When it all falls apart

“We live in a dark world. Rain falls. Storms come. Lightening strikes. Your life can shatter. The roof can fall in. You can be damaged. As long as you live, you will have something to lose - little pieces of yourself. The people you love, the life choices you cherish - there is always something at risk, something dear. Some cause for fear. We can choose to surrender to that fear and let it rule our lives, or we can surrender to God all of those things we love and fear to lose, and then love fearlessly - undaunted.”

-Christine Caine

You know how you wait for something specific to happen for literally years?  With each passing day you hope beyond hope that the dream inside of you just might actually come to fruition.  It’s so good and so big you almost don’t let yourself really believe it might come to be in real life.  And yet, you anticipate it… it gets so close you can taste it, until one day it finally happens.  That amazing thing you felt for sure was too good to really unfold – it actually does.  Your heart explodes with the goodness of it all.  You go all in.  You invest your heart, your love, your time, your very essence into what has materialized somehow.  This dream, this passion – this thing you know that you know that you know God instilled deep down in your heart… it blossoms.  It becomes more beautiful than you even imagined it.  Life feels fuller.  This dream is not a dream any longer – it’s real.  It’s pulsing.  Life is bursting forth.  It’s happening in front of your very eyes.  It’s a part of your story and you are a part of it.  Its beauty is woven into the very fabric of who you are.  You are transformed because of it.

You can see where it is headed.  You are alive with even more possibility.  You live your dream, confident of where you are going.  And then one day, without even a whisper of warning, it disappears.  It’s ripped out of your life so quickly you don’t even know what hit you.  And you’re left reeling, numb.  How could this have happened??

What in the world are we to do with disappointment??  Actually, I think disappointment is too light a word.  What do we do with a heartbreak so deep it threatens to swallow us whole?  What do we do when it seems like our dream dies?

Jessica Davis writes in the book For Love’s Sake: “What did I feel like?  I felt like everything I had ever worked for was ripped into shreds, distorted, and broken beyond repair.  Suddenly the journey that I was on seemed more like a mean joke from God than a precious gift.  I remember feeling so angry toward God one day.  Why would He give me something so beautiful, a dream to change the world, and then sit back as it was snatched away?”

Um, yeah.  What she said.  That’s exactly what I've been feeling this week. 

Through the tears and the hurt and heartache, here’s what I’ve come to… all of us human beings are frail creatures.  We hurt each other even when we don’t mean to.  We fail.  We may even cause someone else’s dreams to come crashing down. But NONE of this changes who God is and what His heart towards us is.  And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we need to know – that even on the most excruciating days, through completely unexpected disappointments, we are loved by the One who matters most? 

Isaiah 54:10 says “For even if the mountains walk away and the hills fall to pieces, My love won’t walk away from you, My covenant commitment of peace won’t fall apart.  The God who has compassion on you says so.”

I’m sure that many of you have things falling to absolute pieces in your lives right now.  People may have hurt you.  You may have had a dream implode before your very eyes.  Your health may be failing.  Your bank account may be empty.  Your marriage may not be what you long for it to be.  Your plans for having children may not be realized.  The list can go on and on. But God is there saying EVEN IF EVERYTHING FALLS TO PIECES, MY LOVE WON’T WALK AWAY FROM YOU.  And more than any dream, any passion, any desire I have – that love and peace God talks about in Isaiah 54 is what I want.  It’s worth sacrificing any desire or dream for.  Jessica goes on to write “When we give our lives to God, we lay down our rights.  We choose to exchange our dreams, hopes and promises for His.  The promises He gives us will NEVER disintegrate, but will remain.”

This morning I was reminded of Isaiah 63:9 which says “In all their affliction, He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them.  In His love and mercy, He redeemed them.  He lifted them up and carried them all of the days of old.”  The beauty of this struck me so profoundly this morning.  In my affliction, in whatever affliction you may be going through right now, the God of the universe is afflicted too.  He hurts because you hurt.  He’s God - He doesn't have to hurt with us and for us, but He  does because He loves us just that much.  Yet, notice that He doesn't leave us there in our affliction.  In His LOVE and MERCY, He redeems us.  He redeems our situations, our disappointments, our dead dreams.  And if today, you literally can’t think about taking another step because you are so worn out and discouraged, guess what? You don’t have to.  He says HE WILL LIFT YOU UP AND CARRY YOU.  And what was it that saved them?  His presence.  Simply knowing God is WITH us even in the middle of daunting circumstances or unbearable heartbreak – that experience of Him being with us is what carries us moment by moment. 

Ben and I were talking last night and he said “Amy, can you think of one painful, difficult circumstance when something fell apart and God didn't replace it with something better?”  And you know what?  I couldn't. In my 38 years, there hasn't been one.  Because that’s the kind of God I know - the kind of God who makes things not just better, but brand spanking new.  And people, “brand new” or “better” usually doesn't come the way we might expect it to, or dare I say, in the timing we want it.  That’s the beautifully frustrating thing about God – He operates outside our realm of understanding. 

Sometimes the replacing He does of the broken things in our lives is simply with Himself.  And friends, He is enough.

 

We might be watching for an exact replacement of whatever we lost, but God in His infinite love for us, gives us what we need.  And often, it comes in the form of a deeper experience with Him.  If, according to Isaiah 63:9, it’s His presence that saves us and rescues us from our affliction, then that’s what I want more of.  I will lay down my dreams and my rights so that I can know Him deeper – because He is so, so worth it.

 

So, all this to say, friends… if you are suffering through loss or desires or dreams that are unfulfilled – know that God is with you in your suffering.  Also know, in all the wrestling and struggle that comes from that, God is taking you somewhere.  It’s not over.  It wasn't all pointless.  You didn't put your heart out there for nothing.  He hasn't abandoned you or your dreams. 

I will shed my tears and mourn my loss, but I will do it knowing that what is to come will be more beautiful than what was (or wasn't). 

“This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden: the cities that were lying in ruins, desolate and destroyed, are now fortified and inhabited…I, the Lord, have rebuilt what was destroyed and replanted what was desolate.” – Ezekiel 36:35-36

Sometimes

"My life looks better on the Internet than it does in real life. Everyone’s life looks better on the internet than it does in real life. The Internet is partial truths—we get to decide what people see and what they don’t. That’s why it’s safer short term. And that’s why it’s much, much more dangerous long term.

Because community—the rich kind, the transforming kind, the valuable and difficult kind—doesn’t happen in partial truths and well-edited photo collections on Instagram. Community happens when we hear each other’s actual voices, when we enter one another’s actual homes, with actual messes, around actual tables telling stories that ramble on beyond 140 pithy characters."

Oh, heavens. I love/hate this. I love, love, love it because it reminds us where true community is found, and it isn't in the light of the computer screen you're looking at right now. I am guilty. Guilty of spending too much time looking at people's "partial-truth" internet lives while there is a whole world of living, breathing human beings out there hungry for companionship - myself included. Heck, I just have to look up and there are three little people sitting right across the table from me who call me mommy. So, I'd better be darn sure that they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that THEY are what's important - THEY are my priority. Not this hunk of metal that "connects" me to the outside world.

And I hate this quote because I think it is so very true of many of us. Our "internet lives" look better than our real lives. Ouch. It made me go back to my Instagram account, my Facebook page, and this blog and ask myself what image of my life I'm putting out there to the world. We fear putting our "real" lives out there because what in the world would people think?! It gets back to my last post on wanting a community of people who are willing to just be who they are regardless of what people think. But more importantly, actually BEING a community of people who are safe for people to show up in with all their beauty and all their junk and just be loved.

We are really, really good at the beauty part. The harder, imperfect stuff?? Not so much. Here's the deal. Life is really beautiful. Beauty deserves and demands to be shared because of the sheer joy and pleasure it brings us as human beings. I won't ever stop posting beautiful pictures and happy moments, because that is a part of my life and it's real. Beauty happens, people!

So does imperfect. And hard. And unexpected. And just as much as the beautiful deserves and demands to be shared, so do the not so beautiful things. Because they also are real life. The truth is, that when I see people get real and share their not so beautiful stuff, it makes me breathe a little easier and know I'm not alone.  So, in an effort to be honest and authentic in representing the REAL life of Amy Savage, I give you my beautiful and imperfect - because together, they are the real truth.

Because sometimes...

The Easter cake really does look this beautiful.

And sometimes...

You drop your daughter's birthday cake outside on the deck, then proceed to pick up the two biggest pieces  you can find and shove cute candles in it in hopes she won't notice. Right.

Sometimes...

 Your kids get all bloodied and bruised.

And sometimes...

They shine.  (Or whatever it is that Mr. T does).


Sometimes...

You surprise your husband with a custom made gift on Valentine's Day.

And sometimes...

Three weeks later it is lost in piles of laundry and unpacked bags from a trip you returned from forever ago.

Sometimes...

You really do get the cutest dog on the face of the planet.

And sometimes...

Your super cute dog manages to blow poop outside of his crate in the middle of the night.  

Sometimes...

On one of the hardest days of your life, you post an insanely beautiful photo of your drive down the road so no one will ever know how much pain you are in.

And sometimes...

Your girls really do love each other that much and their hair really is that red in the sunset. 

Sometimes...

You finally take that trip to Hawaii and you are forced to view the beach from your car with the window wipers on because it's pouring down rain and the waves are so big they could wash you away. 

And sometimes...

The rain disappears and you are able to take in the most amazing sunset while surfers head into the water to catch one more wave.  

Sometimes...

You dye an Easter egg that miraculously matches your dress.

And sometimes...

You stumble across an incredibly awkward 4th grade photo in which you could have hatched the egg your daughter so beautifully dyed.

Sometimes...

You can get so excited over a finished project that you forget...

It's the mess and process of renovating that meant the most.

Sometimes...

Life is heart-wrenching and confusing.

But sometimes...

It's just THAT good.

So, here's to being honest about all the broken and the beautiful.  Life certainly isn't perfect, but its imperfections are gifts too.  Let's not be afraid to show them.

NEED

It was three Easters ago that I was sitting in the Amsterdam airport on my way to adopt my son in Ethiopia.  I was overwhelmed with the reality of my adoption by God as I flew through the clouds to adopt my own son.  I was acutely aware of fresh starts and how God makes all things new.  I was flying to my son.  MY SON.  My son, with all his mess.  All his imperfection.  All his beauty.  All his need. 

Need.  Don't you just cringe sometimes at the word?  Don't we just wish people would stop needing?  Don't we wish at our very core that we could just stop being so in need ourselves?  Why can't we just get ourselves together? Well, because we can't.  We can't. Oh, we want to.  We want to be able to put on a good face and present a solid front, and on our best days of pretending, we can. But don't we get tired of pretending?  Isn't our reality that we indeed are in need?  I feel it rise up within me so often... disgust that I can't just get my stuff together.  Because, let's face it - we look around and so many people seem to have their stuff together.  It makes us feel small.  Unworthy.  Guilty.  Ashamed.  

The reality is that the people who really have their stuff together are the people who have acknowledged that they don't.  

It took me a while to truly get that.  It took me an even longer while to be willing to recognize that all I really need is need. But man, that doesn't really seem to fly in our culture.  It's all about strength and self-reliance and our own power and prestige.  It's about what we can do for ourselves.  What a dis-service we are doing to each other.  Because at the end of the day, each one of us is somehow broken, hurting and so not together.  We are putting on a face of "I'm better than okay" and for what?  For what???? 

What if people were able to find a safe place to just lay all their junk out there - their hurts, their fears, their pain, their desires - and just be who they are?  What if we all lived authentically?  What if there was no more pretense?  What if we didn't give a rip about what other people thought about us? Is this even possible, people???? 

I really, really, really want it to be.  And I think it can.  But what it takes is a people who are willing to be honest about their need. Can we do that?  Can we suck it up and just put out there who we really are?  Can I tell you that I have so loved to be needed my entire life because it gives me a sense of worth, that I have come close to completely ruining my family?  Can I tell you that I don't even know how to have friends anymore because I don't trust myself to do it in a healthy way?  Can I tell you that I feel like I'm starting over in my relationship with God at the age of 38 because I have believed lies about who He is and how He looks at me for most of my life? And can I tell you that just being able to say these words liberates me and sets me free? 

We are a needy people.  And if we don't think we are, then we aren't being honest with ourselves and each other.  But I am learning... my need is a gift.  It is what draws me into a real, authentic, messy relationship with God.  It's what keeps me close to Him.  I freaking need Him every second of the day and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Because He takes our need and He meets us in those deep, dark places and He says "I am enough".  And you know what?? He really, really is.  

And I think that as our Father, He must just hope that we can humble ourselves and share our real, deep, dark with the people around us.  Because He's given us each other for a reason.  And it's not so that we can put on fake smiles and convince everyone that we live perfect lives.  It's so that we can be who we are, no matter what, and know that we are truly loved.  

Because that is what you and I are... truly loved.  No matter what. 

God Does What He Says

Here’s the story I’ll tell my friends when they come to worship,

    and punctuate it with Hallelujahs:

Shout Hallelujah, you God-worshipers;

    give glory, you sons of Jacob;

    adore him, you daughters of Israel.

He has never let you down,

    never looked the other way

    when you were being kicked around.

He has never wandered off to do his own thing;

    he has been right there, listening.

 Here in this great gathering for worship

    I have discovered this praise-life.

And I’ll do what I promised right here

    in front of the God-worshipers.

Down-and-outers sit at God’s table

    and eat their fill.

Everyone on the hunt for God

    is here, praising him.

“Live it up, from head to toe.

    Don’t ever quit!”

 From the four corners of the earth

    people are coming to their senses,

    are running back to God.

Long-lost families

    are falling on their faces before him.

God has taken charge;

    from now on he has the last word.

 All the power-mongers are before him

    —worshiping!

All the poor and powerless, too

    —worshiping!

Along with those who never got it together

    —worshiping!

 Our children and their children

    will get in on this

As the word is passed along

    from parent to child.

Babies not yet conceived

    will hear the good news—

    that God does what he says.

- Psalm 22:22-31

Better Together

There is one thing I know.  We are better together.  We really, really are.  We need each other.  We need each other's encouragement, strength, motivation and resources.  Alone, we can be like a crippled climber standing at the base of a mountain wondering how in the world we will ever make it up.  But together, we help each other.  We push each other out of our comfort zones.  We tell each other that yes, we can do this. Together.  

And together, we have done something beautiful for a community of 200 vulnerable children in Ethiopia.  

Back in December, I asked you all to join me in raising money to go towards new kitchen facilities for Hands for the Needy in Ethiopia.  And you did.  A lot of times, we don't get to see the direct impact of our resources and prayers.  But today, you do.  I share these pictures with you with an overwhelmingly grateful heart.  I am so thankful I am not alone in this.  I am so in awe that God has moved in hearts all over the U.S. to engage us in the cause of the oppressed and the vulnerable.  I am so, so amazed at what we can do together.  

Two years ago, I walked into Hands for the Needy and saw the cooks prepping food outside...

Sisters... can you imagine prepping meals in this environment?? And yet, it's what these women did tirelessly.

There was a small metal room where they kept their cooking supplies...

The cooks would spend hours (no exaggeration) hunched over on the ground chopping vegetables...

But now, because of you... they now have this...

Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?! This will be so much more efficient and sanitary for the cooks and the children.  Cooking for 210 kids will be so much easier with no more smoke inhalation from open fires.  I am beyond thrilled with what we have done together, friends!!  And it's all so that the sweet kiddos can enjoy healthy, nutritious meals every day...

When we look at global poverty issues, they are big, giant beasts that seem impossible to slay.  But one community at a time, we are making a difference.  These kids were eating out of the garbage dump just two years ago.  And look at them now.  Together, we can change the world.  We ARE changing the world.  Don't let anyone ever tell you that your help won't matter.  Because it does.  These kids are proof.  

I have an overflowing heart today and I wish I could thank each of you who donated in person.  You know who you are and I pray these photos will touch your heart and bolster your courage to continue to engage in helping these vulnerable children.  

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  From the bottom of my heart.  I know God has big plans for each of these kids and you are a part of making it happen.  How cool is that?! 

We are indeed, better together.  Always. 

Deeply...

"When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes.  I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty.  I am trusting and suspicious.  I am honest and I still play games.  To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark.  In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means.  My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it."

- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Blessing the Dust

A Blessing for Ash Wednesday...

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial -

Did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil
of this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge we bear. 

 - Jan Richardson

For the 27 Million

There are 27 million slaves in the world today, more than any other time in history. Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings, mainly for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor.  As the world's fastest growing criminal industry, it affects every nation across the globe. Every thirty seconds, someone is forced into this type of bondage - modern slavery. 

The average age of trafficking victims is 12 years old.  That is close to the age of my daughter. The thought of her being subjected to the horrors of abuse, repeated rape and starvation takes my breath away.  And that's why I sat with tears running down my face as I read the following story from Christine Caine's book, "Undaunted"...

One by one that March afternoon, the girls around me shared stories like Nadia's.  Most had been raised in impoverished, ex-communist Eastern European nations.  Each had come to Greece expecting legitimate employment.  All had brought with them dreams, hopes and aspirations to do something more with their lives than their own families had ever dreamed possible.  All of those tender, youthful dreams had been shattered beyond anyone's worst fears. 

What shook me the most was the realization that, for each of these young women I spoke to that day, there were hundreds of thousands of others still trapped in the sex slave trade with no way out - hundreds of thousands of women whose unspeakable pain remained shrouded in secrecy.  Silent.  

Then Mary from Nigeria told her story.  She and 59 other young women had come to Greece in a shipping container.  

"Wait," I interrupted.  "do you mean you were contained in a ship?" I thought I'd misunderstood, or that something had been lost in translation.  

Mary repeated: She and fifty-nine other young women were brought to Greece in a shipping container. Just like the one I had just had an estimate on from a moving company for shipping my household goods to our new home.  

When she and the fifty-nine other girls arrived at the port the day of their departure, they thought they were traveling to good-paying jobs in a land of opportunity.  Instead, they were greeted by hiring agents who said there were complications with the paperwork.  Either travel by container, the girls were told, or lose your deposits and any future opportunity to work abroad.  Either make the voyage in a shipping container or turn around and go home.  

"Our families had given everything they owned to pay for our passage," Mary said. So, one by one, bewildered and frightened, the girls entered the container.  When the last girl was inside, the door was slammed shut and they heard a lock snap into place.  They sat frozen in the darkness.  

"Then the bubble broke!  The bubble broke!" Mary exclaimed.  

"What bubble?"

The filter, she explained, that allowed oxygen to circulate in the container.  It stopped working, and the inside of the cramped box suddenly became not only lightless but airless as well. 

I gasped, imagining the oxygen being rapidly depleted, the heat building, the women gulping for air in complete darkness.  

The journey in the sealed container was gruesome.  Half the girls died from the lack of oxygen.  The other half, the stronger ones, were near death themselves.  They had nowhere to sit but in their own vomit and feces, since they were forced to relieve themselves on the container's floor.  When the men at port opened the container, Mary said, they recoiled, appalled by the smell of death, decay and excrement.  

One of the dead was Anna, Mary's best friend.  Anna had died an excruciating death, suffocating as if buried alive.  But Anna was real, Mary insisted to me that day.  Anna had existed.  And Anna must be remembered.  

The hiring agents preferred to forget.  More interested in quickly getting what they referred to as their "shipped goods" from the dockyard, they hustled the living to small apartments nearby, where, like Nadia, the girls were repeatedly raped and beaten.  

Before sunrise one morning, the girls were loaded into small rubber boats and taken across the Mediterranean Sea to a Greek island.  This was the first time they realized that the original voyage had not even taken them to Greece.  They had been brutalized in Turkey.  None of the agents' promises had been kept. 

In the boat, Mary felt a surge of hope: the Greek Coast Guard was doing a routine check that morning.  She hoped that, unlike the crew on the docks, the Coast guard could not be bribed to turn a blind eye.  Mary's captors showed signs of panic.  Though she was freezing, sleep and food deprived, broken and in shock, Mary's hope grew.  Rescue!  Justice!  Once caught, the traffickers would face a lengthy imprisonment.  And for that reason, these men would do anything to avoid being caught. 

They began throwing the girls overboard. 

Only five of the approximately thirty girls - those who had been strong enough to survive the deadly voyage in the shipping container - escaped drowning that day.  

Those five were hidden among their captors when the Coast Guard came aboard.  When they finally arrived in Athens, the girls were taken to a brothel, where the nightmare of the Turkish apartment was repeated.  Daily, Mary and the others were forced to participate in unspeakable encounters with dozens of men.  The horror continued for weeks or months - Mary couldn't tell.  But one day, anti-trafficking authorities, responding to a tip, raided the brothel.  Mary and the other girls were herded into the back of a police van.  They were given rest, food and water and peace. 

Though no longer in a physical prison, Mary remained silent, constantly tormented by recurring nightmares.  The daily horror may have ceased, but the pain screamed non-stop.  

As I read this, I literally felt ill.  I kept thinking of the scene in the movie "Amistad" where they chain all the weak and the sick slaves together and push them off the ship to drown. That happened SO long ago.  But this - this is happening NOW.  And it's happening in a world that has the power to stop it. An estimated 40,000 people are living IN SLAVERY in the United States, with an estimated 14,000-17,000 being trafficked in each year.  Both foreign nationals and U.S. Citizen victims have been identified in cities, suburbs and rural areas of ALL 50 states.  This isn't someone else's problem - it's ours.  

I love that of all the words Jesus could have read when he spoke from the temple for the first time, He read these:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners.

From the very beginning, God's heart has been for the captives and those held prisoner.  And as the hands and feet of God on the earth, our hearts had best be for them too.  This issue of human trafficking - it's big.  It's overwhelming. It's ridiculously complicated.  But, please, just do SOMETHING.  Christine Caine, who told the story above, had to look into the faces of the wide-eyed girls that had been rescued from trafficking and answer their question of "Why didn't you come sooner?"  Can you even imagine?  These young girls - just shells of who they once had been, wanting to know why their rescue didn't come sooner.  It makes my heart pound furiously.  We can't say it's because we didn't know.  We do know, as much as we wish we didn't sometimes.  What is stopping us from looking this giant beast in the face and saying "Enough.  I will not sit idly by."  Are we lazy?  Are we too busy?  Can you imagine looking into the eyes of those little girls and giving those pathetic excuses?  We ALL have a part to play, as human beings who believe in dignity and freedom.  

Below are several organizations that are involved in ending modern day slavery. Each one lists ways that you can be involved.  You can use your voice, your financial resources, your gifts, whatever platform you have to bring this issue to light.  I'd encourage you to also look into human trafficking task forces that might exist right in your home town.  You would be shocked at how normal, every day people like you and I are helping to both prevent and spot human trafficking in their own cities.  

This isn't a "cause", you guys.  This is people's lives we are talking about.  Little girls who should be playing with dolls are having their innocence ripped from them up to 40 times a day.  Boys, who should be kicking a soccer ball around are doing extreme manual labor in hot fields all day long.  Men and women, who never dreamed they'd end up in a forced labor situation deserve to go back to their families without fear.  These are the stories of 27 MILLION people.  Please don't just be moved.  Be moved enough to act. 

http://www.endslaverynow.com/

http://www.thea21campaign.org/index.php#.UPbdoyc0WSo

http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/?gclid=CO3t2rO97bQCFeZDMgodcG8A0g

http://www.thepolarisproject.org

http://www.ijm.org 





  

Escape From the Prison of How and Why

All day long I have little voices constantly asking me questions.  "Mommy, why can't I have another piece of candy?  When are we going roller skating?  Can my friend come over and play?  Why do I have to clean my room EVERY day? Where's my planner?  What's for dinner?  When can I get a brother?  And WHEN IS DADDY COMING HOME????"

Don't you ever wonder if God doesn't just feel as exasperated as I do when the questions come firing at me one after the other?  I know that there are many days I must sound just like my children, asking God why and when and how over and over again.  Man, do we ever want answers!!

In the book "Glorious Ruin", Tullian Tchividjian says "Our hope is not 'Jesus plus an explanation of why suffering happens' or 'Jesus plus an explanation about why you have this job, that spouse, those circumstances or this pain'.  Our hope is that God is especially present in our suffering."  Our hope is Jesus.  Not Jesus plus an explanation.  

Ouch.  I confess, sometimes I just want the explanation.

And if I can just be frank, the Church in general (myself included) stinks at not wanting to give an explanation for everything.  We think that life should be neat and tidy, just like God.  But guess what?  I don't think God is neat and tidy.  I think God is a beautiful mystery who is often experienced most closely and intimately in times of suffering and anguish.  I believe strongly that our inability to simply sit alongside a suffering brother or sister, in love, without offering explanations is hurting us.  It perpetuates the feeling that those who are in a "dark night of the soul" so to speak, simply need to believe more for answers so that they can get out of the darkness and fast. There is no room for struggle or sorrow or pain.  And that is so unfortunate, because it can be precisely through that darkness that God ushers in the deepest revelations of who He is.  

"There's a tempting notion that if we only grasped God's will more clearly; if we only knew something we don't know now, our wounds would hurt less.  But the Gospel is not ultimately a defense from pain and suffering; rather, it is the message of God's rescue through pain.  It allows us to drop our defenses, to escape not from pain, but from the prison of how and why to the freedom of Who."

I think when we see "Who", that ultimately every other question we have either gets answered or fades away in the light of God.  We find Him to be sufficient.  

And let's not mistake darkness or the wilderness times for things to be hurried through.  As much as we may very well want to get the heck out of there, God has something for us in that space that we might not otherwise find.  I think about the stupid, beautiful Israelites in the book of Exodus, who were rescued from slavery, then wandered in the desert for forty years, wavering in unbelief despite the miraculous hand of God and His presence with them.  When they entered the Promised Land finally, they were a people marked by suffering AND rescue.  I have to believe that God was shaping them during those years - that they walked into the Promised Land a people of deeper faith and character.  And so shall we, friends.  So shall we. 

It's not answers we need.  It's Presence.  So, may we seek the "Who" and not the how or why.  And may we be faithful to point each other to the One who rescues through pain and reveals Himself even in the darkness.  

See

We are on the cusp of a new year.  What is it about a silly date that can breed feelings of hope and expectation?  I suppose it's the opportunity to lay to rest the failures and disappointments of the year and go to sleep in anticipation of a fresh start - a clean slate. Really, this should be our reality every day of the year.  

I read the story of Saul of Tarsus in the Bible this morning - talk about a guy who needed a clean slate.  He was a man filled with hate who oversaw the murdering of multitudes of people. Worse yet, it seems he didn't even view what he was doing as wrong in the least.   How could this be?  It took God appearing to him on a road and blinding him for three days to get him to really see.  Sound familiar to anyone?  Sometimes, it's in the dark when we can't see anything at all, when we feel most lost and confused, when we have the most questions - it's then God shows up just as He did for Saul, and the scales fall from our eyes.  We get our vision back. We get our very life back.  

I can only imagine what those three days of darkness were like for Saul.  Everything he thought he knew was stripped away.  I'm sure he was terrified.  After all, the people he had been murdering were people who believed in Jesus.  And it was Jesus that appeared to him on the road and took his sight away. Saul must have been thinking that blindness was just the beginning of him getting what he deserved.  But God sends a man named Ananias to find Saul in his darkness. And get what God says to Ananias - "I have chosen him to tell kings and foreigners about me." ?????? Uh... God... you make no sense.  And I love it. Can you even imagine what Ananias must be thinking as he heads to where Saul is staying?? I imagine he was having a Jonah moment where he wanted to completely do the opposite of what God had told him.  But he went and here's what happened in Acts 9:17-18...

Ananias left and went into the house where Saul was staying. Ananias placed his hands on him and said, “Saul, the Lord Jesus has sent me. He is the same one who appeared to you along the road. He wants you to be able to see and to be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Suddenly something like fish scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see.

I read this over and over this morning. He WANTS you to be able to see. He WANTS you to be filled with all the life and fullness that God has for you through His spirit.  The God of the universe wants that for you and for me. And friends, sometimes it takes the darkness to get us to the place where we can see.  We won't always understand, but God will give us what we need to see Him in the middle of whatever situations we find ourselves in.  It's been my experience this past year that we receive very few answers in this life and we understand very little, but when we can see and trust the beauty of God's light and presence in us and with us, and His desire for nothing but our ultimate good, our need for answers disappears,even in the middle of the dark.  

Saul had three days in the dark, and I've had three months. Some of you have had three years.  It doesn't matter the time - dark is dark regardless of whether it stays for days, months or years.  But those words - "He wants you to be able to see"- they should be our mantra for this new year.  They should be the hope that we allow to seep into our hearts.  And the time will come when suddenly the scales will fall from our eyes and we SHALL see.  We shall SEE. Because God desires fullness for our lives.  He wants us to live in joy, and sometimes the way to joy is through the pitch dark.  My eyes are starting to squint open... the scales are starting to fall off...the darkness is being driven away...my vision is returning better than before.  And it's all because God makes us new.

Saul got a new name- Paul.  He got a brand spanking new life.  He got a new heart and a new hope.   God did what He said He would do in Saul's life.  He restored his sight and gave Paul a reason to spread the good news of the gospel throughout the world.  

Maybe you find yourselves sitting in the deep dark today.  I have been there...I am just crawling out myself.  I know the fear and insecurity and desperation it brings.  I know how easily the voice saying "He WANTS you to be able to see" can be swallowed up by all the others.  But hold on. Vision is on its way.  Light is coming. I'm not there yet, but I have a feeling on the other side of this darkness is a whole new way of living.  And I know there will be a day (and soon) when I will say that the ability to see with fresh eyes will be worth every second in the pitch black.  

Psalm 18 says:

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
    he drew me out of deep waters.
¹⁷ He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
    from my foes, who were too strong for me.
^18 19 He brought me out into a spacious place;

    he rescued me because he delighted in me. 

You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning;

   My God turns my darkness into light.

My God turns my darkness into light.  Amen.

Light to Drive Back Our Dark

An excerpt from Frederick Beuchner's "Secrets in the Dark"...

"Several winters ago my wife and I and our then twenty-year-old daughter, went to that great tourist extravaganza near Orlando, Florida, called Sea World.  It was a gorgeous day when we were there, with bright Florida sunlight reflected in the shimmering water and a cloudless blue sky over our heads. The bleachers where we sat were packed.  

The way the show began was that at a given signal they released into the tank five or six killer whales, as we call them (it would be interesting to see what they call us), and no creatures under heaven could have looked less killer-like as they went racing around and around in circles.  What with the dazzle of sky and sun, the beautiful young people on the platform, the soft Southern air, and the crowds all around us watching the performance with a delight matched only by what seemed the delight of the performing whales, it was as if the whole creation - men and women and beasts and sun and water and earth and sky and, for all I know, God himself - was caught up in one great, jubilant dance of unimaginable beauty.  And then, right in the midst of it, I was astonished to find that my eyes were filled with tears.  

When the show was over and I turned to my wife and daughter beside me to tell them what had happened, their answer was to say that there had been tears also in their eyes. There is no mystery about why we shed tears.  We shed tears because we had caught a glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom, and it had almost broken our hearts.  For a few moments we had seen Eden and been part of the great dance that goes on at the heart of creation.  We shed tears because we were given a glimpse of the way life was created to be and is not.  We had seen why it was that "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" when the world was first made, as the book of Job describes it.  We had a glimpse of part of what Jesus meant when he said "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh".  

The world is full of darkness, but what I think we caught sight of in that tourist trap in Orlando, Florida, of all places, was that at the heart of darkness - whoever would have believed it? - there is joy unimaginable.  The world does bad things to us all, and we do bad things to the world and to each other and maybe most of all to ourselves, but in that dazzle of bright water as the glittering whales hurled themselves into the sun, I believe what we saw was that joy is what we belong to.  Joy is home, and I believe the tears that came to our eyes were more than anything else homesick tears.  God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in His image, I think it means that even when we cannot believe in Him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by Him, His mark is deep within us.  We have God's joy in our blood.  

I believe that joy is what our tears were all about and what our faith is all about too. Not happiness.  Happiness comes when things are going our way, which makes it only a forerunner to the unhappiness that inevitably follows when things stop going our way, as in the end they will stop for all of us.  Joy, on the other hand, does not come because something is happening or not happening, but every once in a while rises up out of simply being alive, of being part of the terror as well as the fathomless richness of the world God has made.  My prayer is that we will all of us find him somewhere  somehow, and that He will give us something of His life to fill our emptiness, something of His light to drive back our dark." 

I was going through some photos today and stumbled across this one of my daughter, Ella, that actually made me catch my breath in light of the recent shootings in Connecticut...

This is MY glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom.  This is what I wish the world could be like every minute of every day... joy in our hearts, mouths open in wonder, the wind at our backs, the sense of freedom and exhilaration that comes from soaring heavenward.  It makes me homesick.  It makes me realize that God created us to fly barefoot on a swing bound by nothing but joy.  And there will be a day, friends... there will be a day of no more tears.  But for now, we cling white knuckled to the truth that God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy.  

Not all the darkness in the world...