photography, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Love, it seems, made flying dreams so hearts could soar…

-Jerry Goldsmith & Paul Williams

Children are often the best teachers. I watched this boy running and leaping on newly exposed grass on a south-facing hill where the sun melted winter’s snow. He spread his arms like wings and flew down that hill as only the young can.

As I edited photos this morning, a line from the song, Flying Dreams, came to mind.

This was the day churches and theaters were told to limit gatherings to fifty people or less because of the threat of contagion. We did not yet know that within a few days we would be isolated in our house unable to see or hug our children and grandchildren, but we knew the situation was serious.

The photo I took that day reminds me of the innocent, trusting nature of children. They played without fear while their parents made plans to teach, nurture, and protect them during this time when fear wraps the world in its ugly grip. Children simply trust and obey the ones who care for them. That’s their job.

To be humble is to remember to trust in the One who loves us perfectly and not place other sources in positions of authority over him. (Don’t hear what I’m not saying. God gives people intelligence, skills, and wisdom for a reason.) Repeatedly, the Bible tells us that God has a special place in his heart for the humble. His love raises them up so their hearts can soar over any circumstance.

Then Jesus, overflowing with the Holy Spirit’s anointing of joy, exclaimed, “Father, thank you, for you are Lord Supreme over heaven and earth! You have hidden the great revelation of this authority from those who are proud, those wise in their own eyes, and you have shared it with these who humbled themselves. Yes, Father. This is what pleases your heart and the very way you’ve chosen to extend your kingdom: to give to those who become like trusting children. (Luke 10:21 TPT)

 

The Sacrifice of Humility

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Photography3 Comments

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For the source of your pleasure is not in my performance
or the sacrifices I might offer to you.
 
The fountain of your pleasure is found
in the sacrifice of my shattered heart before you.
You will not despise my tenderness
as I humbly bow down at your feet.

(Psalm 51:16,17 TPT)

Bloom Anyway

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Flowers, Photography, Sky, summerLeave a comment

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Looking back, I am unimpressed with the amount of time I spent trying to impress people who didn’t impress me. Sometimes you just need to bloom where you are planted while the storm rages.

It always blows over eventually.

People who manipulate with fear and intimidation are often fearful and intimidated themselves.

Confident peace is a weapon they don’t understand. It frustrates them.

Bloom anyway.

Fear and intimidation is a trap that holds you back.
But when you place your confidence in the Lord,
you will be seated in the high place.

(Proverbs 29:25 TPT)

Then Shall the Eyes of the Blind Be Opened

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Just folks, Photography6 Comments

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Following up on a reminder to remember, let me tell you this story.

“What would we do if that happened in our family?” my son asked. A book he read for a school assignment upset him. It was the story of a girl who became blind.

“First we would cry,” I told him. “Then we would make adjustments and help her to live life as best she could.”

That was an inadequate answer. I had more to learn. A few weeks later our daughter, his younger sister, went blind.

A case of pink eye, combined with side-effects of medication for another condition and the use of contact lens I told her not to wear, but should have confiscated, turned into a raging infection. I didn’t realize how serious it was until one morning, a couple of weeks before Christmas, she screamed that she couldn’t open her eyes because of pain. We took her to the hospital still thinking she was overacting a bit when the ophthalmologist told us she was admitting her. She had “fried her corneas” and faced serious scarring that meant she would probably lose her eyesight permanently.

The doctor was not nice about it. She yelled at us in the hallway in front of patients and staff, berating our parenting ability and accusing us of negligence. I was terrified and filled with guilt. Not only could my precious child go blind, but it was my fault!

The next few days were agony for all of us. Our daughter was placed in a small windowless room near the nurses’ station on the children’s ward. Anyone who visited her was also essentially blind, since any light caused her great pain. Every hour, day and night, a nurse entered and administered painful drops, which, we didn’t know at the time, she was allergic to. Her condition deteriorated.

“First we cry,” was entirely inadequate for the situation. “First we weep and wail and throw up,” was more like it. Of course, we tried to not let her see – or rather hear – our reaction. We tried to maintain a positive attitude around her, even when the doctor told her there was no way she was going home for Christmas. She would be spending it in the dark, stuffy room.

Of course, we prayed, but it was more and more difficult to maintain any kind of faith with every new negative report. But God…

“There was someone in my room last night, Mom,” she said when I came in early in the morning.

“It was probably a nurse, or hospital staff,” I said.

“No. I always know when the door opens because the light in the hall hurts and besides, they always talk to me. This felt different. The door didn’t open. It was just there. I felt, I don’t know, a presence.”

I assumed painkillers caused her to hallucinate.

Then the doctor came in. She was shocked. Our daughters’ eyes were much better. There was no sign of infection and inflammation and swelling were fading. She remained in hospital a couple more days to make sure, but she came home for Christmas.

Today she is a teacher and artist – a professional photographer who depends on keen eyesight. She was told she would never be able to wear contacts or have laser surgery for near-sightedness, but that prognosis was not fulfilled either. Now, she doesn’t even wear glasses. When doctors predicted her husband would die of necrotizing fasciitis, she had faith and hope beyond any logical scientific limitations. An encounter with the Healer opened her heart to possibilities she never imagined. It opened our hearts as well.

Here is where I was wrong. I told my son that if such a thing ever happened in our family, we would try to find ways to cope. Even though I grew up in the church and heard all the stories in the Bible about how Jesus healed people, I didn’t know he still heals. The best we could reasonably expect was help in learning to cope.

I know, the first yeah-but that comes to mind is the question about why many people who pray are not healed. I don’t know. All I know is that people who believe The Healer is part of who God wants to show himself to be for us see a lot more miracles and healings than people who have lost hope. People who rejoice in his goodness are free to live in hope – and hope frees us to live without limits.

God is good.

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When It Hurts

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Just folks, Photography, Uncategorized2 Comments

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Sharing the sufferings of Christ involves the experience of the deep emotions, agony, and passion he continues to experience for the least, the last, and the lost by his indwelling Spirit. All followers of Jesus were once least, last, and lost. When we forget that, we stop feeling.

– Dr. Mark Chironna

Incognito

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Photography2 Comments

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When I saw this mannequin in a country store she reminded me of someone going incognito. Incognito is Latin for unseen, unknown. The goal of going incognito is the opposite of intimacy, something else I’ve been thinking about lately.

The problem with writing about intimacy with God is that when you use the word intimacy, people think you are talking about sex. Intimacy in current usage is very much about being seen and being known by someone of importance.

We see articles about improving intimate relationships in marriage and advertisements for intimate apparel, which have their place, but there is a greater intimacy with the Creator that goes beyond the physical and the emotional. I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe this kind of intimacy without alluding to sexual intimacy, but as I read the Bible, I notice something. God is proficient in the language of symbolism. He doesn’t avoid talking about sex, so why should I?

Sexual intimacy is a metaphor for something even bigger and better.

When God created man and woman they stood before each other naked and unashamed. The Bible says Adam knew Eve and she conceived. According to Strong’s, yada’, the word often translated knew means:
1. to know, learn to know
2. to perceive
3. to perceive and see, find out and discern
4. to discriminate, distinguish
5. to know by experience
6. to recognise, admit, acknowledge, confess
7. to consider

The first act of seduction and the first act of unfaithfulness was when the serpent, the creator of lies, convinced these two humans that if they ignored God’s instructions and ate from the tree, they would become like gods themselves. They would yada’ good and evil.

The first bit of knowledge they perceived, learned and experienced (yada’ again) after they chose to believe the serpent, was that they were naked – and ashamed. The Hebrew word for ashamed also carries the connotation of disappointment. Sin brought a sense of disappointment in themselves and disappointment in each other as part of the package deal. That profound disappointment is called shame. They needed a layer of protection to try to keep their shame from being seen. They covered up. They hid from God. They tried to go incognito. Unseen. Unknown.

The plan failed. It’s been failing ever since because God came looking for them.

One of the key verses for my life is Philippians 3:10 and 11: “… that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

The problem is that knowing him intimately means confronting the problem of shame that piles up like stinky laundry in front of the door. Can I be honest and tell you that a life-time of sin-awareness has not made me less sinful, but more aware of my shame? I’ve watched an entire industry based on the design, fabrication, and marketing of fashionable religious cover-ups expand in my life. I’ve watched it burgeon in the lives of people around me too.

The thing is about sexual intimacy is that involves us standing naked before someone and exposing our less-than-perfect parts. Am I the only one who has noticed, after many trips to the beach, that I am not the only one with scars and rolls and, um, a disappointing shape? I won’t even mention smells and sounds.

Sexual intimacy requires a lot of trust. One of our greatest fears is taking a risk and later experiencing rejection or betrayal as a result. That’s why Jesus said that when a person claiming to represent God betrays the trust of a vulnerable person, they have committed a heinous crime. If a victim thinks God is on the side of the perpetrator, they are hindered from turning to God for healing. It may take years and many demonstrations of unconditional love before they can regain a sense that God will not also betray them. So many people have believed lies about the nature of God as a result of abuse. I believe God wants to uncover truth about who he really is through his goodness.

Spiritual intimacy also requires trust, perhaps even more than physical intimacy. When we make a spiritual connection we give access to the deepest, most vulnerable part of our being.

Entire literature and film genres cash in on crimes of passion based on fear of rejection and betrayal. It is easier to approach God covered with a thick bullet-proof mantle of religiosity,  to speak in tones of formal scripted recitation, and to never let him get between us and the exit than it is to drop defenses.

But God makes a way.  He deals with shame by inviting us to consider it dead. He makes us into someone new. He shows up with his goodness and covers us with his own righteousness. Jesus’ humiliating experience of hanging naked on a cross as he bore our shame purchased that righteousness for us.

Intimacy requires the participation of two naked people with nothing hidden, nothing held back. Because God makes the first move by exposing his heart for me, I can drop my own attempts at cover-up. I am free to expose my heart to him. His righteousness becomes mine. In his eyes I am beautiful.

The passage before the verses I’ve claimed as my life theme goes like this:
“…I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith…” (Philippians 3:8 & 9)

As I was thinking about daring to respond to God’s invitation to increased intimacy, a line from an old song came to mind:

“…dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before his throne.”*

Trust involves risk. For so many years, I found it difficult to trust someone I was told wanted to punish me for not loving and obeying him perfectly. It was too risky to trust. That’s because I didn’t know him. Eventually I took the risk. Trusting someone who demonstrated love by giving his life for me is worth the risk. To be known and loved down to the cellular level by the One who created me is priceless.

It’s worth the cost of dropping disguises — that I may know him.

 

*From My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less by Edward Mote