“Dear God, Speak gently in my silence. When the loud outer noises of my surroundings and the loud inner noises of my fears keep pulling me away from you, help me to trust that you are still there even when I am unable to hear you. . . . Let that loving voice be my guide.”
— Henri Nouwen
Timing is so important! If you are going to be successful in dance, you must be able to respond to rhythm and timing. It’s the same in the Spirit. People who don’t understand God’s timing can become spiritually spastic, trying to make the right things happen at the wrong time. They don’t get His rhythm – and everyone can tell they are out of step. They birth things prematurely, threatening the very lives of their God-given dreams.
– T. D. Jakes
I managed a visit to my father before the snow fell. This is a couple of blocks from his place.
Dad was a prairie boy, but he was always in love with the mountains.
Our house in Calgary was built on a hill facing the Rockies on the horizon and every clear morning he would stand by the window checking out the view.
Every Saturday or holiday we could get away we drove the hour or so to Canmore, or Kananaskis, or Banff, not to ski or climb or golf or canoe, but to walk along the trails or sit under the trees and breathe.
Dad’s memories are fading, but now he lives beside the river he loved. He doesn’t work anymore or write anymore, and it’s hard for him to tell even one of his thousands of stories. He’s not even sure of who the people are who come to visit him. Life has been distilled to its essence. He looks to the mountains and breathes and he is thankful.
“The moment we become grateful, we actually begin to ascend spiritually into the presence of God. The psalmist wrote,
‘Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing. . . . Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations.’ (Psalm 100:2, 4-5).”
-Francis Frangipane
I still had some flowers in the garden on Sunday, but by Wednesday the blossoms bowed under the snow — frozen solid. I hate to see the flowers die. I grieve for them every autumn.
My granddaughter, a few weeks before her fourth birthday, made a profound observation about the flowers dying. It was profound, because only a few weeks later her Daddy lay dying.
This is what her Mommy wrote:
Every time I left Bruce, I felt like I left half of me at the hospital. It felt wrong to leave him, like my being there would somehow make all the difference, but every time I was at the hospital, I felt like I should be at home with my children, making life feel as normal as possible, playing and laughing so they wouldn’t have to be worried about Daddy. No matter where I was, I didn’t feel like I was in the right place…
My kids never knew the severity of what was going on. At two months, two-and-a-half years, and barely four years old, I didn’t think it would be good for them to know that Daddy could die.
I recalled a conversation Keziah and I had shared not long after baby Vivia was born. A warm chinook wind had peeled back the blanket of snow in the park, and we were able to get outside for a little stroll. As we walked past an old flower bed, she looked up at me and said, “We don’t know what it feels like to be dead. That’s a’cause we’ve never been dead before so we don’t know how it feels.”
She looked at me for agreement. I nodded.
She went on, “And if you’re dead, then you’re dead and you can’t tell anyone a’cause you’re dead.”
She paused and thought about it for a few minutes, while shuffling her heavy winter boots down the sidewalk.
“But maybe we could ask the flowers a’cause they die every winter so they know how it feels…Too bad they don’t have mouths, or they would prolly tell us!”
I remember thinking at the time, What three-year old thinks about death? And now I wondered, What three-year old thinks about being raised from something that looks like death?
-from While He Lay Dying by Bruce and Lara Merz (available here)
I was driving through a horizontal Southern Alberta rain shower when I felt the urge to explore. There, near the bridge over the Old Man River on the Cowboy Trail (Highway 22) a road I had never taken beckoned. I had no deadline to get home, so I turned left onto the gravel road and followed it. When I reached the other side of the valley I looked back and this is what I saw.
I’m not a detail person -which means that I don’t handle details easily. I get trapped in the minutiae of the day. I have to keep lists and the bullets points form a kind of map to help me find my way back out. I can easily lose sight of where all the details lead.
When I get bogged down in a problem and start obsessing about things that don’t make sense to me, I hear Abba telling me to take a step back and see the bigger picture. I’ve been in that bog many times over the years, questioning the “right” way to do Christianity. When too many questions start to involve the word “should” He draws me away from the arguments to go for a walk with Him.
“Step back,” He says. “Look at the greater panorama, the big picture, the one that started before your lifetime and will go on until eternity. Look carefully and as far in any direction that you can. Can you perceive my voice has called all of it into existence? The story of gospel of Christ did not start in Bethlehem and end with an empty tomb outside Jerusalem. The gospel is written in every molecule, and every detail proclaims the glory of my Word. My Word will not return to Me void. It will accomplish my purpose -eternally.”
Genesis 1
In the beginning, God created everything: the heavens above and the earth below.
Here’s what happened:
At first the earth lacked shape and was totally empty, and a dark fog draped over the deep while God’s spirit-wind hovered over the surface of the empty waters.
Then there was the voice of God.
John 1
Before time itself was measured, the Voice was speaking.
The Voice was and is God.
This celestial Word remained ever present with the Creator;
His speech shaped the entire cosmos.
Immersed in the practice of creating,
all things that exist were birthed in Him.
His breath filled all things
with a living, breathing light—
A light that thrives in the depths of darkness,
blazes through murky bottoms.
It cannot and will not be quenched.
The Voice was and is God.
…
The Voice took on flesh and became human and chose to live alongside us.
We have seen Him, enveloped in undeniable splendor
—the one true Son of the Father
—evidenced in the perfect balance of grace and truth.
(from The Voice)
I’ve been going through a bit of a molt lately. I think we all do that once in a while. It involves the shedding of parts of ourselves which were once effective, and perhaps even attractive, if I may say so myself, but now this time of examining which ideas to keep and which to shed has left me in a somewhat frazzled state. I feel a lot like this goose I met in the park the other day. The other geese seemed to have it all together, but this one seemed just a little, well, perplexed…
Yeah. Perplexed. Not where I thought I would be as the next season approaches. But I am here anyway – disheveled, unfashionable, decidedly non-trendy and not at all prepared to fly in formation.
Pardon my appearance. Molting (or going through a spiritual “ponfar” -Trekkie reference) can be a little embarrassing. I’m apt to “lose it” at the most inconvenient times, and frankly I don’t even know if I agree with myself half the time.
But change is like that. Sometimes the hardest part is having grace for ourselves when our own inconsistencies and partially formed concepts frazzle our own nerves, let alone the people around us.
Thanks for your patience. You are very gracious, my friends.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed… (2 Corinthians 4:7-9)
But you, God, shield me on all sides;
You ground my feet, you lift my head high;
With all my might I shout up to God,
His answers thunder from the holy mountain.
(Psalm 3:2,4 The Message)
Some things are clear. Some things are not.
This statement grabbed my attention:
Yesterday’s offense becomes tomorrow’s heresy.
When I heard this statement in a discussion of how the early church fathers handled (and mishandled) disagreement I had to pay attention.
Far too often I’ve heard the word heresy thrown at people on the journey –people who are in process, people who have not yet arrived. I have wondered what the difference is between being in error and promoting heresy. Perhaps this statement helps to clarify.
Yesterday’s offense becomes tomorrow’s heresy.
Some things are clear. Some things are not. By heresy I mean the big stuff – lies about the character of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), lies about who we are, and lies about God’s intent and interaction with us. By heresy I definitely do not mean the size and shape of a communion cup or how you cut your hair or your preferred worship style. I mean orthodoxy, the essentials of the faith, the Apostle’s creed kind of stuff. Behaviour and practices (orthopraxy) are the result of living out what we really believe.
So many truths are suspended in the tension of paradox (two seemingly conflicting concepts, dying in order to live, for example). In the process of asking the questions which give meaning to answers God gives latitude (aka grace) to explore all the neighbourhoods inside a paradox. Sometimes we revel in the revelation of an aspect of God we have not seen before. We celebrate it. We take it out for a spin to see how it works. We proclaim it.
Then we feel the backlash from those who have had a different understanding. Then the bashing over the head with the Bible starts. Then proof-texts send less-than-subtle messages telling you to change back. Change is uncomfortable. It throws off the equilibrium of everyone around us.
I have friends who are vegan. The reason is not important here, although it is valid and unique to their situation. They will tell you that as soon as people learn of their choice they are confronted by the defensiveness of those who feel their freedom to eat egg salad sandwiches is being attacked. The temptation for some people in this situation is to retaliate and disparage the character of those who consume animal products. My gracious friends are not among them. You are perfectly welcome to consume a cheeseburger in their presence. Sometimes in Christianity, if you ask a scary question or make a choice that is different from others around you, the backlash can take you by surprise.
In the discussion about heresy one person pointed out that historically if the conversation stopped at the point where both sides could agree, or agreed to disagree on emphasis or the priority of a concept and how it plays out in our actions, there was still unity (if not uniformity) and a chance for seemingly different truths to exist within a paradox. Since ideas have consequences the way we choose to live out our faith in Christ will reveal which truth we emphasize (and our understanding at that particular moment – which, if I may remind you, is subject to change as we seek the Lord and pay attention to what He is showing us. It’s called growth.)
Heresy takes root when we are unwilling to honour the truths in the understanding of others and must not only prove ourselves right, but are compelled to prove them wrong. I use the word “compelled” because the father of lies takes advantage of anger and unforgiveness to plant lies in this fertilized soil. That’s what he does. And history proves he has taken his role seriously.
People who have gone off the rails have often been good people who desired to pursue and honour God. Often a stream of Christianity has a revelation they have stewarded well, but when they chose to stand against other streams, to devalue and dishonor them in order to feel better about their choices, we can see heretical ideas begin to form within a generation or two. Out of feelings of hurt and rejection comes the defense and explanations that lead to division, proof-texting that ignores or dismisses context or other passages of scripture, and loss of sight of the other end of the paradox scale.
In other words, as 1 Corinthians 13 states, “We see in part.” There are already too many sects holding up their piece of the puzzle as if it is the only one. No one denomination has a monopoly on the truth, and no one denomination is entirely in error. As uncomfortable as questions and change and the potential for error make us feel, or as frustrated as the restraints of traditional understanding and practices make us feel, we in the universal church cannot afford to make our choices from a place of offense, unresolved issues and unforgiveness.
This way heresy lies.
Truth needs to upheld and error corrected, yes, absolutely. But there is a better way.
It’s called love.
Charis: Subject to Change 