"Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way," James 1:2-4, The Message.
Note to self: Don't run away from the struggle.
Illusion: the state or fact of being intellectually deceived or misled.
Illusion #1: Relationships can be idyllic. Picture a coffee house. Lattes all around. Stimulation for the mind, the body, the heart. Warmth and encouragement flowing unhindered from one person to the next. Symbiotic friendships where both individuals give and receive in equal measure, and everyone's needs are met.
Illusion #2: I am fine by myself. I am the only person I can trust. Everyone else has hurt me or will hurt me. The only way to survive is to protect myself from other people.
I seem to bounce back and forth from one illusion to the other. When illusion #1 proves false, I move to illusion #2 where isolation eventually drives me back to pursuing feel-good relationships until I get hurt and withdraw . . .
Oswald writes that we need to be disillusioned, i.e. freed from our illusions, and that "the refusal to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering in human life."
Undeceiving myself: Relationships are not idyllic. They can be great, but I hurt other people. They hurt me. It happens. "If our trust is placed in human beings, we shall end in despairing of everyone" -- Oswald.
The answer, however, is not to withdraw into myself. I am not fine by myself.
The answer is to see myself and other people as we really are -- flawed, sinful human beings who are on this journey of life together. We need each other. We fail each other. We must not give up on each other.
Some days it will look like the coffee house scenario. Most days not.
"Is the relationship between myself and God getting simpler than ever it has been?"
I think so. I am less sure of many things. Less dogmatic. Less willing to argue. But I think in becoming less sure of many things I am becoming more sure of the one thing that really matters -- God's presence in my life.
I read a quote the other day about suffering and trials obscuring our view of God the way the clouds obscure the sun: "Measure not God's love and favor by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof," Richard Sibbes (English theologian from the 1600's).
Oswald, however, puts a different spin on the clouds, describes them as a necessary companion to God's glory. We could not behold him directly. Through the clouds, we unlearn what we thought we knew.
I think it is providential -- not coincidental -- that Oswald's message on July 28 reads like a letter from God directly to me. I'm not sure that I can add anything of value to his words. They are clear, direct and powerful: "God's end is to enable me to see that he can walk on the chaos of my life just now."
Today is my 50th birthday. Beginning this year -- beginning this blog -- I had such plans. Such magnificent plans of getting my life together and presenting myself as a meticulously wrapped package of wisdom, devotion and discipline to God. I have no such package to bring. I have a box -- well used and well loved, crushed at the corners, torn at the seams, contents spilling out in all directions. The contents themselves are a motley assortment of memories, fears, dreams,valued treasures and pain.
Here I am, God. Here I am.
Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly.
God calls me to walk. To walk and not faint. To walk on the water and through the valley of the shadow of death. To walk in the garden and walk in all his ways.
Oswald's right. There is nothing glamorous about walking. But it can be thoroughly comforting.
I just walked around my block three times at dusk on a perfect summer's evening. I did not really want to go, but I sit at a computer all day. I knew I should rouse the bones, and placing one heavy tennis shoe in front of the other, I went. The hot day had cooled to a refreshing mid-sixties. I heard voices and sprinklers and the gravel crunching under my feet. I watched a flock of quail strut their stuff and then fly into a huge, thick spruce tree, and I thought about Oswald's distinction between a consciousness of God's presence and the reality of it. I'm not sure I understand, but it was nice to think about it. And to walk.
Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly.
I like the idea of rescuing the word "obedience" from the mire, and I like the idea of obedience being a natural consequence of seeing Jesus. I do not need to add to my list of shoulds and musts. I need to pursue a relationship with God -- seek his face, listen for his voice -- and I will be compelled by his nature to obey.
Miracle: an event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God.
Mystery: a religious truth that one can know only by revelation and cannot fully understand; profound, inexplicable or secretive quality or character.
Belief, Oswald writes, is both a miracle and a mystery. Inexplicable.
I love to explain things or to have them explained. I like my mind to be neat and tidy with well-traveled pathways of understanding. As Oswald writes, I can control what I can explain. I can explain religion. I cannot explain God.
I write. I fret over the arrangement of words. I want to communicate, to break open my soul and connect with other souls. I want my writing to be sharp and crisp and sensual. I want people to read it and get it and like it, but also to be pricked in some way. I want my writing to matter, and I believe in some not-easily-explained way God has called me to this. I hold this calling in one hand. In the other are Paul's and Oswald's words: It's not about me.
It's about God.
At 16, my oldest daughter, Nora, has moved from childhood into young womanhood. She is driving, working and dating -- seems like a great time to impart some motherly wisdom. Only what do I say? What will stick and not bounce off into that wasteland of words upon words spoken and forgotten? When I read Oswald's entry for today, I thought, this is it. If I had only one message I could give her, this would be it: "God is your Father. He loves you. You will never think of anything that He will forget. Why should you worry?"
My dearest Nora,
You are lovely in every way. You're smart. You're a hard worker. You want to do what's right. You can take a lot of teasing and be a good sport about it. You laugh most every day, and you make me laugh with you -- not always an easy feat. You are loving and affectionate. You have proven that you have the ability to forgive and restore broken relationships. You like to have fun and see others have fun, as well. You are beautiful.
Your father and I thank God for you every day, but as much as we might like to be, we are not the perfect parents. God is. Dad and I will get it wrong from time to time. We are sinners. We are fallible. God is not. Sometimes, when you think we don't understand, we really don't. God does. He not only knows the number of hairs on your head, but the inner-workings of your heart and mind. He knit you together, and nothing happens to you apart from his plan (GP4U). Turn to him. Make his love the foundation of your life. You have inestimable value because he created you, he loves you, he died for you, and he wants to live in constant relationship with you.
"The disciple must maintain an attitude of perfect trust and an eagerness to ask and seek" -- Oswald.
Nora, trust him. Don't worry. Close your eyes and fall back into his arms. The overwhelming message of the Bible is that God is good. Trust him. Seek him. Eagerly ask for what you need.
Love, Mom
I was watching Dirty Jobs the other day. The host, Mike, was talking to a guy who cleaned old train engines. It looked like a pretty lonely job, and in response to a comment Mike made to that effect, the guy said, "I learned a long time ago that I don't like people." Ouch! Brutal honesty, but if I'm equally as honest, I have to admit that there's a piece of that sentiment that resonates with me.
Consider these points: 1) I really don't like getting hurt. 2) I am easily hurt. 3) People hurt each other. Conclusion: If I mix it up with people, I am going to get hurt, and I'm not going to like it. My response: withdraw. Not terribly different from the lonely railroad guy.
Only as a Christian, I am faced with this clear commandment: Love your neighbor. Misanthropy is not an option for the follower of Christ.
Consider these words of Paul that read like a love letter to the Romans:
"I thank God through Jesus for every one of you. That's first. People everywhere keep telling me about your lives of faith, and every time I hear them, I thank him. And God, whom I so love to worship and serve by spreading the good news of his Son -- the Message -- knows that every time I think of you in my prayers, which is practically all the time, I ask him to clear the way for me to come and see you. The longer this waiting goes on, the deeper the ache," Romans 1:8-11, The Message.
Lest I think that these were just extraordinarily mature Christians -- i.e. easy to love -- Paul adds this in verse 14 (Oswald's text for today's reading): "Everyone I meet -- it matters little whether they're mannered or rude, smart or simple -- deepens my sense of interdependence and obligation."
I cannot cut off the people who hurt me. I cannot withdraw into my safe corner. I cannot profess to love Christ and hate my brother.
"We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is, Never look for justice but never cease to give it" -- Oswald.
Do justice but love mercy. Don't seek to defend myself. Allow people to malign me. Do not malign them in return. When I allow my reputation to take the blow, I protect Jesus. These are hard words -- words that run counter to every last bit of my nature. And I might be prepared to fight against them -- to re-state the well-known verbiage against acting like door mats -- except that I have recently seen the truth of them manifest in a co-worker.
She's being "let go," a gentle euphemism for a devastating act. She's a single mom with four kids to support, and she could certainly make an argument for injustice, but she has not. She has handled the whole affair with grace. She has been maligned, but by and large, she has not maligned in return. Her reputation, her career, has taken the blow. She has not lashed out in revenge or attempted to fight for her rights. When I compliment her strength and express doubt about whether I could be so noble, she says, "It's God. I just keep reminding myself that my worth comes from him."
His character comes forth, and as a side benefit, so does hers.
Struggling again. King Uzziah, whose reign lasted 52 years, is considered to be one of the good kings of Judah, but his record was far from blameless. During the latter part of his reign, his pride got the better of him, and he attempted to burn incense in the temple -- a job reserved for the priests. About 80 priests stood against him. He got angry, tried to bully his way past them, and leprosy broke out on his forehead. He spent the remainder of his days in isolation, in disgrace, relieved of his kingly duties. His name serves as a reminder of the imperative of humility -- much like Uzzah's act of touching the ark of the covenant which brought about his immediate death.
Most of the commentaries I looked at treated the reference to Uzziah's death in Isaiah 6:1 as merely an historical placeholder. Oswald seems to invest the relationship between the king's death and Isaiah's vision with a great deal more significance -- "In the year that the one who stood to me for all that God was . . ." I'm wondering if, never having been part of a monarchy, I'm missing something. The king was often referred to as the anointed one. He was God's representative. His death created instability, uncertainty, national emergency.
The importance to which Oswald is referring, then, seems to be that of the king's position rather than personal relationship as I was thinking.
The relevant point for me, however, is probably much more personal. It is my husband who stands most obviously in the position of God to me -- not our president. I long ago ceased to hope in government as any kind of savior. But I do often look to my husband to define my value when everything around me and within me causes me to question it. It is he who demonstrates the unconditional love for which my whole being thirsts. It is he who models forgiveness and long-suffering. I do not want to imagine my life without him.
What does that mean in terms of placing God first, God second, God third in my life?
This one has had me stumped for a bit. Is the Christian life about my personal relationship with God or is it about building up the Body? Both, of course, but how does that work exactly? Is it a chicken-and-the-egg kind of thing? Do I pursue both at once and with equal fervor? Or do I wait for a measure of certainty and strength in my own walk before I go about trying to build up others? These are not really rhetorical questions.
Oswald asks a question to which the right answer seems obvious: "Am I building up the Body of Christ or am I looking for my own personal development only?" But what about his next statement: "The essential thing is my personal relationship to Jesus Christ -- 'that I may know Him.'" Surely I cannot build anyone else up if my own foundation is shaky. Or can I?
To realize Jesus Christ -- not merely what he has done for me. I wish I could ask Oswald to explain more fully.
I never saw Groundhog Day, but Oswald's entry today made me think of it -- the idea of God bringing me again and again to the same situation that I might choose rightly this time. And the right choice is to find Christ, to know him.
"The spiritual saint never believes circumstances to be haphazard . . . he see everything he is dumped down in as the means of securing the knowledge of Jesus Christ . . . The Holy Spirit is determined that we shall realize Jesus Christ in every domain of life, and He will bring us back to the same point again and again until we do" -- Oswald.
"We utilize God for the sake of getting peace and joy, that is, we do not want to realize Jesus Christ, but only our enjoyment of Him" -- Oswald.
Wow! How often do I do this in relationships in general? I use people to make me feel good. As long as I'm enjoying them (and this could include a wide scope of relational interchanges -- laughing, sharing ideas, working side-by-side on a project, listening, even crying and experiencing the connection of being understood or understanding), I'm in. But when the relationship ceases to be enjoyable (perhaps boring or painful or depressing or labor-intensive), I'm out.
If I want intimacy with God, intimacy with Jesus Christ, the relationship cannot be based solely on my enjoyment of him or about getting something from him, like peace and joy and eternal life. "All these things are effects and we try to make them causes" -- Oswald.
Not that a relationship with God would ever be boring or painful or depressing, but life can be and therefore my experience of God can be likewise tainted.
Oswald writes, "The test of our spirituality comes when we come up against injustice and meanness and ingratitude and turmoil . . ." Our inclination at those times is to retreat, Oswald writes, to run to our feel good place and look for God there.
Hebrews, however, tells us to provoke one another and stick together and look for Christ in the midst of the turmoil.
Intimacy is not about always feeling good.
"Choose this day whom you will serve," Joshua 24:15.
Choose. An act of the will. The Free Dictionary defines will as "the mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action; diligent purposefulness; determination." Oswald's words from yesterday: "It is a deliberate calculation, not something into which you drift easily." And today: "It is not an impulse, but a deliberate commitment."
I deliberately, purposefully with fore-thought -- considering the options, counting the costs -- and determination -- not lightly or flippantly but with my face set toward opposition -- choose the God of the Bible and his plan for my life.
"You are not able to serve the Lord," Joshua 24:19.
Even as I choose, the picture of failure is before me. Is this the balance between God's sovereignty and man's responsibility? I decide upon a course of action. I put all my eggs in God's basket. I am not hedging my bets, seeking to serve two masters, but I am a frail and fickle servant.
It is not just my eggs but my whole self that he requires. Then he will make of this frail and fickle servant a child, a friend, a bride. He will set me apart and make me holy.
I give him everything I have -- knowing full well that it is not much. That is my responsibility. And, in his sovereignty, he brings about beauty.
"But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
"Then the people answered, 'Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods!'" Joshua 24:15-16.
Joshua then tells the Israelites that they will not be able to serve the Lord, that he is holy and jealous and that they are rebellious, but they insist, "No! We will serve the Lord." Joshua declares that they are witnesses against themselves. He makes a covenant for the people, writes it down, and sets up a large stone under an oak tree as further witness. This is all recorded in the last chapter of Joshua. Then Joshua dies. We turn the page, and Judges begins, the record of a time when "every man did what was right in his own eyes."
The covenant is broken. The stone bears witness that the people did not hold to their promise.
If I were to rewrite Joshua 24:15 as an address to myself, I might say, "OK, Barb, if you think God seems harsh and distant at times, if Christianity seems too bloody and exclusive, if you'd prefer something more rational and less mysterious, why don't you choose a different God or maybe just go without." The options present themselves.
Atheism -- leaving me with Darwin, the Big Bang, survival of the fittest, and a world of chance. Everything in me screams that life cannot be purely random. Every glimpse of creation bespeaks design to me. Secular humanism -- where man is his own god, capable of the ultimate good, and science and reason reign supreme. Perhaps I'm just too right-brained. While I struggle with mystery, I also cling to it, and I have far too little faith in mankind to hope in us as the Final Answer. The other major religions of the world -- Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism -- seem fraught with the same problems as Christianity -- the problem of evil, a sometimes distant god -- and less plausible answers -- reincarnation, karma, jihad, ever-increasing levels of perfection. I answer with the Israelites: "No, far be it from me to forsake the God of my mother and my father."
So, I choose this day whom I will serve, and I am a witness against myself that I am not always loyal.
Easy. If I'm being honest, I must admit that "easy" holds a world of attraction to me. I am always wanting things to be easier -- making dinner, gardening, writing, parenting, relationships. If only they weren't so damn hard. Yes, I know that by lots of standards my life is easy, but I don't think that's the really important point.
In literature, in history, the easy road is never the best one. The characters who undergo hardship are the ones you admire, the ones with integrity and depth and a sense of humor. The characters with the easy lives, the ones who have everything handed to them, are shallow, spoiled, insipid.
Trials build perseverance and perseverance character and character . . . I do not want to be shallow, spoiled and insipid. I will try to stop wishing, at every single turn, that life was easier.
The vision for me is an intimate relationship with God where he and I are in constant communication. I talk to him not in a vague, I-think-this-is-how-one-talks-to-a-supreme-being kind of way but in a daughter-to-father, patient-to-counselor, friend-to-confidante kind of way. I am absolutely assured of his presence moment by moment. I hear his voice not in my ear but in my heart. I have no doubt of his love and acceptance, and I, in turn, am utterly devoted to him. My life, my work, my relationships have meaning because his life, his blood, his breath flow through me. In the vision, there is no wandering hopelessness, no crying out in despair.
In the valley, the vision sometimes seems like a distant dream, a vapor.
I wonder what Oswald thought about financial planning. It seems like Christianity and responsible money management are inextricably linked in America today. Everyone in his right mind plans for a rainy day, right? Anything else is poor stewardship -- irresponsible.
Apparently, however, Oswald didn't plan. When he died of complications following an operation to remove his appendix in 1917, his wife, Biddy, and child, Kathleen, were left without any long-term means of support.
When they returned to England, according to David McCasland's book, Abandoned to God, "Biddy was sustained by occasional gifts of food and money from family and friends," p. 275. Even after she started publishing Oswald's work, she was so intent on continuing the work that she put all of the money back into the next project: "Biddy took nothing for herself and Kathleen." And when they did get a place of their own, it was primitive: "They had no electricity, no running water, a coal fire for cooking and an outdoor toilet." Next, she ran a lodging house while putting My Utmost for His Highest together in her -- few and far between -- spare moments.
Biddy did not have an easy life. Perhaps if he had known, Oswald might have wanted to spare her that. She herself said, "Future plans are uncertain, but we all know that there is first God's Plan to be lived, and we can safely leave everything to Him, 'carefully careless' of it all," (Abandoned to God, p. 274).
I am a worrier, and I know I should not be.
"Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way" -- Oswald. Truly, as arrogant as it sounds, I fear that what God wants for me or my future or my children will not be what I want.
"Fretting is wicked if you are a child of God" -- Oswald. I have also heard worry referred to as "practical atheism." If I believe that God is loving enough to want what's best for me, wise enough to know what's best for me, and powerful enough to bring about what's best for me -- why do I worry? My answer is that I see my weaknesses, my failures, my inability to change, and I despair.
"All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God" -- Oswald. My despair does not take God adequately into account. He promises that his power is perfected in weakness. He promises that he will never leave me nor forsake me. He promises that his plans are good plans, plans to give me a future and a hope.
All of my worry cannot add a single day to my life, but it can certainly subtract. Help me, God, to think more about you and less about me. I cannot change me. I leave it to you.
I felt Oswald's "concentration of personal sin" as I read today's "Faith & Values" column by Steve Massey in the Spokesman Review.
"Our comfort-craving selves so often tell us to disengage from difficult relationships. The pull to be free from fractured relationships, either briefly or permanently, is both powerful and primal. It is also a damaging, defiant rejection of God's best. . .
"The notion of pursuing peace is critical. It suggests that harmony is something we ought to crave so much we'll chase it down at great expense to ourselves."
When I am hurt, I withdraw. I smile, but I quickly and carefully begin to disengage, to separate and protect myself with thin, clear layers of durable protection. When I hurt, I desperately want it to stop -- so much so that I am willing to cut myself off from the Body of Christ, thereby hurting the Body and preventing my own healing. Keeping people at a distance seems so much safer, but as Massey writes, it is "also a damaging, defiant rejection of God's best."
"Whenever the Holy Ghost sees a chance of glorifying Jesus, He will take your heart, your nerves, your whole personality, and simply make you blaze and glow with devotion to Jesus Christ" -- Oswald.
My whole heart, my nerves, my personality blazing and glowing. It sounds painful, and it sounds right. It sounds like a woman who knows the purpose of her being and has passionately relinquished all right to herself to her loving Savior. It sounds like the first question in the Heidelberg Catechism:
Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own, but belong -- body and soul, in life and in death -- to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
May it be so in me today. Amen.
Today is the first day of the last month of my 50th year. When this year first began, I had high hopes of transforming myself into a thinner, sexier, more fit, more disciplined, more organized, more spiritual, wiser, more mature, happier version of me. And, honestly, all those modifiers carried pretty much the same level of importance to me. (OK, maybe "more organized" was a few rungs down the ladder.)
Well, the end's in sight, folks, and I cannot tell you how devastating -- how almost crushing -- it is to find that I am still the same old, unorganized, undisciplined, unfit, overweight, folly-bound, immature, often-unhappy me. And in terms of my spirituality, I am still seeking, still longing, still hoping beyond hope that God is true, but I am not certain that I have a relationship with him.
I cannot sing as my mother did about walking in the garden: "And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known." I'm sure some people would dismiss that as sentimental gibberish, but I think it's beautiful. And possible. I just don't have it.
Oswald's words today suggest that my failure to find the intimacy I seek might stem from clinging to my right to myself: "The moment you realize God's purpose, which is to get you rightly related to Himself and then to your fellow men, He will tax the last limit of the universe to help you take the right road."
I am still trying to come to terms, then, with the fact that God's purpose may not be to make me the best me I can possibly be -- at least not in any overt way that makes sense to me.
He has shown you, Barbara, what is good and what the Lord requires of you -- to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God (Micah 6:8). I'm making a little progress on the humble part.
