Precious Pain

The scene in Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Aslan peels off the dragon skin clinging to poor ‘ole Eustace sticks with people on a truly profound level, I think. We’re drawn into Eustace’s character at first as sort of that guy in the story you just love to hate, but later, we are surprised to find ourselves identifying with his struggle for greed, power, and control. If we’re honest, it’s hard not to see ourselves in him.

What I recall the most, though, is how he clawed at himself relentlessly to be free of the curse. He tried so hard that he did in fact shed a few layers, but the thing itself was still there. His attempts at shedding the scales were merely facades.

“You will have to let me undress you,” says Aslan.

This is, of course, the breaking point, where we, partaking in Eustace’s struggle, come face to face with this fact: we, as we are, are unqualified.

Unqualified for what?

 

……Read the rest at Preston’s Blog: http://networkedblogs.com/lKuKU

 

“Whom do you say that I am?”

Riding horses with the family at A Bar A Ranch, Wyoming! How I miss it.

Our conception of what it looks like to follow Jesus may be changing and growing, but our vision of Him and understanding of His call must remain the same. Mark’s gospel pays careful attention to the path of spiritual growth that the disciples walk throughout its narrative, and at each turn, Jesus is constantly reminding them of who He is, so that their vision of Him would remain true regardless of their occupations and circumstances. When our understanding of who He is becomes tarnished by our own input, preference, and convenience, He gets our attention and reforms our perspective. And as I hope we shall see in this post, this transforming process is a call to humility and the receptivity of Christ Himself.

In Mark 6:30, the apostles gather themselves back unto Jesus, who had sent them out (the text doesn’t say where) to preach the message of repentance, 17 verses earlier. He invites them to “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while,” (v. 31) but instead, the disciples undergo a great testing of their faith, refining their understanding of He whom their faith rests upon. In an ironic twist, while the disciples try to escape with Jesus, the multitudes follow.

As the story unfolds here, the reader is alerted to the disciples’ lack of receptivity and grace when they say, “This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: send them [the crowds] away, that they may go into the country round about […] and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat.” (6:36) Understandably, the disciples are hungry, and moreso, Jesus told them that they would be resting, not occupied with the persistent multitudes curious to see Jesus.

But something is gravely amiss in their response to the crowd’s hunger. The disciples reject the people because they are bothersome. Intent only on their own rest and their own right to rest, they see that the crowds should be sent away, because there is nothing here for them.

This moment in Scripture resounds with profound and keen insight into ministry and following the call of Christ. The point is simple: the multitudes have everything they need right in front of them, but the disciples are too focused on themselves to bring them to Christ. The object of ministry is to bring people to Jesus, feed them with His bread, on His terms, in His place. Even if that’s five loaves for five thousand people in the middle of a blazing desert after a day’s work (or perhaps days of work) on an empty stomach.

But the disciples weren’t just fixated on getting a meal and a night’s rest. That they were willing to send away the crowds on an empty stomach when Jesus was in the midst of them is indicative of something deeper: they were fixated on doing ministry, and furthermore, following Jesus, on their terms. It is not to suggest that the call of Christ is to starvation of sleep and food (though to some, He may indeed ask this at certain times). When the question of how came up, they turned to themselves for the answer, not to Christ. They were not immediately struck with the urgency of going to Jesus to meet the needs of themselves and the masses. I think this tells us that the text is pointing out that the disciples fundamentally neglected who He is. He is more than just a good teacher, more than just a miracle worker. He is someone to be feared, but is He the One to be feared? The call of Christ is to follow Him in light of who He has revealed Himself to be, which means ceasing to use our own lens of understanding as the way of seeing Him. Our own self-constructed vision is a confinement, forming God in our own image, instead of having the humility to see Him as He is.

If I say this with any amount of insight or understanding, it is because I, like the disciples, am a partaker in such ‘failings’ to see Him and follow Him as He is. Jesus is the bedrock of ministry, the crux of the message, the bread for our very being, but when the how of following this message is presented before us, the natural tendency to respond with only our means and abilities, saying, “Here, let me try mine!” creeps in all too easily.

The message of the Gospel tells us that Christ is ever present and is ever the answer to our inadequacies. In fact, recognizing one’s inadequacies and understanding that they are necessary is a key component to receiving the call to follow Jesus. Perhaps this is what the disciples struggled with the most. Because it’s not about us getting stuff done and presenting ourselves as holy. It’s about recognizing that when we are weak, He is strong because we cannot be. It is only when we arrive at this place of recognition that when Jesus asks us, “But whom do ye say that I am?” we shall respond in worship, “Thou art the Christ.” (Mark 8:29)

The Tale of Tales

There’s a lot of literature in the Bible devoted to reminding man that despite all his efforts and desires to the contrary, he isn’t going to stick around for very long. In one aspect, these parts of Scripture serve to strike into us a holy fear, making us aware that God is eternal and we are as the grass of the field, fading away. While this is certainly true, I think there’s another piece within this idea that we don’t give much thought.

I came across a verse from the Psalms the other day that put this familiar message into a very different light: “For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told” (Ps 90:9). The KJV has the word “tale;” others, like the ESV, have “sigh” or “meditation.”

I think the psalmist is telling us that people are stories, thoughts in the mind of God. Yet, there is no passing thought in the mind of God: while no man can amount to anything in the scope of eternity—Moses, the writer, reminds of this in verse 12: “so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”— our stories are known in full by Him. We tell them to Him by how we live. If our stories were fleeting and minute to Him, then He would be forgetful of His creations, just like we are, but I don’t think Scripture communicates this. It communicates that we are but vapors, and it is necessary to understand that this is the condition of man. But God also knows these vapors as stories, because He, ultimately, is the Author, even though we are the ones telling our story.

And, like almost all authors or artists, He wants to insert Himself within the work.

We are His creations, and He desires for us to know Him, to live set apart unto Him, within His created order. If we think of our lives, though finite, as stories in the mind of God, then it helps us to understand the purposes of God toward His creatures as revealed in Jesus. When teaching His disciples how to pray, He emphasizes that the will of God would take place in their own lives as it did perfectly in His: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

Prayer is a way of laying down our tendency to write our own script while instead conforming our lives to both tell and enact the story of God’s redemption. It’s about all of our being, all of our day-to-day activities, all of our relationships, because these things compose our stories, and God is utterly interested in being the Center by which our lives take motion. Do our stories tell of God, to God, for God?

The Lord’s Prayer is key to this because through its petitions, Jesus leads us to live out a purposeful story of which God is the Author; and therein is joy amidst suffering, willful obedience, and love of our neighbors. It’s a prayer that turns our self-made story into a narrative that participates in His purposes because He participated in our flesh. It is no wonder, then, that Paul writes, “My beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (I Cor. 15:58). Humans may indeed be just pages in the book, but the Author wants to write His grace in each one of them, wrapping each tale into His grand theme of redemption.

Naming God

There’s something awful (please read: full of awe), maybe even foolish, about trying to name God, to actually ascribe a word that perfectly constitutes a full understanding of who He is. Unfortunately, the name G-O-D is so commonly referenced and inserted in curses, surprises, frustrations, wonders, or delights nowadays that it all just becomes kind of hackneyed and trite by overuse. This isn’t really that surprising–or new–because it happens with lots of words and usages in any given language.

But I think we should be weary of this. Outside of using the name to intensify speech, G-O-D represents something to us. It refers to that Being we can’t fully comprehend, or in many cases, to that mysterious Other which is somewhere up there, looking down on earth because He’s really big. Or, it refers to some unprovable myth that crazy people believe in to make themselves feel better.

It’s interesting to me, then, why many of us don’t bother to know more about this God, if He is in fact so ‘Other.’ Why don’t we try to find out what, exactly, His name means? If there is even a hint of possibility that He exists, why do we dismiss Him? Why do we just confine His name to add a dramatic effect to whatever we’re meaning to communicate?

Now, we can’t name God like we can name things or people, and I don’t intend to give that a try here. Because that would mean that I fully understand Him, fully know Him. I don’t think He’s quite reducible to our terms, categories, or even our time frames for that matter. For a simply beautiful and stunningly true post on the nature of naming, check out my best friend’s. I think what he hammers out so clearly for us is that there is a twofold crisis nowadays: we hardly bother to call stuff what it truly is (evil, evil; good, good) in the first place; and, secondly, when we do, we name incorrectly because we refuse to take a stance on Truth. We don’t like calling evil by its name because then it has ramifications for us. I think it’s similar with God: we don’t bother looking into what His name means because then we’re responsible with what we might find.

A huge step we need to make, though, especially in this post, is a recognition of the fact that God cannot be properly and fully named on our terms, by our categories, with our language. Nevertheless, I want to pose an idea I think we’ve let slip away: we should want to name God, only insofar as we are able and meant to.

Because there’s another side to naming. Naming isn’t just about control and desire to have full disclosure on something or someone. Naming can also be about love: God names His Church as Bride, Beloved. He gives them an identity, and treats them in that way. What in turn, then, shall we call God?

Sunday school helps out here, I think. Many people have memorized the Lord’s Prayer, a passage of Scripture that is absolutely essential. “Our Father,” it beings. A.W Tozer says that the most important thing about us is what we think about God. The Lord’s Prayer is a good place to begin. I wonder what would happen if, when we used the name ‘God,’ the true understanding of a merciful, intimate Father would came right along with that.

Scripture teaches us that God has a lot of names, and we’ve already talked about the impossibility of finding one that grasps His holiness, His otherness, His beauty, His Justice, His wrath, His goodness, all in one (by the way, that’s a puny attempt at listing all His attributes). People have been grasping at this task ever since the dawn of time. The result, usually, is a deeper love for God and knowledge of Him. How beautiful is that?

And how beautiful is it, still, that He has actually made Himself known to us in part, and allowed us to call Him by a name: God, our Father. May we never lose what that Name signifies. It is, unshakably, Scripture that continually reveals the unutterable depths of His identity to us as if we were reading a great Story: the more pages we turn, the further our understanding of Him grows. He’s invited us into these pages, to grow, to understand, and to love Him more.

Why a Book?

Do you ever have that feeling when you read a passage from Scripture, or even a passage from a devotional book like “My Utmost for His Highest,” that what you just read is exactly what you needed to hear? Sometimes it’s almost scary how apt certain passages speak with precision into what we’re struggling with or burdened by. Some even narrate and comment on our very lives. How does this work? Why, how, does God speak to us through books, namely, a Book?

I’m always struck with the beauty of Psalm 139. It begins, “Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.” God so intimately knows us because He created us (“You knitted me together in my mother’s womb,” v. 13). But the Psalm doesn’t seem to exalt God just because He knows us intimately, in the way we know a painting because of the hours spent adjusting every line and contour according to the apprehension of what we intend to be. God does know us on this level, but the Psalm also illustrates an even greater beauty: He continues to know us, even after we are knit in the womb. No matter where we go, He is there. No matter what we say, or even think, He hears it before we do.

So how does this work with the Book and Him speaking to us?

I wonder if it’s something like music. Music is movement; its language is fluid and the way we receive it is somewhat of a narrative. One moment we’re in an abbreviated soft staccato that whispers to us; another we’re in the thunder of a chorus or the might of an orchestra in full swing which echoes in the chambers of our heart and mind. Its dynamic power can take us through a spectrum of emotions, thoughts, and responses. And there’s the thing: the music is what leads us to these emotions. We respond to it.

I wonder if God’s Word is like this. As we approach its pages in faith, we literally take Him at His Word: we trust in the movement of His Word and that He’ll speak to us in a powerful way through it because His voice is imbedded in the pages. When we listen to song, we consent to the artist’s purpose conveyed through it. We’re along for the ride, wherever it may take us.

There’s that great Switchfoot song, “Your Love is a Song.” I think so too, Jon Foreman. And I also think this idea translates: His Word is a Song. I think that every time we experience the beauty of hearing His Word speak to us with a penetration that’s rather astonishing, it’s because, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we’ve consented to listen to His Song. And that’s the thing about a book: we have to read it like a story, we have to listen to it like a song. It has to become real. We have to hear it for what it is. Otherwise it won’t speak much; or worse, we’ll determine what it says for ourselves.

Like a song that was written for you and for me, His Word is so dynamic that however we approach it (random-page-opening, devotional book, Zondervan’s ‘One year Bible track,’ lectionary, etc.), we are spoken to because He knows us intimately. We are exposed, utterly, at the Truth of His Word. Hebrews 4:12 reminds us of this: “It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” We hear what we need to hear because the nature of His Word prepares our heart to hear it. It penetrates.

And that’s why I walk away, saying, “I needed to hear that.”

I don’t think these occurrences are happenstance.

When we’re in the place spiritually where we need to hear something, and we humble ourselves to read His Word, God speaks. Because consenting to listen is trust, and trust is a platform for relationship. Then, like manna from Heaven, His Truth descends to the desert of our heart, supplying it with what will truly fill our empty stomachs. One of the greatest aspects of sanctification is to humble ourselves to receive His Word at His Word; to consent in letting the Song take you on a journey. That’s the power in a book. It takes you. It leads you, shows you, speaks to you.

God’s Word is like this because of how personal it is to us as humans, and how revealing it us of God Himself. It speaks profoundly into the human condition with every turn, every character, every law prescribed there. So, as my ‘ole prof likes to remind me, “When we read His Word, it in fact reads us.”

Looking Closer; Hearing Clearer

In a recent reading of St. Luke’s Gospel, I was struck still with wonder by a component of the first chapter’s text.

I’ll be honest: at first it seemed like a paradox of some type; but as I let His Word ruminate in my heart and mind, I was fascinated with where He led me in thought and reflection. Alas, it was all too quick that I realized how seldom I allow His Word to truly penetrate my heart with its Truth and listen to His “still small voice.” (I Kings 19:12) If anything, let this blog be an encouragement to you, to allow the depth within the text of the Word to come to light as you cast your gaze upon He who brought this text to us. Look closer at this with me.

I’m journeying through Luke slowly, and it wasn’t until the second or third time that  reading the first 40 verses of chapter I that something struck me.

In verse 11, an angel appears to Zechariah and tells him to him (he was the priest chosen to go into the temple to burn the incense of the prayers of the people) that his wife, Elizabeth, though barren, will be with child. This child, the angel announces, will “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (v.17)

Now, later on in verse 26, the angel Gabriel appears to Marry and announces to her that, “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” (v.31-33)

When I read over Mary’s response for the first time, I thought that they responded in the same way, which made the different outcomes of their responses such a mystery.

Zechariah says, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” (v.18)

Mary responds, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (v.34)

What’s fascinating is how Zechariah is, for lack of a better word, ‘punished,’ (he is made mute in verse 20) while Mary is not. Their outcomes are different, yet their responses seem to be similar.

I wish I knew the Greek here, to really understand what the questions were. But I don’t think we have to. The text is glaring (it usually is, when I silence myself enough to hear it). The angel(s) respond differently to Mary and Zechariah because Mary and Zechariah’s responses are, in themselves, fundamentally, and crucially different.

Zechariah asked for a sign. He did not believe! He challenged the angel, and thus God, to prove to him that God’s promises would come true. The situation seemed impossible, even for God. Zechariah’s response is characteristically doubtful; before staking belief in the promise, he required of God to see a sign that would clarify and validate God’s promise. He asked, “How can I be sure? How do I know this is true? How will I be certain that God can do this? “

If ever there was a way to test the Lord God, it is to ask that he prove Himself to us. It seems to me as saying, ‘Lord, I’ll step forward, but only when I’m certain that it’s a good idea.’ Dueteronomy 6:16 admonish us that, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Later in Matthew 12:39, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees who demand a sign of His validity, purpose, and relation to the Father, saying, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”

Mary’s response, on the other hand, reflects a desire to know more. She wonders at God’s plan. She wants to know how it will work and what she must do. The idea of her bearing child when she and Joseph intentionally did not ‘come to know each other’ before marriage is utterly extraordinary and surprising. She has right to wonder. Gideon had right to wonder how he and his small army would defeat the Midianites. He asks, “How can I save Israel?” (Judges 6:15)

And God tells Him how.

When God has spoken, we have not the right to question the wisdom of His plan. Asking God to prove Himself by showing a sign is showing Him no trust in His wisdom, authority, and Goodness. Mary does no such thing. She does not ask for a sign of proof.

But she does wonder.

She is amazed, perhaps even afraid. God is faithful to her, and reveals His plan with even greater depth: that she will be “overshadowed” (NIV, 35) and reminded that “nothing is impossible with God.” (v.37) As she presses further and wonders with a reverent fear of Him who spoke her into being, she acknowledges God’s plan with a humility and faith expressed in some of the most beautiful words in all of scripture: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” (v.38)

There is a difference in questioning the wisdom of God and questioning the will of God. Friends, we must hear this.

This comparison seems not to encourage an immediate doubt in His plan, but a rather an ardent willingness to ask further of God to reveal His will. It’s a humble posture of listening. Asking further of Him shows that you’re willing to listen to what He will say – even if it’s silence you here. When you hear God speak, ask Him more. Press into God, lean into Him and become utterly familiar with His Word, and His work. Ask of Him, not test him, that you may pursue Him who pursues you.

The Warehouse and the Library

A wonderful view from up in a tree that rests up on a cliff at Ebby’s Landing, Washington.

During the time off between my semesters down at Baylor University in Waco, TX, I make quite a dramatic shift in ‘occupation.’ During the term, I ride my bike down the lane to the library; during the break, I ride the bus into the city to try my hands at a bit of blue-color (I write with no demeaning tone of any type) labor in a warehouse. I’ve done this on every break since the summer before I came down to Baylor.

It’s a funny dichotomy; the contrasts are vivid. The hard thing is how different that world of work in Seattle is to the one I live in down in Waco.

In one I ride into the smoke and dust and chaos and bitter cold of the city and warehouses. In the other I ride my bike or, more often then not, have a friend take me to and fro.

In one I’m lifting, spraying, cleaning, packing, driving, delivering, cutting, organizing, and eating out of a lunch pail. In the other, I’m seeing friends, spending time with my wonderful girlfriend, talking, relaxing with coffee and a good book, studying Latin in the Library, reading Aristotle in the ‘Honors Residential College,’ and eating meals that are typically fresh cooked (sometimes by one Preston Yancey, if fortunate – but if extremely fortunate, by Ms. Cherie Michelle Bates), of wide variety, and, of course, not made by myself.

In one I’m surrounded by the casual and rough slang of the Seattle working class. In the other, I enjoy the polite and friendly conversation of a thoroughly Christian environment.

A quick note about this particular warehouse work: it is, largely, monotonous to the ‘T’. I’m not talking about the same kind of task day in and day out; I’m talking the same taskday in and day out. The same boxes need cleaning. The same papers need sorting. The same trucks need to be filled with the same load when they come in at the same angle at the same loading bay at the same time each day.

Now, come break, I’ve always bumped up against a common struggle, and this time around, I’ve met it just the same. It is not the physical adjustment or even the mental one. Honestly, it is, in many ways, the spiritual adjustment that is hard to make. What I’m struggling with and learning through is how easy it is to think that one type of work glorifies God while the other simply does not, that He is present amidst one while absent through the other. Lately, though, I’ve been coming to bear in mind that to think one type meaningful and the other meaningless is a load of rubbish.

I think it’s all because of my friend Richard (or so I shall call him here).

He showed me how to find God in the warehouse.

Richard is a Christian. He has worked there in the warehouse for years. The thing that struck me the most about Richard the first time I met him was simply his attitude and disposition, not just towards other people, but also – and hear me on this – towards his work. He comes in to work every day with the same smile and greeting, puts on the same gloves, moves the same boxes, yet maintains the same aura of peace, joy, and love towards all.

It’s not even that he’s smiling every second of the day or blurting out the name of Jesus at random times so people know he’s one of those guys. There is just something about the way he asks how you’re doing, and the way he faithfully does one of the hardest and most monotonous jobs in the warehouse without the slightest compliant or deviance from solid effort. And that’s his life. I’m certain he has a family and a church that provides some other type of community, but he has faithfully come to the warehouse day in and day out for the past decade, at least, to do the same job. Yet in the dull grey of the warehouse, he is like a beacon of light because he has profound peace in what he is doing, no matter what it is.

I wonder if it’s because he’s latched onto the Truth that Jesus spoke to His disciples before the ascension, after the Resurrection: “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20) There is so much Truth and so much mystery, such profundity and so much implied in that statement. I hardly know how to unpack it, to make sense of it in certain areas of my life. But I think for Richard, that statement always carries the same Truth, no matter what he does or where he is. God doesn’t change, though our circumstances might.

I think Richard has realized that God is ever-present, and that, by doing the best job he knows how to do, by devoting his heart to the job, he, in the present, goes before God and says,

“Here’s all I’ve got. It isn’t much, but I believe you when you say that you can use it for your good.”

What a state of heart this is. It seems like the same state of heart that Mary had when the angel of the Lord appeared to her in Luke 1 and she said, “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said.” (v.38) The beauty of this is that she expresses this not just because she chose it in the moment, but she lived in such a way. Richard presently and willfully believes the Lord when He says that He is ever present with us. The fruit of his belief is his light in that warehouse. Richard believes that He is making our labors – both seemingly large or small – a work done not in vain.

It also takes great faith to believe that God cares about what may seem mundane and monotonous, ordinary and insignificant, pathetic and forgotten. But He is always with us. And the term “us” implies all of humanity. There are no ‘pathetic and forgotten’ in God’s eyes. He is ever involved in this world, using His people and His hand to bring a Great Light into the darkness. The audacity to believe His promises forms within us a constant willfulness to partake in His work of redemption in all that we do.

This state of heart requires no specific set of feelings or series of special signs. It requires still, persistent, and strong faith. I am convinced that the virtue of hope stems from the Christian pillar of faith, faith that Jesus came to save the lost, and restore mankind unto Himself. Faith is a present hope. Because when His promise of restoration is real, He changes all reality right before our very eyes because our hearts are set for Him to do so.Hours in the library, hours at the office, hours in the warehouse, can all be devoted unto the same end because of the same promise. As inhabited dwelling-places of God, He’s using (and always has used) the Church in all of it’s various parts to partake in and actualize His redemption story one step at a time, and at the pace He has made.

Richard’s heart and example has taught me to breathe ever upon the fact that He lives, and that He lives in me. That’s why I can find God in the warehouse and in the Church, in the library and on the bus.