Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32)
I found a little shrub in my garden. I didn’t plant it. I didn’t nurture or tend it. I don’t know what it is, but it is covered with tiny pink blossoms while everything else is still frozen. A free gift of promise that says, “More to come.”
Thank You.
Twenty degrees! (That’s room temperature for those of you living in the country that doesn’t use Celsius.) Yesterday the sun was shining! I opened the windows! I went out without a jacket!
I had work to do, but the forest paths called to me.
The snow was gone. The birds were singing! The trees were rustling! The scent of pine and fir and cedar is starting to return.
Ahhh
When through the woods and forest glades I wander
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
and see the brook and feel the gentle breeze,
then sings my souls, my Saviour God, to Thee,
“How great Thou art!”
There was a time when I could have gladly smacked one of those smiling, happy, praise-singing, weirdos upside the head with a hymnbook as they had their own little personal in-love-with-Jesus experience in a church service. The guy up front leading the choruses, who insisted we all needed to plaster on a smile as big as his, particularly irked me. Did he not know the scripture that said, “Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda?” I was tired of faking it. I didn’t need to add hypocrisy to my considerable growing list of sins.
“So your Christian experience is wonderful. Goody for you,” I thought, “Well, mine sucks. I am exhausted trying to raise rebellious teenagers, maintain some sort of relationship with a workaholic husband, dutifully meet the expectations of church and parents and maiden aunts, and appease picky people everywhere I go, all while coping with depression and chronic fatigue and pain that nobody, even doctors, understands. His yoke is easy? Hah!”
Finally I quit trying. I just gave up.
I gave up on my ability to try any harder, or to try at all.
I didn’t give up on Jesus though, unlike some of the outsiders I formed friendships with at the time. I felt like one of his left-over disciples standing around after he said something about eating his body and drinking his blood. Many religious keeners found that statement extremely offensive and said, “That’s it. I’m outta here.”
Like the ones who stayed with Jesus I said, when he asked if I wanted to leave too, “Where else can I go? The stuff you say is really hard to understand but I have no hope in anything else. I don’t get you and this whole church thing drives me nuts, but I recognize that you alone have the words of life.”
When I finally gave up, he could finally start to change me.
Recently I heard someone go on a mini-rant that sounded very familiar. It was along the lines of, “If someone is having a great personal spiritual experience they should just keep it to themselves! It is insensitive to talk about what God is doing for them when so many are suffering.”
How strange it is to be sitting on the other side of the table. I realized the irritating person he was talking about was me. God has been so good to me in the past few years. I have come to understand his love in a way I never did before. Like a person who goes on and on about a new love, I just want to talk about him, brag about him, praise him. I had forgotten how annoying that can be when you are in a place where the relationship feels duty-based, when prayers aren’t answered, when pain and suffering without an end in sight is a way of life.
Here’s the question I have been pondering: Should I shut up? Am I somehow increasing the pain of disappointment in God by talking about his goodness to those who can’t feel it right now? Should I just keep a lid on it?
I was reading today about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem: “And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” Luke 19: 33-40
And the events in the temple after his arrival: “And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” (Matthew 21:14-16)
Jesus did not allow expression of praise to be limited to a level that was comfortable to those who felt indignant, like I once was. The reason I was so uncomfortable around people who had joy and a deeper personal experience with Christ was because I was like the older brother in the prodigal son story who had worked so hard for the Father and felt angry that I even though I had been so dutiful, I had seen so little reward. The wandering irresponsible younger brother had done nothing to deserve special treatment! My pride was in my effort, and that’s the very thing that was getting in the way of seeing that everything he owned was already mine. It wasn’t until I gave up my need to prove my worthiness that I could start to receive.
Will I stop talking about his goodness? No. My focus is on the Lover of my soul first. I have tremendous empathy for those who are frustrated and feeling left out. I really do, but I desire to bring hope and not merely sympathy. I don’t intend it to, but sometimes that just may appear to be offense-worthy. I know there is nothing in me, or the millions of others who have known His favour, which has earned a single drop of his blood by my own effort. I weep with those who weep, yes, but now I can finally rejoice with those who rejoice without feeling offended myself.
I’m not going back. In the words of the old spiritual, “If I don’t praise Him, the rocks is gonna cry out, ‘Glory and honour! Glory and honour!”
God is good.
Kootenay Lake
Bluer than Blue
The artist leading the workshop in the desert city looked at my paintings and asked, perhaps facetiously, “You use a lot of blue. Are you depressed?”
I looked around at the other participants’ work mostly done in earth tones –beiges, browns, greys –with occasional splashes of red and yellow. Desert colours.
“No,” I said, “Not anymore. I just come from a place that is mostly blue.”
When I arrived home in the Rocky Mountains of Canada a few months later, deep lavender blue skies, shifting azure-blue lakes, paler and paler layers of blue mountains and sparkling blue snow shadows seemed even bluer than the paintings.
Bluer than blue.
I come from a place that is mostly blue.
To some blue communicates serenity. To some blue communicates depression. I come from a place that was mostly depression.
A while ago I was told in a dream, “Look to the area of your greatest failure, for therein lies your greatest success.”
There was that night.
That night I bowed on a stage before a large audience jumping up to shout “Brava” and throw flowers. Most of them didn’t know that underneath a gorgeous costume I was balancing on one leg the whole time. I had broken the other one only a few days before.
Then there was that night.
That night, I cowered in a locked ward where a silhouetted person behind a flashlight peered in my room every fifteen minutes to make sure I was still alive.
That night on the stage, the night of “my greatest success,” was actually my greatest failure. That was the night when I identified myself as a strong-willed, disciplined overcomer. That’s when I was foolish enough to think that if I just worked hard enough I could earn love, respect, and adulation.
The night on the ward, the night of “my greatest failure,” was actually the night of my greatest success. That was the night when I admitted it took more courage to live than to die. I was fresh out of courage. That was the night when my tank hit empty, when I had no will power, no self-discipline, no hope. That was the night when grace pulled me deep down into those depths of blue and began to show me that freedom means nothing left to lose. Freedom means letting go of self-sufficiency, self-righteousness, and self-promotion. That was the night when Jesus Christ took me by the hand and lifted me up toward the light. Drowning in emptiness and being lifted up to a new life of hope was a kind of baptism.
It took a while to get on my feet. I had a lot of forgiving to do. Forgiving myself was the hardest test of wrestling pride, reputation, and the albatross of potential to the ground. I still have to remember to punch it in the beak regularly.
Blue means freedom, revelation, and serenity now. I understand better what Paul meant when he wrote:
Yet every advantage that I had gained I considered lost for Christ’s sake. Yes, and I look upon everything as loss compared with the overwhelming gain of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For his sake I did in actual fact suffer the loss of everything, but I considered it useless rubbish compared with being able to win Christ. For now my place is in him, and I am not dependent upon any of the self-achieved righteousness of the Law. God has given me that genuine righteousness which comes from faith in Christ. How changed are my ambitions! Now I long to know Christ and the power shown by his resurrection: now I long to share his sufferings, even to die as he died, so that I may perhaps attain as he did, the resurrection from the dead.
Yet, my brothers, I do not consider myself to have “arrived”, spiritually, nor do I consider myself already perfect. But I keep going on, grasping ever more firmly that purpose for which Christ grasped me. My brothers, I do not consider myself to have fully grasped it even now. But I do concentrate on this: I leave the past behind and with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead I go straight for the goal—my reward the honour of being called by God in Christ.
(Philippians 3)
Only Someone who knows the plans He has for us has the courage it takes to show us how to die so that we might live.
Photo: Tam O’ Shanter Creek
So much of art, music, and poetry
is learning to leave spaces,
observe rests,
and reserve words.
So much of maturity
is learning to leave spaces,
observe rests,
and reserve words.
So much of faith is learning
abundance is
not needing to eat the whole feast
today.
In the Kingdom of God
there is time
to savour his goodness.
His loving kindness endures forever.
Photo: moulded
Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould.
(Romans 12:2 -J.B. Phillips version)
I’m weird.
I’m weird and finally okay with it.
Some people are just meant to be on the edge of the crowd, not really out there, but not really fitting in either.
If something is trending you’ll find me wending down some other path. I figure the trendies have got that one covered.
When the tourists are snapping photos of each other in front of iced mountain peaks, I’m focusing on lichen blanketed rocks in the ditch. I weep for the clown, rejoice for the beggar, fast at the feast, and arise to do battle at night. When the clan gathers for a celebration in the heat of a summer’s eve, I slip out in the moonlight to breathe the cool falling cedar and pine air as it settles along the creek bed.
My poor, dear mother never knew what to do with me. I was hopelessly out of step.
I tried. I really did. I wore the uncomfortable fashionable clothes and the crippling high heels. I endured the horrid chemical smells of perms and hair dyes and nail polish. I spent far too much of my income and far too many years of my life obsessively following diet and exercise programs that, in the long run, always left me in worse shape than when I started. I listened to hours of pop music trying to understand the allure of a limited assortment of repetitive chords, rhythms and lyrics. I read the best-sellers and watched the Oscared pondering the pay-off of fear and pessimism. I paid attention to political pundits who knew what was wrong with everyone else’s ideas and I faithfully endured more sermons and devotional talks than I dare to recall. I tried to participate in the church ladies’ games (which usually involved rolls of toilet paper and or unscrambling baby and cooking related words.) The only spiritual maturity I gained from those exercises was learning how to doze with my eyes open and with an is-every-body-happy-smile on my face.
Then I realized one day I was spending a lot of effort trying to win the approval of people who didn’t really have mine -not that they were doing anything wrong, it’s just that I had no passion for the things that seemed to move them.
There is only one person whose approval I really need, and that is God’s. He likes weird. He can work with weird. When I look at the weird folk he loved in the Bible I realize I am in good company. Jesus didn’t exactly fit in either.
The crowd can move on without me. I’ll catch up later. Right now I am just enjoying watching the osprey flying a pas de deux, the daisies growing in cracks of asphalt, and working on becoming who God intended me to be in the first place.
Charis: Subject to Change 