i heard the bells on christmas day

"Advent is about anticipating the birth of Christ. It’s about longing, desire, that which is yet to come. That which isn’t here yet. And so we wait, expectantly. Together. With an ache. Because all is not right. Something is missing." Rob Bell, "Why Should We Care About Advent?"

This year, I began attending a church that takes the church calendar very seriously. And I realized that I liked it. The rhythm of the Christian life is lived out based on our ceremonies and traditions. Some are sad, some are happy, some are both at the same time. But just as the Bible has its hymns of revenge and its poems of romance, there is a wide spectrum present in the church calendar. A spectrum as wide as life itself.

Christmas is my favorite season of the year. That's fairly obvious from the disproportionate amount of blog posts I write about the holiday. But the true reason that I love it so much has never been as clear to me as it has been made through the lens of church tradition.

I enjoy Christmas as much as I do because it follows the journey that Advent has begun in us.

In the same way that it seems like the world is at its most opaque in the silent, cold, stillness of a winter's breath, I hear more from God in the season of Advent. (That may not be true. It just may be that it is the time I focus most on the listening.) Walk outside on the coldest, darkest night of the year and just stand there. You will hear noises you didn't even previously realized existed. More than that, you'll uncover thoughts you didn't know to be inside your own mind. I know that happens to me in this season. It is as if the world itself has more to offer in those long, quiet moments spent in solitude.

This is the season in which we welcome our coming Savior. Not very unlike the season the Israelites once welcomed him into. Except they had not been waiting since the end of the Thanksgiving meal but instead hundreds of years. Mostly spent in bondage and oppression and in the dimming light of the hope of a promised Messiah. It would have been a natural consequence of their long wait for them to lose faith in their interpretation of God's promise to them or maybe even in the idea that God would make us a promise at all.

And in despair I bowed my head
There is no peace on earth I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men

Of course, this year we cannot bring an end to Advent and shine the light of Christmas without having within all of our minds Newtown, Connecticut. There are no words and no comfort to combat the coldest, darkest tragedy that I can imagine.

And yet there is Christmas. One thing I have learned in difficult moments this year is that the days do pass whether or not we recognize it as the pages on the calendar's days flip by. For the families who can never again be whole because of this tragedy, I have only my sympathy and my prayers to offer. And these seem like wretched things in light of the magnitude of the loss that was suffered.

Our entire nation has been set back on its heels from the violence played out on the news. Unlike most tragedies, this one has hit a personal chord. This shouldn't happen. Not in our country. Not in our towns. Not in our schools. The immediate response is one of confusion at a tragedy so senseless. And then an urgent cry to prevent anything like this from ever happening to another family again.

Still we know that even if we improve public policy, we can no more reverse time to prevent what happened than we can to stop death entirely. The violence that exists in our minds can be a betrayal of our biologies or our minds or even our very nature. And when the violence spews forth from within to hurt those that form our communities without there will be losses suffered. We lost the lives of precious children in Sandy Hook and we lost the innocence that accompanies an age where wonder and delight rule over cynicism and hatred.

As the President read the names of the fallen in his speech last week or as the bells rang out 26 times this morning to commemorate those that were lost in a moment of silence, it would be understandable to let this world and this act of terror plunge us into a state of hopelessness. Or to turn on each other and propel ourselves into a divisive political blame game looking to point the finger at who is at fault for this feeling of helplessness and grief.

But the promise of Christmas is that the darkness of this season will be pierced by an unmistakable light. That the silence of this dark and lonely night will be broken by the cries of a baby from a manger.

Then rang the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor does He sleep (He is The Lord)
(He is The Lord)
The dark shall fail, the light prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men

Still, we cannot forget that as those cries from the mouth of the baby will one day turn to giggles to words of wisdom to comfort and healing to our very salvation, they will also turn to cries of anguish as this hope seems to be extinguished by a cross. God's very nature is to bring light into darkness, to bring form into chaos, to bring meaning into despair. We may not always understand it but he has set  the entire world to the rythym of this truth.

And so at Christmas the promise we cling to is just that moment of hope, of light in a dark place, or joyful clamor into the silence. If we can have just that moment to capture and to cherish, I believe we'll have strength for the journey ahead.

the herald angel

I recently rediscovered one of my favorite Christmas hymns in the form of a reimagination by the terrific group Seabird. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is a staple of any Christmas album or church service but this version is special because although it still retains its reverent hymnlike nature, it introduces a little more up-tempo "heralding" of Christ's birth. After all, this is the gospel--the good news that God has come to live among humans in the form of a man born from the womb of Mary--the announcing that there is now no longer any separation between God and His creation. Though there was once enmity and war, there is now the promise of peace eternal. There will be no more struggle, no more mourning or tears or hate or war, only "God and sinners reconciled."

Hark the herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled"

It sometimes seems that since creation itself began, it has exploded with violence. The violence we do to each other, both the ones we love and the ones we leave out. But God sifts through the struggle and doesn't blot out our transgressions. He shows up among them. He leaves the throne of Heaven, the eternal unchanging perfect synergy of the Trinity to introduce His creation to how they have been created. We are to join Him in His mission of reconciliation. We are co-reconcilers with Christ as this earth, this life was our gift from Him. Though we have done our best to sully and denigrate what we have been given, God is patient. He is relentless. And even when our faith does not lie in Him, His faith lies in us.

Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
"Christ is born in Bethlehem"
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

This is the essence of what the herald angels have come to announce. The fact that we refer to them as "herald" shows just how special they are. They have one job. To proclaim, to announce, to declare that life as we know has been forever changed. A new reality has taken hold. In the midst of our despair, of our struggle, of our hatred and denial... springs Hope.

Christ by highest heav'n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb

A herald is an official messenger of news. A courier. A forerunner. A precursor. A harbinger. Harbinger is an interesting word in itself. Normally, there are "harbingers of death" or "harbingers of evil" or "harbingers of danger." But I think harbingers have gotten a bad rap. I don't think it is the danger or death or evil that turns a simple messenger into a harbinger. It is the gravity of the message they carry. And there nothing heavier than the truth weighting down the announcement of the gospel.

Christmas itself comes in the dead of winter. Just days after the longest night of the year in fact. It is literally never more dark than it is at Christmastime. I don't know if that is a coincidence or not but it is part of what I love so much about this season. Because in this time of darkness and cold and dreariness steps in the most joyful, special time of the year. And instead of avoiding at all costs this intemperate time of year, we welcome it. We look forward to it. I'd have a hard time finding a better metaphor for Christ's arrival than the season in which it comes. The God who shames the wise and uplifts the foolish has us looking forward to the darkest and most difficult time of the year because of the hope it symbolizes.

Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth

You see, Christ isn't just announced by the herald angels. He Himself is a type of herald angel. Because he is the second Adam, the firstfruits of the gospel. He is the precursor of life itself and yet alive and present forever. Before anything was, He was. And so He is the promise, the hope in human form. At our darkest moment, God doesn't bring us comfort, he doesn't relieve our suffering, he doesn't even change the weather. In our bleakest moment, God steps into our lives Himself. He comes for us. And He promises us that this is the rhthym of life. This is the pattern, the DNA of life lived in intimacy with God. When we are weak, He is strong. When we are downtrodden, He is hopeful. When we have lost, He has won on our behalf.
Not always in the way we would expect. Not with a powerful Kingdom trampling all others under His feet. Not with trumpets and revelry and pomp. But on a quiet, still night. With a simple miracle. Birth. 

Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Sometimes it takes fresh ears to hear an old song. Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to see an old truth. Few will herald but all will know. Christ is born in Bethlehem. And Hope is born in us.

angry birds

Whatever happened to the dreamers
They always look beyond the sky
Saw a world they could believe in
But only when they close their eyes - Jack Savoretti

Where is the line between dream and reality?  What is the relationship between ambition and obsession?

These are the questions at the center of Darren Aronofsy's latest film, Black Swan.  The film depicts ballerina Nina Sayers as she wins the role of a lifetime starring as the Swan Queen in a stripped down, raw production of Swan Lake brought to the stage by a visionary, mercurial director.  Faced with the full weight of the pressure of dancing the lead in the show, she slowly begins to buckle under the enormous stress that is put on her body and her psychological health.  Even as she revels in her newfound fame and power, she becomes increasingly suspicious of a new dancer to the company, Lily, and constantly worries that Lily may be trying to steal her role.  Nina becomes only more consumed by the role and driven to the edge of madness by the requirement that she transform her personality to achieve some method-like form of representing the evil Black Swan onstage. 

I'll stop my summary there as not to spoil any of the key plot points in the movie but if you are familiar with the story of Swan Lake, you may quickly catch on to where the action is headed.  (Only Aronofsky would attempt a film about Swan Lake with the plot of Swan Lake.)  As one reviewer described it, the movie is "cold to the touch leaving more to be admired than liked."  However, Natalie Portman's spellbinding and Oscar-worthy performance  is reason enough to see it and study it as a piece of pure cinema.  More than anything, the film left me pondering whether the interplay between dreams and reality will forever be aggresive and adversarial and whether ambition and obsession share a similar fate.

On the one hand, dreams (read: hallucinations) are what Portman's character experiences throughout the film as she falls further down the rabbit hole of her own obsession and paranoia.  However, on the other hand, her character also dreams of being a prima ballerina, of dancing a perfect routine to the loud cheers of an adoring crowd, and winning the admiration of her mother.  I think there has to be more of a connection between these two kinds of dreams than simply the word we use to describe them.

Nina's dreams/hallucinations materialize more as nightmares as the movie progresses but they are directly fueled by her dreams to achieve and fulfill the bright star of her potential.  Her nightmares are caused by the fear that her dreams will never come to fruition.  As Langston Hughes would have it, a dream deferred is not simply a missed opportunity but a haunting specter much more difficult to decipher and traverse than merely a disappointment.

But sometimes our dreams don't come true.

This is a fact of life.  We don't get everything we ever wanted.  No matter how hard we strive for it or how well we work for it or how ingeniuous our plans to grasp hold of it, there are times when our dreams remain just beyond our reach.  Like the hazy first few moments of realizing the dream has ended and reality has returned, we remain just within sight of our dreams but incapable of attaining them.  Nothing can hurt so much as the intanglible that feels just beyond arm's length.

I would submit that our character is forged many times by our response to these seeming tragedies.  I think most people would say I'm a very driven individual.  I live my life with purpose.  I expect much from myself and from the people around me.  I value boldness and vigor when making decisions and I take that approach to my professional life, social life, romantic life; I apply the same philosophy whether I'm on the basketball court, in a meeting with politicians, or across the dinner table from a date. 

But I wonder whether that ambition can lead to obsession and whether taking that responsibility to make things happen for myself, to achieve my dreams conflicts with Christ-like humility.

There's a verse in Scripture that I feel like is always quoted out of context and misrepresented by preachers in the pulpit and paltry promisers looking to make a quick dollar on their newest Christian self-help book.  It's in the 29th chapter of the book of the prophet Jeremiah.  In verse 11, "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  If you have any knowledge of the Bible or have heard any amount of contemporary preaching, you have probably heard this verse used out of context to feign comfort for those with uncertain futures or even to promise prosperity.  What you likely have not heard is verse 1.

This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

This is the context from where God's promise comes.  These are the words God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah to the people of Israel who have been exiled to Babylon.  They aren't even necessarily personal words of comfort, they are more meant to assert that God is ultimately in control despite the outward reality of Babylonian captivity facing the people hearing them.  The words were spoken to a people that had worshipped at the temple built by Solomon who had overseen one of the most prosperous times in the long history of Israel.  Spoken to a people who knew of the promises given to his father David that a king chosen by God would forever reign on that throne.  Spoken to a people who had seen all of that come crashing down as the temple itself fell under the crushing blow of the Babylonians.  But not without God's permission.  God had sent the people into exile and sacrificed the temple because the people had relied on themselves and not on God.

Sometimes I'm in exile.  And the way out is not to rely on myself, to try harder, to buckle down, and drive myself to obsession over my own ambitions.  Sometimes the proper response is to take an objective view of reality and believe the fact that God is in control and ultimately has my good in mind.  Christ prayed for his followers that they would have eyes to see and ears to hear.  He did not pray that their dreams would come true.  This is not a case against dreaming but it is a plea to myself not to let my dreams and ambition turn to the nightmares of obsession. 

I feel like I've just been through a year where I got everything I wanted and nothing that I needed.  What do we do when our dreams come untrue?  Achieving a zen-like ignorance of reality won't solve the issues that surround me and neither will giving a firmer tug to my own bootstraps.  My only response, my only option is to remember and wait.  Remember that God is in control of this world and that everything happens only because he allows it.  Remember the ways in which He has worked for my good and on my behalf in the past.  Wait for Him to show me what comes next and where I can join Him in living out what He plans for my life and ultimately the plans He has to continue to redeem this world and all its broken dreams.

It is in light of that context that I can more fully understand what God is speaking through Jeremiah to the people and how the truth of that might apply to all of us.

"Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity."

I can learn much from that passage by simply listening to the cadence of the You's and I's.  God says: You will call.  You will pray.  You will seek.  God promises: I will listen.  I will be found.  I will bring you back.

We don't need our dreams or our ambitions to bring us comfort.  And whether realized or unrealized, they would never be up to such a task.  Our source of comfort comes from the fact that God is in control.  Even when we are in exile.  Even when we are in captivity.  He has a plan and wants us to be a part of it.  He is listening.  He is waiting to be found.  He is bringing us back.

heart heart heartbreak

I would be sad because you left me all alone.
I would be sad because the lies that you had told.
I would be sad because I got left by a girl that I adore.
I would be sad because the love I had before. - The Avett Brothers

Denial

I meant what I said when I said I would settle down with you

although I know it's not something that you were asking me to do.

And I know we are young but we won't always be, so marry me;

lets not be that predictable young couple changing, moving on.

Heartbreak.  Inevitable.  Undeniable.  Instrinsic.  There is no way to both breathe and avoid it in your life.  Yet we spend most of our days, our waking hours, our efforts and energy trying to distance ourselves from it.  Even the risk of having our hearts broken, the mere prospect, is so awful as to cause us to rearrange our lives, reconfigure our choices, to ensure we would never face such a sentence.  Still we fail.  It catches up to us all.  We don't deny its power, we deny it is an essential quality of life.

"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me."

Christ's prayer spoken with His face in the dirt, alone in the Garden of Gethsemane looking for any way possible to remedy our sin.  Jesus in no way denied his fate.  He knew the pain he would endure, the torture that would be inflicted to mete out God's punishment.  He was willing to endure it.  For the joy set before Him, He did not waver.  It was the heartbreak that gave Him pause.  To suffer the pain that we had merited by our waywardness was a difficult task.  To face the heartbreak of His Father as He turned from the sin that weighed down on the back of Christ even as he clung to the cross, I have to imagine that was what brought Him to His knees in the garden.

Anger

But I can tell by watching you that theres no chance of pushing through.
The odds are so against us; you know most young love it ends like this.

In the midst of my trials in the garden of my life, I must admit I never respond so graciously.  I shake my fists in the air and rage against the stars that would dictate such a fate.  I blame God Himself temporarily forgetting that my arms are too short to box with God.  Forgetting that He has endured far worse from my hands and only desires my good in the long term.

God is not the author of heartbreak.  He is the author of love.  But you cannot have love without heartbreak.  There is no such thing.

God subjected Himself to that pain before any of us.  God was perfectly content before creating us.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were in perfect community, in perfect Love before the world we know was spoken into existence.  But it was out of the overflow of this love that God decided a perfect universe would be made somehow more complete with us in it.  It was out of this love that we were created.  Among our first acts to thank God for the inexpressible gift of somethingness out of nothingness that we responded by breaking His heart with our disobedience.

And yet I'm angry at God.  The weight of the evidence leads to an easy suggestion about which party should be truly grieved by this deal.

Bargaining

I meant what I said when I said I would rearrange my plans and change for you.

In the course of His ministry on Earth, Christ and his disciples happened upon a blind man one day.  His disciples, ever taught and never learned, immediately turn to Jesus and ask, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

Christ responds patiently, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."  He tells them, "I am the light of the world."  He heals the blind man and sends him on his way home. 

I am sight.  Without me, you are all blind.

There is no bargain we can cut with God to avoid heartbreak, no deal that He would prefer.  It's as natural as a wildfire.  An Austrailian grass tree is a very special kind of tree.  Subject to the conditions of wildfires, they can become damaged but not die.  After the fire has finished, the trees are known to push new leaves and bloom brighter than they ever had before.  In fact, some Austrailian grass trees only bloom after a scouring fire.

Only the heart set ablaze by pain that knows the depths of the contrast joy provides.  It's only in contrast to the darkness that light gives meaning and purpose to our sight.

Depression

You know me; I've always been the kind with easy confidence.

Confident enough to honestly believe that nothing out there stopping me

especially not someone who's not loving me.

Now listen here I told you I could live on without loving you.

I was bluffing then, but it seems that just might have been the truth.

That doesn't make dealing with pain any less hard.  It still hurts just as much even to the enlightened mind.  But our suffering, even when its meaning is opaque, is not without purpose.  If we are to believe the words of scripture, temporary pain is producing in us a glory that is incomparable to what we had before.  Hope dilutes sadness and spreads until even depression is changed into a new substance entirely.  Bleak worlds are colored by hope.

As Paul writes it to the Corinthians in his second letter, "For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory."

Acceptance 

Well my dad told me, "One day son, this girl will think of what she's done
and hurting you will be the first of many more regrets to come."
And he said, "If she doesn't call, then it's her fault and it's her loss."
I say, "It's not that simple see, but then again it just may be."

"Yet not as I will, but as You will."

Christ concludes His prayer in the garden.  Accepts His fate, draws on God's strength even in the face weakness, and endures the cross. 

In the final analysis, heartbreak is not a reason to lose trust in God.  It is a reason to trust Him.  We see the heartbreak that he endures at our hands.

It's not a proof that God does not care for us.  It is a proof that He does.  Even from the cross, Christ petitions God on behalf of His murderers, namely you and me, "Forgive them for they know not what they do."  We almost never do.  But we should know that we can follow and trust the God who endures such heartbreak on our behalf no matter the heartbreak we must endure ourselves along the way.

I would be sad...

i need some meaning i can memorize

I got a hunger and I can't seem to get full/I need some meaning I can memorize/The kind I have always seems to slip my mind - Bright Eyes

How is that a person can image God?  How can we walk as Christ walks and live as He lives even as we continue to reside on this earth?

These are the essential questions I am struggling with the most these days.  And I have found some insight from an unlike source: Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens is the among the most unlikely sources of Christian inspiration because he is a well-known atheist, indisputable contrarian, and all-around crank.  But he's brilliant and a great writer.  He's also recently wandered further into the limelight as he was diagnosed with cancer and many evangelicals began to start movements to pray for his death bed conversion to Christianity.

I have recently picked up his book, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, mostly because he is a great writer and dogged contrarian, both of which to some degree I also aspire to be.  I was in no way surprised by his skepticism towards the Christian faith as he repeated sneeringly refers to believers as "monotheists."  In his angrier moments, he fires flaming arrows at the heart of the brand of Christian theology as comfortable and worn as an old pair of house slippers.

How much vanity must be concealed--not too effectively at that--in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?  How much self-respect must be sacrificed in order that one may squirm continually in an awareness of one's own sin?  How many needless assumptions must be made, and how much contortion is required, to receive every new insight of science and manipulate it so as to "fit" with the revealed words of ancient man-made dieties?

Not eaxctly the lighter side of atheism.  More the grizzled and vaguely angry veteran, Hitchens' most poignant critique of Christianity is not Niestchke's grand proclamation that God is dead but rather that Christianity itself is a dead religion.  In the same way that Latin as a dead language is incapable of producing any new words, Christianity is vacant intellectually and incapable of producing any new thoughts or insights.

Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago...  We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratched up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.

Is it true?  Are we ready to declare new thoughts about theology and God as impossible?  Are no new formulations of the Christian faith possible?

Regardless of our answer, we live in too many churches that act as if it is.  But if there is nothing left to be done, nothing new to discover about God, no new insight to be gained about His intentions for the world, then what is the point of the Christian life?  In the literal sense, what difference does it make?

What might have been the most startling aspect of the chapter for me was a story that Hitchens recounts about selecting an appropriate scripture to eulogize his father at his funeral in a chapel of the Church of England.  He picked a passage from Paul's letter to the Philippians (chapter 4, verse 8), "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and ifn there be any praise, think on these things."  He then explains his selection by saying,

I chose this because of its haunting and elusive character, which will be with me at the last hour, and for its essentially secular injunction, and because it shone out from the wasteland of rant and complaint and nonsense and bullying which surrounds it.

And with that Christopher Hitchens, the most unlikely of sources, gave me as good of an insight into scripture as I had heard in months.

So why aren't we thinking new thoughts about God?  Why aren't we gaining new insights?  Mostly because of fear.

Don't believe me?  Just watch when someone tries.  Take, for instance, an author such as Rob Bell.  In his book, Velvet Elvis, he questions the centrality of doctrine in building a strong Christian faith by describing the Christian life as a trampoline and doctrines as the springs that hold it together.

This is where the springs on the trampoline come in. When we jump, we begin to see the need for springs. The springs help make sense of these deeper realities that drive how we live every day. The springs aren’t God. The springs aren’t Jesus. The springs are statements and beliefs about our faith that help give words to the depth that we are experiencing in our jumping. I would call these the doctrines of the Christian faith.

They aren’t the point.

They help us understand the point, but they are a means and not an end. We take them seriously, and at the same time we keep them in proper perspective…

In fact, its stretch and flex are what make it so effective. It is firmly attached to the frame and the mat, yet it has room to move. And it has brought a fuller, deeper, richer understanding to the mysterious being who is God. ...

Even his analogy is one that evokes the image of motion and energy.  The converse is a systematic theology built on stagnant doctrine brick by brick saying that a Christian who subscribes this view has quite a differenct experience of the Christian faith, "For him, faith isn't a trampoline; it's a wall of bricks. Each of the core doctrines for him is like an individual brick that stacks on top of the others. If you pull one out, the whole wall starts to crumble. It appears quite strong and rigid, but if you begin to rethink or discuss even one brick, the whole thing is in danger."

Brian McLaren relates a similar idea in his book, A Generous Orthodoxy.  For him, orthodoxy is not a set concept that is now and forever incapable of being bent and stretched and questioned and reformed.  It is a set of beliefs that are articulated by a community in the process of living out the Christian faith together.

To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuff, and mounted on the wall...That, to me, is orthodoxy -- a way of seeing and seeking, a way of living, a way of thinking and loving and learning that helps what we believe become more true over time, more resonant with the infinite glory that is God.

If you need proof that these ideas are dangerous, divisive, and disfavored, just take a moment to google the names of the previous two authors and see how they are vilified.  For some "conservative" critics, the only new thoughts they ever have are critiques of someone else's thoughts.  As a people, Christians have become more critics than creators.  But in the essential picture of creation, fall, and redemption of the Bible, who is the creative force and who is the critical one?  When we spend all of our time opposing a new way of thinking, just who are we really imitating?

As Galileo put it, I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.  I am always drawn to authors with new ideas because they might be able to help me understand a new aspect of the character of God.  Isn't that kind of the point of learning to know him more?  Is that even possible by only simple repetition of everything I have learned before?  If we cannot accept a new concept or the possibility that God might still have something left to reveal to us, then our faith really is as dead as Hitchens would have us believe.

tuesday's gone

I have a couple of ideas for blogging soon but there is no way I can write anything else until I write this.

Lately, I have been encountering a wealth of pain and struggle, not of my own but of others.  Everything from the failure of relationships to the dissolution of marriages to death and sickness and poverty.  I have been witness to too much grief and too few miracles.  There is little else in the world that makes less sense to me than seeing parents mourn the loss of a child.  It is something that is particularly affecting my church family as our pastor reported on his blog just the other day.

The past 24 hours have been pretty devastating for us as a Summit family.

First, our beloved Helen Young, a matriarch in our church, passed away this afternoon. Helen had struggled with a severe case of cancer for some time…and went home to be with Jesus at about 4pm. Helen was our church’s backbone. I remember when she told me, 9 years ago, that God wanted me to be pastor of her church, then “Homestead Heights Baptist.” I thought she was crazy then. Perhaps she was. She has served us and our congregation faithfully, and up until the past year has been on just about every church-wide mission trip we’ve taken. She has entered into joys unspeakable.

Secondly, Chai Atwood, the son born 14 weeks premature to our college pastor Trevor Atwood and his wife Keva on Sunday, went home to be with Jesus a little before noon. We were praying for a miracle. God has taken Chai on into ultimate healing. No longer can he come to us, we will go to him. (1 Sam 12:23)

Third, we found out today that Nate Henn, the son of Summit members (North Raleigh campus) Bob and Julie Henn, was killed by a terrorist bomb in Uganda yesterday. Nate worked for Invisible Children, leveraging his life to see healing and hope brought to forgotten children around the world. Check out his story here.

I have said prayers for all of these people over the last few days knowing that feeble but powerful offering is all I have to give them.  For the Atwoods, it is a little more personal for me as I have served in the college ministry with them for years now and have learned so much from the example of Trevor and Keva as godly people and loving parents, even though they probably don't even realize what a testimony they have provided for me.  Shortly after I learned of what happened, I saw Trevor's response on behalf of his family and it was filled with grace, humility, hope, and strength.

Today much changed, Jesus did not. The gospel is true in the face of death. Thx to the 1st born among many brothers. Chai Samuel is yours.

I don't know if I'll ever be a man like that.

I am lucky to call Trevor a pastor and a mentor, blessed to call him a friend.  Inasmuch as he is like Jesus, I need to be more like him.

While all struggles are light and momentary in comparison to the glory and inheritance we have in Christ, my struggles truly are light and momentary in comparison to anything that matters.  Still I rage inconsolably blaming God and anyone else for my slight pin-prick of pain that I experience.  I am a bratty child in God's sight.  A sissy when it comes to pain.

The light of the gospel shines its brightest out of darkness.  Hope is precious to those who would be without and useless to those who have everything that they need.  One of the greatest gifts God can give us is the clear understanding of our desperate need of Him.

That will usually come when I stop trying to make sense of everything or presuming that I can or should know what God is doing in the world.  It comes from knowing that Christ does not change.  His love is steadfast.  His character remains the same always.  God doesn't wait around for me to need Him to show up.  He is always there, ever-present.  But thank God for the times it is made clear to me how desperate I am for Him.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn and pray for these people if you are reading this and are so inclined.

And I pray God that I will remember...

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

change vs. more of the same

Change is the only constant.

This week, I have been thinking a lot about human relationships and also our relationship as humans to God.  I've been consciously pursuing a relationship with God for nine years now although he's been pursuing one with me for much longer.  (In fact, today marks the ninth anniversary from the day I walked forward in a church in Louisville, Kentucky as tears streamed down my mom's face on a Mother's Day that will probably always represent the best gift I ever gave to her.)  Like so many better men before me, that day I "admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps... the most dejected and reluctant convert" ever.

Nine years is a long time to hold onto a relationship.  In fact, other than the members of my family, there is not one person who has been constant in my life throughout all that time.  When I say that God knows me better than anyone, I don't just mean that he has more wisdom than anyone else could ever possibly hope to possess.  I mean also that He has been there through the good times and bad, the low points and high, the struggles, the celebrations, the hopeless nights, and the days that I thought I could take over the world.  God doesn't just know me because he knows everything.  There is nothing about myself, my thoughts, my motives that are not laid bare before Him.  I want to tell him everything there is to know about me because it is only in Him that I find acceptance even in my mixed motivations, my tendencies toward wandering, the cynical walls I build up around my heart for protection against unwelcome interlopers, and my sometimes seemingly unquenchable desire to fill myself with things that will surely end in my destruction.  My pastor said something this weekend that made a great deal of sense to me.  To be known but not loved is rejection.  To be loved and not known is superficiality.  But to be both known and loved, that is the thing.  God loves me like that.

As human beings, we are in a constant state of flux and change.  Everything around us is constantly changing.  Our circumstances, our preferences, our knowledge and ideas.  Our bodies are growing older, our hair and fingernails are growing longer.  Seas are eroding beaches, the earth is constantly spinning and making its way around the sun.  The moon waxes and wanes to mark the change of time.  In fact, change or variance is the only way we can measure time.  Without the alternating days and nights, or the rhythm of seasons, it is hard for me to imagine how life would continue or how we would mark the progress of our lives.

And yet constantly, we tend to live our lives in the constant fear of change.  We hold onto our notions that we are constant, that we never change.  We paint out own mental pictures that we are hunkered down as the world rages around us, rising and falling in an unpredictable rhythm and that if we can just hide ourselves from that oh so changeable world that somehow we can find bliss and protection in the serenity of sameness.  But the truth is there is not such thing.  Like sharks who must swim to live, change is to the human being as essential as breathing.  We evolve, we adapt, and we survive.  Change is our only constant.  It is unavoidable.  It is certain.  It is happening.

In my nine years of learning more about God and myself, I cannot tell you how many times I have felt distant from Him.  As if he had turned His back on me that He was somehow out of reach just beyond my grasp or that He just didn't care.  I have so many times grown bitter and disappointed and wrathful toward God blaming Him for changing and injuring our relationship.  But God doesn't change.  He always was and always will be.  He was in relationship with Himself by means of the mysterious Trinity long before I was ever created.  God is love.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  His affection for me has not waxed and waned.  He did not pull back or hide Himself from me.  It's me who has run from Him, tried to hide when came to find me in the Garden, and allowed our relationship to become less than a priority.  His love has been constant.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not making the argument that change is bad.  After all, the title of this post comes from a meme created by a political adviser during Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for the White House.  Almost every great movement in history and every political candidate who gets remembered is immortalized for bringing a desperately needed change to society.  As people, we need change.  That's why it is part of our basic natures and why God created us to experience change and growth and struggle.  Even in our salvation, we are changed from dead to alive.  "Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet."  "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here."  The Bible is full of calls to change.  I feel like I've lived a lifetime of mistakes.  There are days when the only thing I want to do is start something completely new, rewrite the rules to everything I've ever learned, and embrace the change as it comes.  Sometimes change is just what we need.

But let me never put my faith and trust, hope and foundation in the changeable whims of other people.  No matter how important another person may be to me, no one else can determine my identity but the unchangeable, unwavering, unrelenting God.  The one who is called Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, the same from everlasting to everlasting.  For God, for nine years to eternity.

You are my only constant.