Giving Up . . . For Now

If you've been reading my blog, thanks. I've enjoyed the journey, and your comments along the way have really encouraged me. The lesson that cannot seem to survive the arduous journey from my head to my heart is one of grace -- that I do not have to be good enough. In my challenge to live with myself, this blog has begun to represent another way to fail, and so, I am suspending my efforts for now. I hope to return and finish the journey with Oswald at some point in the future, but for now, my pilgrimage is heading in a new direction. Thanks, again, for being interested.

Barbara

The "Go" of Unconditional Identification

"If you are hard and vindictive, insistent on having your own way, and always certain that the other person is more likely to be wrong than you are, then there are whole areas of your nature that have never been transformed by His gaze" -- Oswald.

I can be arrogant. I can be hard and vindictive. I can be a misanthrope, and I am certain that there are huge parts of my nature that have not been transformed by his gaze. Come, Lord Jesus.

The "Go" of Renunciation

"He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man," John 2:25.

He knows what is in me -- my thoughts, my fears, my desires, my longing, my strengths, my weaknesses, my secrets. He knows. He knows.

The "Go" of Reconciliation

I have only experienced this sort of reconciliation once. I was on the receiving end. My pastor came to my husband and me at the tail end of Sunday school. We had been teaching the three year olds of whom we had two and he had one.

A bit of background: A year before we had been the best of friends -- the pastor, his wife, my husband, me and our four young children. We got together on the spur of the moment -- combining pot-luck style what our frugal budgets could afford, caring for each other's children, sharing plants from each other's gardens, meeting over coffee and dreaming about the future. Then we -- my husband and I -- had gone into business with my pastor's in-laws, and while the business was a stunning success, the partnership was a disaster. My husband and I had suffered what seemed like a death, and now, an ocean of pain lay between our pastor and us.

That particular morning, he was going to be serving communion, and as he said it, he wanted to do as Scripture taught and be reconciled -- if he had done something to offend us. If. If. Hm-m-m. What a powerful little word. We were pretty young at the time, and I've never been good on the spur of the point, but I wish I had had the presence of mind to protest. To say this mess -- for indeed it was one huge mess of mistakes (big and small on both sides), hurt feelings, misunderstanding, and betrayal -- could not be resolved in the five minutes before he needed to be upstairs for worship. But I didn't. My husband didn't. We were taken by surprise. We had no idea how to begin to put the damage into a conversation, let alone a five-minute, neat-and-tidy reconciliation. No, the script for this conversation had been pre-written, and we played our part, said our lines.

Months later, before we left town and moved halfway across the country to start a new life, I sought out a mediator and invited this pastor and his wife to what I imagined might be a real reconciliation -- not neat and tidy at all but by its very messiness imbued with genuine meaning. They declined.

And to this day, honestly, I wonder how it's really supposed to work.

The Divine Commandment of Life

"The true expression of Christian character is not in good-doing, but in God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your life, not just good human characteristics. God's life in us expresses itself as God's life, not as human life trying to be godly" -- Oswald.

I found these sentences to be simultaneously comforting and perplexing. Comforting because I have always felt defeated by the words, "Be perfect." How can God command that? He can demand it because he is the Perfect One living in me. Perplexing because what in the world does that mean? How can he live in me? Where? I know we teach three-year-olds to say Jesus lives in their hearts, but really, there is nothing but blood pumping through tissue in that particular section of my chest. Where is he really? In my mind?

Don't be so literal, Barb. OK, I get that. If you spread my chest or crack open my skull, you will not find God there. He is a Spirit, but what does that mean?

Partly, it means this: Mystery beyond my understanding. He is a Person whom I cannot see, hear or touch, and yet, I know he exists. When I try to deny him, make sense of the world without him, I cannot.

So here's where the comfort comes in again: All my do-gooding will not make me like him. If he is to live in me, it will be his doing, not mine.

You want perfection, God? Bring it.

Are You Going on with Jesus?

The thing that struck me in today's Scripture passage is how clearly Christ knows our weakness -- the certainty that we will fail him -- and yet he calls us friends. Oswald jumps off from verse 28: "You are those who have stood by me in my trials." The irony, however, is that these words are said at the Last Supper -- just before the Garden of Gethsemane where his best friends fall asleep when he asks them to pray and then desert him when he is arrested. Peter denies even knowing Christ -- not just once but three times. And Jesus knows all of this -- predicts Peter's betrayal -- when he says the words Oswald uses in today's devotional: "You are those who have stood by me."

Make no mistake, Barb. You are weak. You know it. God knows it. And yet, he calls you his friend. He sees you. He knows you. He remembers you. He loves you. Just as you are.