Friday, April 24, 2009

Meeting God in a Dark Alley

This was originally posted a year ago, when Lindsey and I were both involved in NCFCA competitive speech. Even though our circumstances have changed (we no longer compete!) we think the message still very much applies. Hope it blesses you!

“When you are weak, you are strong!” My eyes starting fuzzing out as Charity grabbed my hands and squeezed them. When you are weak, you are strong. The words reverberated in my head as I walked past the judges, smiling at the blurring shape of their faces in my eyes. What did it mean exactly? I was certainly weak. My legs felt bendy like licorice and I couldn’t remember what month it was, let alone formulate a winning impromptu speech. I should’ve worn my glasses, because my eyes were fuzzing in and out. How was it possible for me to be strong at the moment?

It doesn't take a legal adult to experience troubles. I'm seventeen, and I have seen just enough to understand that life isn't always berries and cream. Although the example of my impromptu round is admittedly insignificant compared to other struggles, its a small slice of the kind of obstacles that humble us every day and convince us of our own insufficiency.

I wonder, why does God sometimes lead us through moments where we feel overcome by weakness? As we watch other Christians skip blithely through fields of daisies, facing a life with little or no obstacles, we can feel that God has dumped us in a dark alley. As small as it seems compared to the troubles of others, why does He put me in an impromptu room with blurry vision? It feels so pointless.

Let The Real Sufferers Stand Up

My weakness is insignificant when considered alongside the problems others face. For instance, my friend Stephanie is directing a documentary on the life and ministry of Nick Vujicic. Born without limbs, Nick struggles to complete tasks most of us can finish in an instant. And guess what? His situation will not change in his lifetime. He can't look forward to one day finding a cure to his problems. On the surface, he has no reason for hope.

Elisabeth was also bombarded by weakness. Restrained from marrying the man she loved as he sought direction from God for over a year, she wondered at the indescribable ache in her heart. In her diary she copied down a prayer of Amy Carmichael's, struggling to find perseverance in her journey:

"'If I make much of anything appointed, magnify it secretly to myself or insidiously to others; if I let them think it 'hard,' if I look back longingly upon what used to be, and linger among the byways of memory, so that my power to help is weakened, then I know nothing of Calvary love.'"

Then Elisabeth prayed herself, "Dear Lord, Thou alone knowest the inmost workings of my mind and heart. Keep the level of my love in Christ--never lower. Thou hast said, 'Neither are my ways your ways.' Help me to walk in Thine, Lord, in peace." (Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity.)

Some say that because Christ carried our sorrows, we will have no more suffering on earth. Any pain we experience on earth is unexplainable in their theology. But what about Nick’s struggles? How can we ignore the cries of Elisabeth in her time of loneliness and waiting? How can we explain Paul’s vision problems and the unnamed ‘thorn in the side’ that he experienced throughout the course of his life? How can we say that Christ took our sufferings when these Christians have suffered so?

Christ’s death didn’t remove human weakness from the Christian life. Rather, God allows the weakness of His children to be revealed for a purpose. While my impromptu anxiety wasn’t real suffering, it was a wake up call to cry out to the Creator of the Universe for strength. It was a humbling revelation of inadequacy. It was a situation that pulled me from my high horse and caused me to fall on Christ for grace to get through.

And that's exactly the point. The situations when our inadequacy is exposed are meant to lead to further trust: “Therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.” (1 Peter 4:19)

He Is Our ________

Hope. Strength. Joy. Fill the above blank with any of these words and they’ll fit. God doesn't promise us perfect bliss on earth, but He does give us something better. In the face of struggles--whether it's believing God will help in weaving through a traffic jam or entrusting to Him delicate matters of the heart--rest can be found in His unfailing love.

King David said something funny in Psalm 63. After crying out that his life was like a “dry and weary land where there is no water,” he wrote that he'd continue praising God because “because Your lovingkindness is better than life." That's pretty unusual. While David didn't mince words describing his situation, he had found a higher source of joy than just his circumstances. Interestingly enough, the people I have met who are closest to God are the ones who have met Him in the dark alleys of life; because they learned that His lovingkindness, even in darkness, was better than living in daisy covered fields without His Presence.

And yet, those who travel through dark alleys aren't left there forever. Sufferers in the big and the small have a promise: "And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong..." (1 Peter 5:10) Will we ever be made strong? Will we be healed? Maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but one day, it's certain we will. And our Healer will be the God who does all things well.

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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Happy S.A.D.?

February 14th is known to most as Valentine’s Day. To a few traditionalists, it’s even St. Valentine’s Day. However, to a notable segment of society, it is recognized as S.A.D. (Singles Awareness Day.)

Standing starkly against other holidays, S.A.D. is supposedly the lowest point of the year for singles. Where married and dating couples exchange flowers and chocolate, S.A.D. participants are content to mope on the sidelines. No chocolate candies or surprise engagement rings for them. O woe!

Much of S.A.D. sadness, I suspect, does not stem from relationship problems but from hope problems. I have never met a human being without a future hope. Whether it is a long-term career aspiration or just an anticipation for dinner, to be without hope is to be dead. In fact, all of creation is spoken of as having hope, or unsatisfied longings. (Romans 8:19) Proverbs 13:12 says that these feelings are a force to be reckoned with: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Unlike the rest of the world, which may pin its hopes solely on marriage or some politically correct “mutually beneficial relationship,” Christians have a different aspiration. Augustine wrote, “Christ is not valued at all unless He is valued above all.” The hope of one day being able to value Christ above all, uninhibited by human frailty, fills me with excitement. The longing to cherish His Presence up close and to always exist in His company is, well, heavenly. Nothing compares with it; and with hope placed securely in that promised future, S.A.D. worries hold no sway.

Valentine’s Day--a celebration of marriage and love in a time where marriage is rarely respected--is a holiday for all. Singles, enjoy this day, even if you must buy the chocolate yourself.

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Friday, January 04, 2008

Becoming Jane

At one time, a very average little girl lived on a very average little street in an average little town in the United States. We will call her, “Jane.” Jane was born with talents, strengths and weaknesses, much like other children. However, unlike other children, Jane had no parents.
It’s not that they never existed. She had them at one time. But the day she decided she didn’t like the rules they gave or the broccoli her mother served at dinner, Jane quit the family. She wanted to decide for herself who she would be.

Jane decided to treat her friends the same way. Although Jane managed to make friends with her talents and personality, she rarely was asked to play hide and seek or jump rope because she’d never adhere to the rules. She preferred to make her own.

Years passed and Jane grew. When she was a woman, she was very much the same as when a child (except a bigger version.) While as a child her main rebellion was concerning broccoli, as an adult Jane revolted at the idea of abiding by the laws set by God. Jane wanted to decide for herself, as always. The older she grew, the more headstrong and demanding she became.
One day, as Jane sat in church, she heard the pastor speak of God having different, specific designs for men and women. She learned that God had created her with a certain purpose in His mind. This angered Jane. It was yet another set of rules she’d have to dodge. Jane ditched church and decided that if the Bible contained such restrictive rules for women, it must not be true. Orthodoxy, to her, was extremist. The only religion she followed devoutly was the adoration of herself.

This was the way Jane lived every moment of her life. She never married when she fell in love, because she knew marriage involved submission. (More rules.) When she was pregnant, she refused to be chained to motherhood, so she aborted her child. (More rules.) Finally, one day, she found that she wasn’t happy to be female.

So Jane forgot she was, which was actually what she was trying to do all along.

Jane is, sadly, a true story. She’s a personification of the feminist movement, through which every woman has been encouraged to become a Jane.

If there is one thing that Jane despises, it is orthodoxy. The idea that there are Biblical roles for women, and that God really instated them, is a dagger driving at the heart of Jane’s philosophy. Unadulterated Biblical truth is her kryptonite. She can’t stand absolutes.

Having seen much of Jane in myself, I am on the verge of making a very politically incorrect absolute statement: There’s no place like home. The statement (albeit cliché) is ever so true. Even for organizationally-challenged (I.e. naturally sloppy) people like me, a tidy, cozy home in which God is held at the very center, is something to savor.

I’m not the only one. However uniquely individual women have been designed, with varying arrays of talents, I believe unshakingly that every woman was created to love the home. There was a woman Carole Mayhall wrote of in her book, Come Walk With Me, who emanated this love: A missionary wife who traveled constantly with her husband in the bush, migrating from hut to hut, she had no steady house. Yet it was so much a part of her identity to make a comforting environment, that everywhere she went, she carried a set of silver candle sticks. She’d set them on her makeshift table in an effort to turn every hut she lived in into a home.
Like the missionary wife, all women have the capability to cultivate homes that are refuges, nurturing godliness. Although it may not be a woman’s only calling, she is told by Scripture to fulfill this task. (See Proverbs 31 and Titus 2.)

In the midst of a culture radically adverse to any sort of distinction between men and women, my persuasion is a part of a minority (and a minor minority at that). George Bernard Shaw, a bitingly agnostic socialist wrote, “Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.” Thus is the common perception of homemaking. (Jane wears the quote like a t-shirt…in fact, it may be on a t-shirt.)

To an extent, I agree with Shaw; the home can certainly be a prison and workhouse. Likewise, any kind of rules concerning a woman’s nature can be seen as imprisonment-- from one perspective.

From where Jane is standing, the home doesn’t look like all that and a bag of chips because work is tiresome and rules plead for obedience. But the grass is always greener on the side of disobedience, until we reach that side and look back at the lush plants where we were. With a right, Biblical perspective, knowing full well the freedom that comes with obedience, home is less a cage than a stage to display God’s glory.

I like what Touchstone, the wise court jester in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, observed about contentment. Upon arriving wearily to the forest of Arden, he declared, “Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content.” Only when we find our identities in the locations God places us do we discover contentment.

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