A Passing Thing

I like being liked.  It makes me feel complete and ...healthy, somehow. 
It's almost like finding a hidden superpower -- because when the feedback is positive and steady, I am charged up for any obstacle.  For a little while.
Time and time again I have noted and railed against this internal inclination, stiffening my resolve to find my identity in a deeper place rather than hanging out on the thin ice of public opinion.  But it is the bent of my heart to want the approval of people around me. 

Today's message was about being trampled by suffering.  For me that is living in a narrow corridor of disapproval, dislike and what even feels like hatred.  I didn't think I wanted to hear anything else about that crippling place, and I focused on the details of the sweetly snoozing infant a few feet away, delighting as a grin split her dreaming face.  Her eyebrows lifted in the form of surprise before all those dainty features stretched again into a one-month baby smile.  And then words from Daniel wrested my attention to horns that were growing and being broken off and more erupting, with everything pointing in different directions (but surely "the beautiful land" meant there was something good?) until I was reminded of a battle scene of intermingling forms and faces and I wanted to call out, "What color are the good guys wearing?!"
It turns out the point was hope.  Hope.  Despite the losses caused by (perhaps?) some of the horns which were bad, there was ultimate victory.
Still, the time of defeat was almost complete.  All the externals were stripped away, the wounds were staggering, and rescue had to come from an outside source.
Suddenly, this mysterious passage sounded so familiar.

It is only when the work of my hands is exposed as the rotting filth of self-righteousness that I can be freed to repentance.
It is only in the absence of affection that I turn toward the source of all love.
It is only when I lose my life that I find it. 

Likely, there were other take home points intended.  But I have spent too much time considering the hideous beast that seems to prevail; it was good to remember the Ancient of Days. 

“For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” J.R.R. Tolkien
 

Struggle Bravely

I have received many weather alerts and emergency drills by

way of radio, television and now smart phone.  Tornado watches send me to my basement, despite the fact that I live in a tornado-free zone.  Hurricane warnings motivate me to run every item of dirty laundry so that I won't need electricity, for days.  I check weather maps each morning and anxiously refresh updates on false alarms.  No meteorological prediction has yet lived up to the hyperbole with which it was billed.

Friday morning, at 3 a.m. we were awakened to a pounding on our door by first responders, cautioning us that we should be ready to evacuate.  The house next door was surrounded by water, and it was still rising. 

Flash floods.

I hadn't heard any rain.  It certainly wasn't coming down.  But the water was coming up -- through the drought hardened lawns -- right before our eyes.  And twenty minutes after we packed a bag of necessities and moved our cars to higher ground, the alarms began to sound on the radio, television and smart phones.
While there are many interesting things to learn during a natural disaster about camaraderie, rescue boats and the time it takes to carry all the lower shelf books up to the second floor of our house, there are deep lessons for me. 
After the water had begun to subside, and the adrenaline faded, I kept hearing everyone echoing, "...it came up so fast."  
Grief and sorrow and sin and guilt are like that.  They come faster than the warnings.  They come in drought and they come during heavy rains.   They come in the middle of the night when I am fast asleep and they assault me with disaster that I struggle to wake up in order to comprehend. 

Wisdom sets me to work building the walls, defenses, and digging out the run-off basin -- in advance of the emergency.

Today, while the sun is shining and the crisp air is drying out the muddy remnants of the things we used to store in the basement, I leaf through the books as I permanently shelve them on higher ground, stopping on a bit of Thomas a Kempis.
“My Son, thou art never secure in this life, but thy spiritual armour will always be needful for thee as long as thou livest.
Thou dwellest among foes, and art attacked on the right hand and on the left. If therefore thou use not on all sides the shield of patience, thou wilt not remain long unwounded.
Above all, if thou keep not thy heart fixed upon Me with steadfast purpose to bear all things for My sake, thou shalt not be able to bear the fierceness of the attack, nor to attain to the victory of the blessed.
Therefore must thou struggle bravely all thy life through, and put forth a strong hand against those things which oppose thee."

Fifty years before Columbus wheedled some ships from the Spanish monarchy, a Dutch monk was shaping blocks that are as perfectly suited for disaster preparedness today as they were five hundred years ago.  
Because it always has come up so fast.

Almost Persuaded

Spending time with a very new person clarifies my philosophy on all kinds of things.  Environment should be stimulating (but not hectic), music must abound, and vocabulary may as well be precise and varied.  Why not? In this culture where a single profanity can serve as noun, adjective, or verb --oftentimes in the same sentence-- the world seems to be withering from lack of excellence in speech.
A few weeks ago, a new song was introduced in the morning worship service.  Frankly, I had heard it on the radio and dismissed the lyrics as trite, predictable and ...uninspired. 
But this was different.  Within the context of people proclaiming faith in the face of personal pain, trial and heartbreak, I heard something that flipped my heart upside down.  With faces lifted, the whole hungry hurting flock of us caught the rhythm of a battle march, a call to arms, a fight song.  And it wasn't about taking back a piece of geography, or carrying a banner, or even about going into the lions' den.  It called us to look up -- and trust.  With voices united we spurred each other on to rest in God's great love and care despite the most difficult of circumstances.
In the epistle to the Romans, the apostle claims that he is "persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth nor any other creature can ever separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."
Those are beautiful words.  However, it is a rare day in which, "I am persuaded." 
Willing?  Yes. 
Wanting?  Yes.
But the magnitude is unfathomable to me.  Love, beyond comprehension, is powerfully holding on to me, in spite of the brokenness, "within and without"?   Eight nors in two verses seem to provide a hefty argument.  And perhaps that is the point.  The evidence is piled on in order to persuade.  Like a rousing fight song, our weakness and neediness is anticipated and provided for in this artfully crafted list of all the things that can't get between us and Love.

Perhaps the lyrics of the song aren't poetry.  But sometimes the most basic, stripped down vocabulary might serve best.  I took Greek from a teacher who claimed the Gospel of John was written so simply that we should be able to translate it after just two semesters of the ancient language.  He had lofty ambitions, but we did muddle through a good-sized portion.

"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..."
That's a rousing march, if ever I heard one.