Keeping in Step: Peace

"The mind controlled by the sinful nature is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. " Romans 8:6

I have always been enamored with people who seem to handle life with a sort of calmness.  Those people who cannot be moved.  They simply face life as if it were under their control, even when it is clear it is not. Those people who never seem to respond irrationally.  They don't have to stop and get their resolve - they never lose it.  

I recognize that some of those people are liars.  When they go home to their wife and kids, they are simply a tyrant.  Stalin and Mao have nothing on them.  They may treat the higher wagers with dignity and regard, but the hourlies are a dime a dozen.  I know this and I am not speaking of them.  

For the past several years, my wife has been attending a week long camp in the summer that is committed to taking 40-50 kids under the age of 12 and treating them like royalty.  These kids know very little about being treated as anything more than expendable.  Their history reads like a horror novel.  The shards of life that sometimes show up at camp are more than a person can bear.  If you can muster up the strength during the day to just be present with the kids, you typically bottom out in the late hours of the evening when you have to recognize the living Hell some of these kids face every day of their lives.

And sometimes - that Hell comes to life in front of you. 

These children who have have learned to protect themselves at any cost, fight back against the kindness.  The scars of "love" borne in their own body and psyche, reacts violently against the Love  has come to rain on their parched landscape.  The target of their resistance:  the counselors who have come alongside of them for the week.  The ones who are trying to show them that life doesn't not have to be a tragedy are the ones who get to see the tragedy unfold.  Amidst a torrent of emotions, these counselors stand like the Survivor Tree waiting for the storm to pass so that some type of shade can again be granted to the tired and weary.  

It's not that these people are superhuman or have no threshold for exhaustion. Everyone does and for some of them they would like the hurricane to cease.  However, their peace is what so many need.   They are like the physician from Thorton Wilder's play "The Angel that Troubled the Waters." Based loosely on John 5 and the account of the man at the pool of Bethesda, a number of invalids await the stirring of the water by an Angel.  A physician approaches whose problems are not physical, but emotional. Longing to be healed of his own infirmity, he approaches the water. However, the Angel tells him that the healing is not for him.  Instead, he (the physician) is the one who should be healing others.  Broken internally, the physician pleads with the Angel to heal him, but the Angel responds:

"Without your wound where would your power be?  It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men.  The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living.  In Love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve.  Draw back."

This is the secret for those who have Peace.

You see they many of them are at peace in their lives and being at peace means they can give that peace back. Sometimes that peace is a sense of wholeness - the Shalom of God.  Other times that peace is simply the assurance that life is what it is and there will be a day when all things are reconciled - that day may be today and I may be the bearer of that peace.  Other times that peace is just the steady calmness to accept that while life is filled with tragedy, there is hope.  Because only those who have been broken, know the healing power of Peace.  

Soli Deo Gloria

Keeping in Step: Joy

“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9)

I am a bit of a whiner.  In fact, if you were to ask those closest to me you would likely find that they too would agree that I am a bit of a whiner.  Now I don’t typically complain about things that most people care about, instead I complain about dishes in the sink or wrestlers  (action figures as my son refers to them) in the living room.  I point out if the pool is sagging or if there is just nothing on TV.  I just complain.  

It is strange because there are moments when I feel completely at ease.  Moments when I don’t seem to care about an unkempt lawn or that my van is too hot.  There are times when I am completely wrapped up in an experience that nothing can steal my focus. There are things to be frustrated by, but in these moments I don’t really seem to care.  

Those moments...when I am singing in my car. Laying in the hammock, listening to music and staring into the night sky.  Walking around the edge of a lake or standing in a field.  When I am underwater.  

Life can really be challenging at times.  Keeping a sense of focus in spite of the various distractions can really throw a person for a loop. Friends betray us, our bodies fail to produce, jobs get “restructured”, wives find a lump, dads develop a cough, a bruise shows up that won’t go away, we are never quite able to sleep at night.  Whatever it is, the uncertainty that can follow proves to be unrelenting.  

It’s here that I need a moment.  It’s here that I need to go swimming.  It’s here that I just need to take a walk.  Because at times life is quite simply Hell and I need to be reminded of something greater.  Something that never fails.  Something that is always there- albeit buried in the debris of living.  It is not a “happy place”.  It is not my inner child or the sacred space I have cultivated.  Instead, it is something not related to me at all.  It is a gift to me by the Spirit of the Living God.  It is there to remind me that no matter the situation, I have not been abandoned.  It is a water in a dry land, calm in a storm, it is the moment when my head goes underwater.

It is joy. 

"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." (John 15:11)

Keeping in Step: Love

In my life love has taken many different forms:

Family

Friendship

Sports

Food

Romance

Sex

In the midst of these forms, I have found that love can mean one thing in one moment and something quite different in the next.  In the same way that most of life's initial events are colored by an interpretation we get from those closest to us, love can be seen in the same way.  I am grateful for those who have loved me without expectation for recompense.  Those who have loved me knowing that I may never fully understand what is being done.  I am reminded of those who in my seasons of teenage angst, loved me by granting me insight to this day I still use.  They were patient with me as I found my way, lost it, found it again, and then lost it one more time.  They understood that the darkness that had fallen over my life was but for a moment and if I would press on - the light would shine one day again.  

But then I remember those who were not so loving.  Those who were unwilling to wait on me as I figured it out.  Those who "knew" their wisdom was greater than that of anyone else.  Their condescending looks and hateful words scarred me fearlessly.  Those people who never could see the end of the tunnel, they could only see me in my current situation.  Their "love" was more expensive to receive than it was to give it away.  To be fair, I only knew one person like this.  Consistently my enemy.  Fought me at every turn.  No matter what I thought, there was always something wrong with it.  There was no love in the many responses I got. The work I did, the efforts I made, were all failures. 

I fought this person relentlessly throughout childhood, teenage years, and continue to fight into adulthood.  He shows up when I want to exercise love, but am uncertain how to.  He is there when I wake up in the morning and when I retire for the evening.  He is most antagonizing and unkind.  He knows no patience nor is he willing to accept responsibility for anything he does.  He is selfish and knows nothing of love.  In the end, he is my greatest enemy.


And in the end, he is me.   This is why, love can be many different things, because it did not originate with me.


"God, who needs nothing, loves into existence holy superfluous creatures in order that he may love and perfect them.  He creates the universe, already foreseen- or should we say 'seeing'? There are no tenses in God- the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is, time after time, for breath's sake hitched up.... This is the diagram of love Himself, the inventor of all loves."   C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

For the past couple days, I have been attempting to get our above ground pool up and going. It has been a semi-daunting task in that an empty pool in Oklahoma wind is like trying to put socks on an infant.  Lots of movement, little success.  However, I was able to get the pool up and began filling it up yesterday evening.  

Now it takes quite a while to fill up the pool so I just left it and went about my business.  Later that evening, in fact around midnight, I decided to go and check to see how it was doing.  Filling up just fine, but I was left with a quandary:  do I let the water run through the night and risk the pressure of the water pushing the hose out of the water and just running all over the yard or just turn it off and wait until the morning.  Turn it off

So I turned around and... wait there is an important part of this story I haven't shared yet.  

Vine

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener."  (John 15:1 TNIV)

We have begun to do a little gardening lately.  We have built a couple of planter boxes, filled them with dirt, and planted things like tomatoes, lettuce, squash, etc.  Now I say that we have done this; however, it is really true to say that I have built the boxes, filled the dirt and my wife is the gardener.  It's interesting to watch her go from day to day caring for this garden.  She waters it regularly.  Every day looking for weeds and making sure the plants look healthy. Part of the process is pruning.  The plants will grow in random ways and the various branches that grow always present the possibility for fruit.  However, just because they grow out doesn't mean they will produce.  When she sees this she cuts the branches away to make sure that more water and nutrients get to the branches that will produce fruit.  Even at times, she must trim back the healthy branches to make sure they will produce even better.

What is true of our current situation is true of Jesus and His Father.  Jesus makes it clear that He is the vine from which the branches grow.  He possesses all of the nutrients required to produce fruit. He distributes water throughout the plant so that all of the branches are able to succeed.  However, producing fruit can be a painful process and this requires the branches to "remain" on the stalk to produce.  The idea that a branch not connected to the vine could produce fruit in keeping with the vine makes no sense.  Instead, if the branch is to produce it must be attached to the vine.

Sometimes followers of Christ will forget this simple truth:  Without Jesus, we cannot produce fruit.

You can do all of the civil work you want to, but it really doesn't produce fruit.We can study the Bible and understand the deep riches of its context, but apart from Jesus it is simply pages turning in the wind.  I can go to church on Sunday, Saturday, Wednesday, online, in a big church, small church, volunteer to teach children or lead worship, but without Jesus I am simply play-acting.

 And lest we get consumed with being in Jesus and not have community, we cannot forget that Jesus says to be in him means we live in community with others.  So on the flip side, I cannot have Jesus and neglect the company of believers.  I cannot simply live as if having fellowship with other believers is not essential, while proclaiming the message of Jesus.  It must come together.  If the branches are to truly bear fruit, they must be together on the vine.

Everyday my wife goes out to the garden to see what is yet to be done. Each day she finds that some of her plants are growing and that some are not.  As the gardener, she must make the decision - which stay and which go.  Funny thing about the plants, when they really are healthy they produce fruit naturally.  When they are not it is almost always because they are not really connected to the source.

Anastasis

“I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”  (John 11:25-26 TNIV)

I have been told that in life you can count on two things:  taxes and death.  Now I have met a number of people who have managed to avoid paying taxes, but I have yet to meet anyone who has truly avoided death.  If you die, you die. I know there are a number of people who have stories of having died and then came back - I am not talking about them. In the end those people still haven't fully died.  If they had, they wouldn't be here.  If they "survived" death, then they would have been immortal and only one person gets to claim that.  

The story of Jesus and Lazarus is an interesting one.  Lazarus has died and Jesus has come to raise him from the dead.  Everyone around Jesus fails to see the connection between Lazarus' death and the presence of Jesus.  Yet, the connection is profound.  When Jesus arrives, Lazarus' sister Martha runs to Jesus first. "If you had been here, he wouldn't have died.  I still have faith in you that you are God's man, but I know you could have prevented this."  Jesus tells her that Lazarus will rise again to which she simply identifies the "raising" at the end of time as her consolation. In response,  Jesus says the most interesting thing:  

 “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die;  and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus says quite plainly, I am that Resurrection you speak of as well as the Life that proves the Resurrection.  Now Jesus clearly believes in a Resurrection at the end of all time (John 5:29, 6:39-40, 44, 54), but here Jesus clearly is making a distinction.  Jesus says to her that those who believe in him, though they die, will live forever.  That those who base their lives on believing in Jesus will never die.  In other words, Lazarus isn't dead and he has been for awhile.  

And that is what I am doing.  I am alive.  In every sense of the word as pronounced by Jesus, I am alive.  True, I am getting older.  I don't move as quick as I used to and may not be as sharp as I once was, but I am fully alive.  I am experiencing Life because Jesus is my LORD.  And as I experience Life, I am reminded that He who grants Life holds authority over death.  So that when death comes knocking - as it will - I know that I will raise again. I don't know what the space in between will be, nor do I know what the time frame looks like, but I know with confidence I will be raised.  

So maybe today, I will live because of the Life who gives me the confidence to know I will never die.  

Soli Deo Gloria.