contentment with the unseen

Anything God allows He intends to use for good.

Anything God prevents is for our protection.

When God allows us to undergo suffering, He always has a “redemption plan” for that area of our life. And sometimes He allows terrible, awful things to happen: the death of a child, the loss of a home, the loss of a job, the consequences of someone else’s sin on our lives. While none of those things are good in themselves, God always always always has a plan to use them to produce a good. We can never know exactly or fully why He allows terrible things to happen, but we can rest in the knowledge that He will use them to produce a good. He can “redeem” those things and even transform them to whatever extent He chooses in our lives and in the lives of others.

Similarly, anything God prevents is for our protection. And sometimes He prevents good things from happening: the receipt of a job, the pregnancy of a hopeful-wife, the fulfillment of a desired relationship. While those things may be good in-and-of-themselves (although specific instantiations of those things being qualified as good apart from their being God’s will is nonsense) He only prevents them so as to protect us from something else unforeseen. We can never know exactly or fully why He prevents good things from happening, but we can rest in the knowledge that He prevents them so as to bring about a greater good than what those other perceived good things would bring about or what good they represent in our feeble understanding. He can redeem those areas of loss and emptiness to whatever extent He chooses in our lives and in the lives of others.

The wondrousness about our lives and these two realities is that there is an incredible depth of unseen beauty, grace, and intricacy that we can never know. It’s so easy to rejoice and feed on the apparent, visible beauty. I am thrilled and awed by the visible signs of God’s provision, mercy, love, and will in my life. But I have a very difficult time being thrilled and awed by the provision, mercy, love and will that I cannot see and may never see. And even in those times when I am, I have a difficult time being content with being thrilled and awed solely by the provision, mercy, love and will that I may never see. I always seem to want an expression of it in my life (which is completely natural since we are incurably earth-bound and thus made up of the physical--i.e., the visible). In the immortal words of Cuba Gooding, Jr.: "Show me the money!" (Or whatever it is I desire at the moment)

Will I allow myself to be wooed by the unseen beauty of my circumstances? Will I allow myself to be fall in love with the beauty I cannot see, by the beauty that is completely hidden by the pain and trials of life? Because if I’m not, what amount of apparent, visible beauty is enough for me to be satisfied? And isn’t my being satisfied only when I have visible signs of God indicative of my love for evidence of Him rather than love for Him? The unseen is so much of who God is to us, and to be thrilled by the beauty I can’t see or understand is to be thrilled by God Himself.

coffee shop turds

Lady to me at coffee shop: “I thought my computer was plugged in.”

Me: “Well, I think a girl tripped right here so maybe it came unplugged.”

Lady: “I just thought it was plugged in the entire time.”

Me: “Do you want me to plug it in for you?”

Lady: “I just thought it was plugged in. I didn’t realize it had come unplugged.”

Me: “Well, you can plug it in.”

Lady: “I plugged it in when I got here and just thought it was still plugged in.”

Me: “AUGH! YOU’RE RIGHT! I DID IT! I UNPLUGGED YOUR COMPUTER SO I COULD USE YOUR OUTLET EVEN THOUGH THERE’S ONE RIGHT ABOVE IT I COULD HAVE USED! I AM A RUTHLESSLY MANIACAL BEEOTCH WHO ENJOYS UNPLUGGING COMPUTERS USING THE OUTLETS AND THEN LYING ABOUT IT FOR SPORT! NOW I WILL GO EAT THAT BABY."

Ok, *part* of this dialogue *may* have been made up. But it is definitely what I would have said had she kept up the flow of her oh-so-subtle accusations. I know that tone, lady. I have 1/5 of a PhD. I know exACTly where you're going with that incessantly repeated observation about the assumed-plugged-in state of your computer. And somehow I think you and your computer will survive the unplugging, accidental or no.

Sometimes I really loathe people. Or maybe this is yet another opportunity for me to exercise patience and grace. Watch me kick it in the pooper.

additional thought on entitlement

I think some of our assumptions of entitlement come from our claims (right though they may be) that God wants us to be happy, successful, provided for, etc. The truth is that yes, He absolutely does want us to have and be all those things. Take happiness, for example. God wants--and in fact intends--us to be happier than we can possibly imagine. That He desires happiness for us does not entitle us to any specific circumstance or behavior that we imagine will make us happy. And in fact the path to happiness may be paved with sorrow, pain, and suffering because of the way the world is and because of our own sinfulness. Oftentimes our best happiness must be preceded by this moment's deep unhappiness. And the reality is that we really don't know what will make us happy. At least, we certainly don't know better than God. He created us and knows every inch of us, every desire, every minute longing. He put them there because He intends to fulfill them (all of them) in His time and in His way.

But the bottom line is that we cannot assume or derive entitlement from God's desires and intentions for us.

That's all. Back to scraping fruit roll-up off my face (yes, I did wake up with strange blue smears on my face that I can only attribute to my late-night habit of rapidly consuming fruit roll-ups and then falling asleep before brushing my teeth. Think cavities and blue clogged pores are in my future?)

claims of entitlement

I wonder how much my sense of entitlement affects the way I perceive my circumstances, people, and life. I was thinking the other day about how irritated I get with people and my life, how incredibly impatient I can be, and I think a good portion of that response is due to the fact that I feel entitled to a variety of things. I feel entitled to spend my time the way I want, entitled to use my talents in a way that I feel they "deserve" (if that makes sense), entitled to a certain mode of treatment, etc. And granted, I am entitled in a certain sense to those things. on the human-to-human basis, we all deserve certain standards of treatment: respect, grace, etc., because we are all equal on a fundamental level.

But as far as my relationship with God goes, I am entitled to absolutely nothing. I have no entitlement because I have done nothing to deserve anything, nor do I truly have anything that is "my own." God created me, saved me, and purified me; what is there in my life that is perfectly mine? What have I produced? What can I lay ownership to or claim creator-ship over? My time is His--I owe Him my time, and it is already His because He has given it to me first. My talents are His--He created me and gave me these specific abilities (I didn't produce them in myself by any means) to use in His own way, time, and purpose. My life is His--He saved me and has called me to be His follower and disciple, going wherever and doing whatever He wants of me.

The longer I am a Christian and the more I grow in my faith and relationship with God, the more I see myself clearly for the sinner I am. It's humiliating (and humbling), but it also slowly erodes my sense of entitlement. How can I, dirty, broken, wretched mess that I am, demand ownership over my time and tell my Almighty not only that I deserve it, but that I deserve it more than He does? How can I continue to pout over the job God has provided for me when I know He has a purpose for everything? I am not entitled to claiming my life's purpose, either. Only God is entitled to assign purpose, and everything He calls me to has a purpose. I need to surrender to that.

Giving up our claims of entitlement is difficult and painful because they are innate within us, a part of what makes up our human (finite and mortal) nature. Was entitlement not the motivation for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit? I think all sin and disobedience is rooted in a sense that we are entitled to spend our time the way we think we should or the way we want to spend it.

The good news is that, while it is difficult, giving up those claims of entitlement is also incredibly freeing. Everything we have is revealed as a gift from God, and the way we view our circumstance is transformed. Sure, I may still hate my job (and oh boy do I some days), but when I acknowledge and really, really believe that my time and life are not my own, that even my gifts and abilities are for God to use in His way and not the way I think they would best be utilized, I don't get caught up in anger, frustration, or resentment at the way my life seems to be turning out. I can even celebrate His purpose (though I can't see it yet) in the seemingly mundane, trivial, or downright distasteful. I can obey Him with joy rather than grudgingly or with resentment. So surrendering my claims of entitlement betters my emotional life, my relationship with God, and my relationship with others. God will provide for all my needs, and I just get to enjoy the unexpected ways He does so.

a safe heart for God

We often think about the relationships in our lives (or at least I do) in terms of who is a “safe” place. And different people provide different safe places for different aspects of our lives. My brother provide a safe place for me to talk about the difficulties of being a pastor’s kid or a conservative radio host kid; Renee provides a safe place for me to talk about a million and one things, especially relationships because she is beautifully honest and loves me dearly; Sarah is a safe place for me to talk about simply being who I am and the ways God works in my life because her wisdom, love, understanding, and hilarity coincide so closely to my own beliefs and the ways in which I process and/or respond to situations, and she is beautifully honest about her struggles and the ways she continues to grow and mature in her trust of God; my parents provide a safe place to talk about spiritual and life matters because, well, they’re my parents, they’re incredibly godly, incredibly wise, and love me more than life itself; and God provides the safest place (though it doesn’t always feel that way) because He knows me inside and out and loves me more than I can possibly imagine.

I think what it means to find a “safe” place in a relationship is to find someone who accepts you just as you are and not only provides understanding for what you’re going through, but provides a way to heal. A safe place is a place of rest and a place of healing, and is found in a person who does not put any conditions on who I am “allowed” to be, think, or feel. As soon as someone puts those kind of demands on me, that safe place is lost for me. A safe person lets me be who I am even if that "who I am" is uncomfortable or is somehow inconvenient.

But in order to find a safe place I have to be a certain way, too. Finding a safe place requires that I be open to being vulnerable with someone, open to receiving his or her honest observations, open to facing my own faults and sins, open to change, and open to loving that person with the same mercy and grace with which they love me. More than that, it requires me offering them the same love and mercy Christ offers me.

So if you know me at all or read this blog as religiously as I’m sure you do (have you been absolutely dying, parched from being denied the nourishing water of my prose?), it’s obvious that I believe God to be the safest place for my heart. But the other day I found myself thinking, “Am I a safe place for God?” And at first I laughed at that thought. I mean, He’s God. He doesn’t need a safe place, a place of rest. The concept of God having a safe place is almost laughable at first. But while He doesn’t need a safe place, I think He wants to rest in us, and I think He adores finding hearts that allow Him to be everything He is, unconditionally and delightfully. I think having a heart that is a safe place for God means having a heart that lets God be Who He is, in all His glory, Awe-someness, Holiness, Righteousness, and in whatever work He wants to do in my heart. It means loving God unconditionally—loving (choosing, often, to love) Him no matter what He chooses to let me go through, no matter if I don’t feel or understand His presence, no matter if I don’t want to do what He wants me to do (obedience kinda sucks sometimes). Do we let God be all that He is, even if it is uncomfortable or inconvenient for me? Or do we put conditions on Who we think He is “allowed” to be and thus not offer Him a truly safe heart where He can rest?

I think King David was a safe place for God (made even more beautiful because of the sin in his life—as Renee said to me recently, “God can make anything beautiful”). I think many contemplatives were safe places for God (making them beautiful in His eyes though the world considers them utterly useless. Kind of like philosophy/lit PhD students. Except contemplatives were actually more useful because they tended to write books that actually helped people. BURN ON MYSELF). Part of what I love about being around Renee, Sarah, JD, and my parents is that they adore and love me. I feel so happy when I know that they enjoy me, partially because I love them so much, too. God’s love is waaay bigger than mine, so I am sure He feels the same happiness and delight when we take a moment to adore Him.

I think one of the most amazing things about God is that we can delight Him. I mean, just think about that for a second. It’s kind of mind-blowing! I can delight the heart of the God Who created the far-reaches of the galaxy, the God Who created a system of life so complex that the smartest minds in the world still don’t understand how everything holds together at the most intricate level. The God Who is so infinitely Glorious and Perfect that the thought of standing before Him in my sinfulness terrifies me is delighted by my delight in Him! All the delight I derive from life and creation (snowy mountains, sunsets, laughing with Renee until I can’t breathe, hearing Him speak to me through Sarah as she shows me unhealthy patterns I had been living that I never realized were keeping me from forming healthy relationships, working out so much that my muscles tingle in bed hours after I’m done) are His attempts to delight me, and every delight I take in them I take in Him. We just resist making that transference, for a multitude of reasons. But my relationship with God, with Christ, can be one of mutual delight and adoration, and I honestly can’t imagine any better way of living life than finding that my God, the One I love more than anything in the entire world, is delighted by my heart being His place of rest.

God's purpose in awesomeness

“God still speaks to us today as [H]e spoke to our forefathers in days gone by.” ~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, pg. 1

To seek only God is a bit of a scary thought at first. Such an all-encompassing and singular search requires us to abandon all other searches. It necessitates no longer looking for a career, a relationship, a home, a friendship, money for bills, our next adrenaline rush, insert-anything-that-we-look-to-in-order-to-satisfy-us. So on the outset it feels like in order to seek only God we have to abandon everything earthly we love, everything else that gives us pleasure and fulfillment, everything else we desire. It also feels like it would necessitate abandoning the practicality of maintaining our daily lives, and abandoning the responsibility that God has given us to act (in order that He might have actions to act through). That’s painful, scary, and—let’s be honest—feels almost foolish.

But to seek only Him actually means to seek the best of all that. Seeking Him firstly and only is to surrender completely to Him, and by extension surrender completely to His plan for us. And He won’t let anything in our lives fall through the cracks. God reminds us to do things and God inspires us to take actions. Do we trust Him with all that? God will direct every moment we give Him, and each action He calls us to has a specific moment for a specific purpose (no matter how seemingly insignificant that purpose is). To seek God firstly and only is to seek only Him, but in seeking only Him we also find His will for us (which is His best for us). Seeking only God means abandoning the desires of our heart on the strength of the absurd.

Seeking Him first also breaks open our concept of “God’s purpose.” How often we think of God’s purpose in heavy or dogmatically pious terms: serving the poor, reading the Bible, praying, fasting, tithing. But man it’s SO MUCH AWESOMER YES I JUST SAID AWESOMER than that! God gave us an earth with awesome pleasures and thrills. He created mountains to ski, waves to surf, fields to run, wine to drink (oh yeah, I just went there), music to listen to, books to read, kisses to thrill us, rocks to climb, sunsets that still us, etc. etc. etc. And part of His purpose for us is for us to enjoy those things, because through those activities we are refreshed and energized, and because in them we find new expressions of His beauty, majesty, and love. To seek Him first is to be open to all of life and to all of His creation and to be ready to enjoy everything to its fullest because through them we find pieces of Him. Call me crazy, but I think sometimes God’s moment-purpose for me is to rip a mountain to shreds on a sunny powder day or watch a movie that makes me laugh till I cry. He’s in all that.

To hear God is to respond to those urges He puts on our hearts—urges to read a book, hike a mountain, pay a bill, make a note to drop off the dry cleaning, call a particular person, or sit down and spend time absorbed in Him. Every good thing is from Him and He is ready to speak to us through everything we do. We simply need to learn to discern His voice from all others, and that is why we seek Him and Him alone--so we can learn to distinguish His voice and respond to it immediately, and through that response find everything awesome He has designed for us (although sometimes that awesomeness is deeply painful).

So yes, in order to seek only Him we do have to give up the search for everything else that is significant, practical, desirable, and fulfilling. But the amazing part is that it doesn’t mean that we abandon all that “everything else.” We simply abandon the search. When we seek only Him we actually find everything else. Even more awesome is we find a better “everything else.” It’s the “everything else” directly from God corresponding to the specific desires He put in us, it’s the “everything else” minus the pressure and stress of feeling like we need to figure it out or have it all under control. To seek only God is to find Him in everything at every moment. It’s wild, messy, exhilarating, and ridiculously peaceful.

OH MY GOSH IT’S SO AWESOME!!!!

desperation

A song I can't stop singing lately is "Breathe," because the words pretty much sum up my internal life right now:

"This is the air I breathe,

This is the air I breathe:

Your Holy Presence living with me.

"And I,

I'm desperate for You.

And I,

I'm lost with You."

Lately I have felt more than ever just absolutely desperate for God and desperate for His grace. Again, I think it has been one of the most real (as well as the most deeply painful) times of my life, because I just don't think we as Christians realize how desperately we need His grace and His presence. Most of us, myself included, don't fully understand how thoroughly incapable we are of righteousness by our own effort alone. We fallen human beings simply are desperate for Him, whether or not we know and feel it.

As per my usual, I decided to google define "desperate." For me, in praying, "Lord, I'm desperate for You" I always meant that I needed Him and had no other avenue of grace, strength, love, hope, and value than Him. Google provided some other slightly different definitions that made the concept of "being desperate" for God so much more interesting:

* "arising from or marked by despair or loss of hope"

* "showing extreme courage; especially of actions courageously undertaken in desperation as a last resort"

* "showing extreme urgency or intensity especially because of great need or desire"

* "fraught with extreme danger; nearly hopeless"

* "a person who is frightened and in need of help"

To be desperate for God is to have lost hope in everything else but Him (to have lost hope even in His promises). It is to feel passionate urgency in searching for Him and an intense desire to bow before Him in humility and supplication. It is to feel the weight of fear, the weight of danger, the weight of frightening neediness, the weight of complete inadequacy. It is extreme courage in following Him even though the path He is on--though the only path left--leads right into the heartache and danger other paths attempt to avoid. It is to allow myself to be utterly emptied, broken, and helpless for as long as He knows is necessary for me to see Him and His grace for what they truly and deeply are.

To be desperate for Him is to be real before Him.