Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Home.

The old glassware and candle-holders we’ve had stashed in the kitchen cabinet for something like 11 years? Headed for the give-away box. All those clothes that don’t fit us anymore? Packed up and gone. Even the couches will be going.

Because my dad has been out of work intermittently over the past year, my family is prepping our house for a move. We have no idea what's going to happen, but if it all goes through, we’ll be renting a small apartment in another city by the end of the year.

In so many ways, this situation is a blessing. And in so many ways, it keeps making me think of another subject that’s been on my mind lately: heaven. Somehow, the prospect of moving is helping to make me more sharply aware of the transience of our time in this world. If someone were to ask me where I’m from, I feel like any of these replies would be much more accurate than a mere statement of our current address--

We're foreigners, just traveling for a little while. Our home isn't around these parts, but I’m headed there soon.

Oh, we're living in the Bay Area for now, but we're really just visitors.

Funny you should ask- by birth, we're actually citizens of another country. I'm happy here, but I can’t wait to go home.

I’ve been meditating on Hebrews 11:13-16 this week, and I’m getting more excited the more I think about it. Read it slowly, and let the promise sink in.

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

I don’t belong here. Not in this house, not in an apartment, not in California at all—nowhere in this world. I don’t belong here, because I was made for heaven. That’s the sweet refrain I can’t get out of my mind.

Do you tend to see yourself as more of an “exile” and a “stranger” here, or a permanent resident? Which home seems more real to you—heaven, or earth? Why?

Monday, August 09, 2010

"Everywhere I Look I See Fire"

Annie Dillard is now a card-carrying Catholic; but for many year, she was (as she described it) "spiritually promiscuous." Annie dabbled in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and a smattering of other ideologies.

In an effort to sort through her thoughts, she wrote them down. Then, at age twenty-nine, Annie won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek. (I'm now chanting, "iwillnotbeenvious, iwillnotbeenvious...")

Nearly twenty years following, Annie Dillard converted to Catholicism and seems to have stuck there ever since. But this short reflection from her first book, written in her days of searching, struck me with its beauty. I love her reflections on nature, and how they obviously led her to the existence of a creator. This passage left me in awe--not only of her ability as a writer, but in awe of God's ability to create magnificent beauty in such a way that we can't help but try and take it all in.

If you, too, are left speechless by beauty, grab a cup of tea and enjoy this piece:

After watching a frog killed slowly by a gut-sucking beetle (you read that right), Annie wrote:

"Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power of light, the canary that sings.... Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous.

About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.....

The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Another time I saw another wonder: sharks off the Atlantic coast of Florida. There is a way a wave rises above the ocean horizon, a triangular wedge against the sky. If you stand where the ocean breaks on a shallow beach, you see the raised water in a wave is translucent, shot with lights. One late afternoon at low tide a hundred big sharks passed the beach near the mouth of a tidal river in a feeding frenzy. As each green wave rose from the churning water, it illuminated within itself the six- or eight-foot-long bodies of twisting sharks. The sharks disappeared as each wave rolled toward me; then a new wave would swell...containing in it, like scorpions in amber, sharks that roiled and heaved. The sight held awesome wonders: power and beauty, grace tangled in a rapture with violence.

We don't know what's going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite?

....The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames."

Years later, and we still can't ignore the "conundrum." The whole world is still sparking and flaming for an answer to the question: who gave us this beauty and grace?

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Getting Rolling Again...

I've been asked, oh, maybe twenty times why Lindsey and I write for this site. Sometimes the questioner forgets to sugar coat it and asks point blank: "Why should I care to read your blog?"

Usually, in the past, I've fumbled for an answer. (I'm Southern. Rudeness throws us for loops.) Usually I respond with whatever's off the top of my head. "God just placed the opportunity in our laps." "I just like to write, bla bla bla," or something else vague and barely helpful.

The truth is, there isn't a special reason you should read this. There are a trillion blogs on the internet. The advice columns in the paper are probably more scintillating. We're not half as interesting as listening to the Old Spice guy on Youtube, and we know it.

So why do I blog?*

Profound question.

Let's see. The internet is filled with filth. Scratch that--the media is filled with filth. Scratch that. We're up to our necks with filth, so much that half the time we don't know it's there.

Do I write because I want to somehow try and counter all that, with some Superman complex? Uh, no. None of us can singlehandedly do that, because honestly, our hearts are all filthy too.

Here's what I do know:

In Ephesians 2:19-22, it says that all of us who belong to Jesus are being built together into a dwelling place for God. A crazy, incredible thought. Jews, Greeks, hippies and kings; all that live for Jesus are being built to become a dwelling place for God.

Meaning that God connects all of us together; uses each one of us as building material. We've all got jobs. We're all created to carry weight.

Great power means great responsibility--but even without power, we're still held responsible. It doesn't matter if you had an eating disorder when you were thirteen, or if you've spent your whole life looking down on those you sense are "less holy." We're part of a city on a hill. We're shining to angels, principalities and powers that Christ is worth it and is making all things new.

This applies to blogs. This means that, sometimes, we must write simply because God deserves to be praised even in the dustiest corners of cyberspace.

And as this principle becomes more clear, it becomes possible to trace into other areas of life. Forget communicating on a blog. What about praising Him through time and love?

Recently I read about Jesus washing the disciples' feet, a story I've heard told since childhood, but still have yet to fully absorb. After preaching to them, sharing meals together, and roadtripping all over the nation, Jesus washed his follower's feet. After speaking to them with words for so long, He forever imprinted His meekness in their memory by action.

The guys--they were his students, and dense ones at that. He was a famous rabbi the people, at one time, wanted to name king. They were fishermen, who dreamed they could ladder climb by sticking close to Jesus.

In the most poignant portrayal of His humility (next to that of His death) perhaps ever recorded in the Bible, Jesus wiped clean the feet of his friends.

It was an act any of us could do. We're all given opportunities to serve the hard-to-like. We can forgive and serve our family members. We can ask that little sister we've wronged for forgiveness, even though she's partially to blame. We can go out of our way to love on those former friends who've decided to shun us.

I guess the common thread that knits all this together in my mind is this: are we waking up every morning in order to lift His praises higher, and to put aside petty things?


*Which is a funny question in light of the fact that Lindsey and I haven't blogged in several months since the site's been down. But humor me.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Pray for Peter Helms

On Thursday, Peter Helms, a homeschool student from Texas and NCFCA speech and debater (the league Lindsey and I were involved in during highschool), was the victim of a serious car accident. Peter was flown to a nearby hospital, where he is currently in a coma with bleeding on the brain.

His sister-in-law, Hope wrote in an update,

"On Monday or Tuesday the doctors plan to try and get him conscious, but for now they are just trying to keep Peter stable through this critical time.

Prayers for physical strength would be greatly appreciated. We are all exhausted (especially mom who was here through the night and has gotten very little sleep). God has used so many people to encourage and strengthen us and we are so grateful.

We are sorrowful, yet hopeful because we know we serve a God who can make even dead men walk again. God has been faithful to us in the past, even in our unfaithfulness to him, and we know he will be faithful to us as we walk the road ahead."

Please join us in lifting up the Helms family. Updates on Peter's condition can be read on his Facebook group page, here.

Labels:

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Aaand we're back!

After a two-month-long technical problem with the site, Beauty from the Heart is rolling again! It feels good to be back. Stay tuned for new posts coming in the next couple of days.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Overthinking A Country Song


"There's a place in the sun that she's never been
Where life is fair and time is a friend...
She looks out the window and wonders again..."

I'm going to cut it for you straight. This is a dumb song. It's about a mother wanting to leave her children, and I have some obvious issues with that. And, I'm kicking myself for even starting a post with a country song in the title. (Oh where is my dignity?)

But I had an epiphany while listening to this song and the story of a woman who "lives for tomorrow," dreaming of the future. It hit me how often I hear people talking about not being obsessed with the future, not worrying, etc.

The topic of "The Future" is a dead horse I beat all the time when chatting with friends: "Don't get worked up over this [homework, guy, job, otherproblem]; it'll all work out in the end. Just chill. Keep your mind in the now..." is the advice we give each other. Nobody wants to be that woman from the song. You'd be better off just stamping the words "doomed" and "desperate" on your forehead.


Yet while we talk about not obsessing over the future, we don't really make a gameplan for how to live out our talk. (At least, I really haven't.) So what's the plan? How do we actually "live for the now" and stop going crazy worrying about tomorrow?

Here's a quick diagram:

1. Don't Stop Your Obsession. Just Change it. My gut says (sadly, from past experience) that yes, we need to stop obsessing over life, but we need to replace that obsession with something else. We need to obsess over God, instead of our situations. If we don't shift over to Him, we're going to jump right back into anxiety. The key to not being that lady from the song is to become obsessed about something better, that something being God. (Wow, am I really taking the song that far? Hmm. Yes. I am.)


2. Supplement Point 1 with Friends. Okay, but still there's the "how." How do we obsess over God?
While I'm not a pro on this topic, Imma gonna say it: you need more than the Bible. Now, the Bible is vital. You won't come to know Jesus without it. You won't grow without it. We should probably read it more than we do, because it's the source of every good hope. Just the same, God designed us to need more than His Word.

He's made us to want not only the companionship of His Spirit, but also the companionship of friends.* Through them His grace is also dispensed. I'm just beginning to realize how much of the positive changes in my life were influenced, partially, by the friends close to me.

Mhmm. I just sounded like a cheeseball, didn't I? Seriously though, just ask yourself: would you laugh at the same kind of jokes you do now, if you hadn't grown up around your family members or your good friends? Would you have the same standards you do now if you were, instead, born into another family? What if your family was the same, but if you had a different hometown? Our companions affect us, and we affect our companions. They become part of us.

The obvious challenge for us here is that, as friends, we need to point each other to God-obsession. We have different personalities. Don't fight with them; use them. Those differences can help us see ourselves, decisions, and situations in a totally new way. Letting good, wise friends nudge us toward wisdom helps us to grow. If we want to stop worrying about the future, we need to surround ourselves with God-obsessed friends who are dedicated to doing that, too.

None of us are independent enough to live totally without friends. (When was the last time you booked a vacation on a desert island?) We were created to do life with other people.

Maybe if that woman in the song had some friends around to give her shoulders a good shake, she would've thought twice about "living for tomorrow." Maybe they could've warned her that too much dreaming about the future can make us lose the present. And who knows? I might even be her myself, except for my friends.

That might be a stretch though, because it was a country song, and bad things were bound to happen anyway.

*I define "friend" as any person who knows you to some degree, and is a part of your life. That means family members can be friends too.

So, what are your suggestions for becoming more obsessed with Jesus? Tell me about your friends, too. How do they encourage you? Have you made friends with your family members? Do you ever overthink country music?

Monday, April 12, 2010

A Kick In The Shins

My pride got a kick in the shins this past week. In a conversation, someone asked if I was my friend’s personal assistant.

Uh, no. She’s my friend. And why do you think I’m her assistant? I wanted to pout. Why can’t you assume she’s my assistant?

Continue reading.

Friday, April 09, 2010

Hannah Harps On Humor

I like humor as much as the next guy. Maybe even more, depending on who "the next guy" is and if they like Brian Regan.

Lately, it seems Christian blogs have really acquired a sense of humor. Take for example Jon Acuff or Carlos Whittaker or Bianca Juarez. There's also Mark Driscoll and CJ Mahaney defending the use of humor as a tool of the Gospel. I couldn't be happier.
But there's also such thing as too much of a good thing, and there are places where lines ought to be drawn. I'm trying to find this line myself.
Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with making fun of kitschy art, "youth pastor hair," evangelical Christian's over-use of alliteration in sermon titles or v-neck shirts. And if there is something wrong with that kind of humor, I need to be convicted, because I do those things all the time.
At the same time, I've seen, heard, and cracked jokes that now I think were probably inappropriate. It's not that they were trashy or crude, but the object of the joke is not something to be made fun of: the Bride of Christ.

It's one thing to mock marketing attempts by churches that try too hard to be cool. It's one thing to laugh good-naturedly about the Christian "counter culture" that made side hugs what they are today. Humor can be a tool to expose wrong thinking and helps us not take ourselves too seriously.

It's quite another thing altogether to sneer at the honestly-trying Christian leaders, or at Christian behaviors that are Biblically-rooted. (Like, say, communion crackers and grape juice.) That's where we start to tread on hallow ground, making fun of the honest efforts of those for whom Christ died.

If you laugh at the Bride that way, it makes me wonder. Who are you trying to get to laugh?
At one point does humor stop being salient and just becomes condescending? Where do you draw the line?

Labels:

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

God Kills Death



"My two companions were faster than I. Swiftly, they took flight, perhaps in fear, perhaps running to tell the disciples of these words. Risen? I could not see it. I could not see past the bloody and torn body I had watched upon that cross. I could not allow such a wild hope to be embraced. I slipped to the ground, still soft from the fierce storm that raged on the night of my Lord's death, and struggled to think of the sweet smelling grass...instead of His lost face, His missing healing-filled hands. Peter and John came...and left, and still I lay and wept. Where was He?

'Woman, why are you crying?'" (Amy Rachel Peterson, Perpetua.)

New life. The trumpet sound in a room of silence; the river that washed out the desert. That's what the Resurrection was.

What is it now? For me, Easter Sunday is the time dedicated each year for making fun of weird traditions: "Jesus rose from the dead, so let's hide eggs in the shrubbery." As Jim Gaffigan pointed out, if hiding eggs on Easter is too weird for you, "Don't worry. There's a bunny." Cause if it's already weird, why not make it weirder?

Taking communion back to back with criticizing nonsensical American customs and listening to apologetics on the Resurrection, the narrative can get lost.

Come close and listen. I want to show you something beautiful.

There's a poem by Debora Greger that imagines what Eve would feel after the Fall, if she still lived today. In the poem, Eve opens her eyes to see Adam, just as she did on the first day. "But this time," she says, "you were old. When I looked closer, I saw myself in your eyes, a fallen leaf starting to curl."

The world outside her is dying, too; though it doesn't know it yet. "Down the street," Eve observed, "trucks trundled their dark goods into eternity, one red light after another. Though it was morning, street lamps trudged down the sidewalk like husbands yawning on the way to work. On puddles, on rags of cloud, they spilled their weak, human light. With shadow my cup overflowed."

That's the world. That's you and me, reading Ecclesiastes or The Great Gatsby or the newspaper, finding futility in every corner. We live in a depressing world, where all its beauty is choked by death. We're all slaves, really, to aging and time and the inevitable end to what little good we know. The gods of our pursuit have abandoned us.

"With shadow my cup overflowed."

Then. BAM! The Resurrection happens.

That's what it's like. Smack in the middle of a tragedy where the main protagonist (God) dies, the greatbutimpossiblething not only becomes possible...but it occurs. It actually happens. God not only chooses death for Himself in order to erase the debt of sin, but He does something else entirely new.

God kills death. Jesus folds up his burial clothes and walks away. Those nails? They became nothing. What was once a nightmare no one could imagine overthrowing...now became one more victory.

I'm explaining again an old story, that you could probably turn around and explain to me. We both know it well. But think again.

Jesus' resurrection is not only a landmark (or even The Landmark) in history, but it's a metaphor for you and me. Even though it was Jesus who was raised, we were raised with Him. In Him, His life becomes ours. If He's alive, we're alive too. Death can't hold us anymore either.

"He was risen! Risen! I jumped to my feet, oblivious of decorum... He was risen....The sacrifice was made, and now this God was mine. I cried out, reaching beyond the ceiling, the sky and the stars hidden above the sun, 'You are God!' The words echoed and re-echoed... Jesus heard them." (Ibid.)

I want my every Easter to be like that--or hey, forget Easter. I want to be like that all the time...which is one of the reasons I'm writing this several days after the eggs have been hunted and the bunnies have been put wherever the bunnies go. The Resurrection deserves more than once-a-year obligatory attention. Isn't the news wonderful enough to deserve it?

Thursday, April 01, 2010

What Then Happens


“Sisters, if the only charm you have is your physical appearance, beautiful as you may be, you are foolish and will come to rue the day you scoffed at the value of inner beauty. You will find a man for whom physical beauty is also the main thing. What then happens as you age? You will grow more insecure with every birthday….You will become one of the empty, frighteningly sad women who submit to face lifts, breast surgery, and Botox injections (if you escape the deadly grip of anorexia). By midlife, you will be popping antidepressants…. When it comes to appearance, Tallulah Bankhead’s (1903-1968) axiom is worth remembering: ‘There is less here than meets the eye.’”

-John Ensor, Doing What's Right in Matters of the Heart, p.127 (emphasis mine.)

Labels: