Tag: Essay

I’m getting yelled at roundly from all corners for not posting anything but once a month, so I’m going to try to be more frequent in my posting. See, the trouble is, I don’t really know what I’m doing. No, not about my writing. I can always blather something. I mean about my life. I have no clue what I’m doing.

Back that up. I have no clue who I am.

Back up again. I have no clue that I am

But I know one thing: I know that HE is, and that is enough.

I think it’s in one of John the apostle’s letters where it says, before anything else, we must first believe that HE IS. Our gut reaction in the modern world is to think that has to do with some stance against atheism. But John wasn’t talking about acknowledging that, yes, there is a God out there somewhere. He was making a reference to Jesus saying “before the world was, I AM.”

HE IS—in some sense far more fundamental than we can comprehend.

Now, I’ve never read that Descartes guy, to find out what all exactly he said, but the more I think about his famous statement—I think, therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum)—the more I am amazed. Not at how profound that statement is, but at how profoundly stupid it is—Absolute, undeniable proof that Descartes had never encountered the living God, or even any intimation of Him.

Descartes assumed that the act of thinking about the fact that he was thinking proved that at least he was there to think about thinking. Even if his body and this worlds-realm were illusions and imaginary creations, there was at least somewhere, a mind that was thinking about these things without reference to any outside source. Descartes was right in that sense, I suppose, but where he missed it was when he thought that mind was his. We humans cannot think without some medium to think through, any more than a bell can ring in a vacuum, without the medium of air to convey the sound. Our thoughts require some mechanism, some reference through which to think. But Descartes didn’t realize this because he was too worried about whether or not he himself was thinking to wonder if Someone Else was thinking too.

It is in Him that we live, and move, and have our being. But, like Descartes, if we are too busy concerning ourselves with our own being, we will never look up to see what it is that sustains us.

That all sounds very intellectually stimulating, but it has a very real application, if I can find the human words to explain it. Yahweh IS. Yesu IS. And so far as I have a reference back to HIM, I am as well. I don’ t mean some kind of trite truism about how, if it isn’t about God, it really isn’t very important. I mean if there isn’t some kind of connection with the living God, it just doesn’t exist. We are but a vapor, or smoke, almost literally, and His is the light that defines us. Even a rebellion against God has solidity because it is a rebellion against God.

See, I missed it again.

Jean Calvin, in his Institutes of Christianity, starts at a very strange entry point. You’d think he’d start off with “The bible is true because….” or “God is real because…” But Calvin starts with a paradox. Calvin knows that there is no objective way to look at God. The only one who can be objective about anything is God, because he’s the only one with an absolute reference point. I, on the other hand, can’t perceive God, except in reference to myself. I can’t see God working through my goldfish because I am not my goldfish. The only way I could see God working through my goldfish is if my goldfish told me, and then, once again, my reference point for perceiving God would have to start (at least partially) with me. I can’t perceive the wonder of God’s work in the heavens, except to feel wonder when I stare at the heavens. But that wonder happens in me, so my reference point is still me. But the problem is, of my own volition, I don’t wonder. Since everything goes through my filter, I think my filter is reality. I end up like ole René Descartes: “The filter is real, I am the filter.” The only way to know that my filter is flawed is to perceive God. But I can only perceive God through my filter.

This is why it says in scripture that “it is God who works in you to will and to do for His good pleasure.” There is just no way for a human being to infer that something exists from its absence. You’ve heard it said about somebody who lives in a desolate environment “They just don’t know they’re poor.” That’s how it is all the time with us. We don’t know that God is waiting to rend the heavens and pour Himself upon us, because it’s never occurred to us that the heavens can be rent.

So God cheats. He reaches inside each of us, and creates an unfulfillable longing: that oft referred to “God-shaped hole.” It isn’t fair. We’d be quite content if that longing were not imposed upon us. And once that longing is in us, nothing is ever good enough, our whole lives long, until we see Him, finally, with unveiled face. He artificially inseminates us with a longing that is at odds, that s, the filter of our minds. And we are permanently, and increasingly miserable until this conflict is quelled. We must either destroy the filter, or suppress the longing.

What we don’t realize is that this complex system of perceiving God, not perceiving God, longing for that which you do not perceive, and hating and loving both the means through which you do not perceive Him, cannot exist, except in reference to the only absolute in existence. Please forgive me while I wax mathematical for a moment, but I’m going to dredge up your geometry and calculus memories. Imagine a graph. Or even draw a graph. In the middle of your graph, going up and down, is the y axis. It starts at zero in the middle and goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 going up and -1, -2, -3, -4, -5 going down. Going left and right is the x axis, and it does the same thing. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 going to the right, and -1, -2, -3, -4, -5 to the left. Where these lines cross is “the origin”: zero on both axes. It’s the center of the graph because it’s the reference for every other point. Stick a dot in the top right corner of the graph. That, my friend, is a mathematical point. If you remember from school, a point has no measurements. It has no length, width, depth or height. The only thing it has is position. The only thing it gives it any value whatsoever, is its position in reference to the origin. That point, my friend, is you. If the origin did not exist, your point would cease to exist, because without the origin there would be no graph.

This simple relationship is what Augustine calls “the simple good.” God’s over there, I am in my place in relation to Him. Everything is good.

Now draw (or imagine) a diagonal line between your point and the origin. That is your filter. Some might say it is your sin. Now draw a random curve sticking out from the origin, going around the filter line, and running through your point heading back toward the origin, but being stopped by the filter. That’s your unfulfillable longing. Now draw a big huge black point between your point and the origin. We’ll call that Jesus. Now, on either side of your point, and just behind it, draw two little dots . The one on the left is your talking goldfish and the one on your right is the wonder of the heavens. If you connect your three dots, you should have a triangle, with one point facing straight to Jesus. That, combined with the line of unfulfillable longing should make an arrow. You know what to do. Various bizarre circumstances in your life, combined with this unfulfillable longing have pointed you straight to Jesus, whom you now understand to be the only way to get through the filter of your sin so you can once again be in right relation with God. So now you take the plunge and draw this little dotted line from your point, through Jesus, straight to the origin. Now, for extra emphasis, scratch out that stupid filter line with a great big, red, magic marker.

Now, I know that was kind of silly, but you must remember, none of that huge extravagant diagram can exist at all, except in relation to the origin of it all. And, I hope, in some geeky sort of way, it’s kind of beautiful. It’s what Augustine calls “the complex good,” and in a lot of ways, it’s actually superior to the simple good.

And after all of this, I’m brought back to my original point. The reason sometimes that it’s been difficult for me to say something, is that I want to be able to tell everybody just exactly where I am on that diagram. Sometimes, I can’t even tell if I am on that diagram. But there is one thing that I am aware of, and that’s that HE IS, and even if I can’t tell what shape exactly the complex good will take, I can always be confident of the simple good: that HE IS, and I am in relationship with Him.

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In news of the mundane, I am still unemployed. This has been kind of difficult for me, just because this is the longest I have ever been without some kind of job. I expected to get something within a couple of days. That’s the way it’s always worked for me. Not to say I haven’t had a couple of leads. I had an interview just this last week. But nothing has actually solidified. As a result, I’m discovering things about myself I didn’t know before. Like the fact that, when I have a job to go to, I’m the most prompt and organized person on the block. But when I don’t have an externally imposed structure, I’m a lazy slob. I haven’t had an externally imposed structure for over a month now, and it’s really been showing. For instance, the fact that while I’m writing this, it’s 5:00 in the morning. Part of that is because I had some coffee late last night. But part of it is because I don’t have a regular bed time that I’ve been sticking to, since I didn’t have a regular schedule in the morning. I’m going to start working on it as soon as I can (that means, like, tomorrow, since um… it’s already tomorrow?)

The other really big news, I suppose, is that after careful prayer and consideration, I’m going to make another dig at seminary this fall or summer. I still need a job, no matter what. A kid’s gotta eat. But sitting around trying to live without attempting to fulfill some of the purposes God has for my life is just… wasteful. I decided that I had two options, to match the two things I want to do with my life. One of those is ministry oriented, and the other is business oriented. They both seem to require more schooling. I decided that, if I had to choose one path to go first, it’d had better be ministry. First, ministry is more important, but also, it seems like it would be more conducive to raising a family than working the probably 80+ hours to keep a new business alive. I’m still not sure I’ll end up doing pastoral work, per se. I haven’t found the church that I would feel comfortable pasturing. But then, I’m not prepared yet to be a pastor, so I wouldn’t, would I? But I see no barrier to teaching at a seminary, or working as a Christian counselor.

But by God’s grace, and a little tripping in the night (pun intended), I think I have the next step.

A while ago, my darling and I were having a discussion. I don’t know particularly how it happened, but conversation turned to the story of the water from the rock. It’s one of the most fascinating stories for me, although it’s pretty well dispersed. In Exodus something, when Israel was first out of Egypt, they came to a place where there was no water. So they complained, and threatened to kill Moses. Moses prayed, and God directed him to a rock, and said “hit it.” Moses strikes the rock and FWOOSH! out comes enough water for 600,000 fighting men and all their families.

One of the old, anti-miracle-ist explanations for this miracle was that the rock that Moses came to was actually a great side of a mountain. Probably the person who thought this explanation up was from the Appalachian Mountains, because you see it there all the time: The drift water from the previous snows isn’t held just in the surface of the mountain, but inside every crevice of the mountain. You can drive by and see little rivulets creeping out of every minor crack in the surface of the stone. So, our anti-miracle theory goes, God directed Moses to just such a mountain, that had a vast store of water inside of it somewhere, and Moses struck it and just the right place, and all that stored water of the ages comes rushing out—enough to feed 600,000 fighting men and all their families.

The only problem with this explanation is in Corinthians 10:16, which says that “the rock which followed them was Christ.” The image of a rock following someone pretty strongly implies that the Israelites treated that rock the same way they did the Manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the Ten Commandments, and every other physical manifestation of God’s supernatural grace for them: They picked it up and carried it around with them. Which means the rock would have had to have been pretty small. It couldn’t have been much bigger than the size of a watermelon.

And then the next time Israel was stuck in a corner of the desert with no natural source of water (which would be about Numbers 20), Moses prays again, and God says to speak to the rock. And Moses, because of the lovely mood he’s in, instead of speaking to the rock, he hits it, twice. And then there’s this big section where God tells Moses he won’t get to go into Canaan because he hit the rock instead of speaking to it.

OK. So what’s the big deal? I mean, of all the dumb things Moses has probably done wrong in 80-odd years, the thing that tops the cake and kicks him out of Canaan is hitting a rock with a stick. Ever hit a rock with a stick? Watch out! Actually, one explanation I’ve heard on this goes something along the lines of “Moses represented God as angry when he wasn’t,” which I guess is pretty bad. I mean, misrepresenting God, false prophecy, false teaching and all that. But I think it’s even more significant than that.

If you look at it with a little historical perspective, and remember what Jesus said about the whole Old Testament being a prophecy (c.f. “the law prophesied until John;” “not a jot or tittle of the law will pass away until all is fulfilled;” etc.), what you realize is that Moses screwed up what was supposed to be one of the most powerful symbols in the entire book. Remember, “the rock which followed them was Christ.” God only told Moses to strike the rock once. Jesus was crucified “Once for all” (It’s in Romans and it’s in Hebrews. Go look it up.) As a Christian, what is one of the worst things you can do, in regard to your sin? Isn’t it to try somehow to earn God’s salvation? Jesus was crucified once. There is no need for anyone to do it again. It would be an affront to God to attempt to do so, like attempting to pay for your birthday presents.

Strike the shepherd and the sheep are scattered.
Strike the rock and the waters come.
They struck my Lord and they brought salvation.
Could they have known what they had done?

Jesus was struck once for our salvation, and out of his side, like blood and water, came an unquenchable fountain of life. Moses struck a bolder and out came enough water for 600,000 fighting men, and their families (and their sheep, and their camels, and their donkeys…) From Jesus Christ flows an unquenchable flood that has watered people in the billions. He was struck once, and now all we have to do is speak to that rock to receive anew that fresh fountain of life.

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Now that was pretty good, but I’m pretty sure I already knew most of it, though it had never quite before congealed so nicely. But what happened next was pretty amazing. I dropped my darling off for the night and headed home (that’s not the amazing part), when the Holy Spirit reminded me of another verse involving water (here it comes—this has totally revolutionized my life). The verse from Ephesians 5 pops into my mind, about husbands: “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the water of the word.”

I’ve always liked that verse, because it describes the word of God as this cleansing agent that automatically draws you to holiness. I like verses like that. Like “Acknowledge God, and He will direct your path,” which had me chanting a mantra of “God I acknowledge you” for months every time I found my self going on the wrong path. I had in my mind somehow this idea, like in Psalm 119, where it says “because of Your word, I have more wisdom than my elders,” that if I just hid enough scripture in my heart, somehow those bible verses would work their way out in my life and actions, and I would be this super-righteous person. I hope you can recognize the wrong direction I’m going here. Crucifying again, making a mockery of Christ, and all that sort of thing. I had in my mind this nice little formula: Read bible, become holy. The only problem is that it never really has managed to work.

So, anyway, I’m driving home in the night and this verse pops into my head and the Holy Spirit says “What if that word there is Rhema instead of Logos?” I don’t remember if I stopped the car or not, but I do know I shouted “WHOA!!!” about as loud as I could. (I’m pretty sure all my windows were up.) Right about then 10,000 stones were falling into place.

For those of you who aren’t in the know, there are two Greek words in the New Testament that are translated into English as “word.” One is Logos, and the other is Rhema. Logos is pretty famous already, as it’s found in English words such as logic, and every word that ends in –ology. Logos is also pretty famous because John used it like crazy in the first chapter of his Gospel. “In the beginning was the Logos…” John probably knocked the socks off of some Greek philosophers with that one, since Plato had used Logos to describe both the very mind of God, and the absolute foundation of all reality. Pretty cool intro to have the absolute foundation of all reality to become flesh and dwell among you. In everyday Greek life, Logos just meant the written word. Logos means, ahem, pure text. Heh, heh. (woo. I made a funny!) Logos has the connotation of all that is orderly, organized, planned out, structured, prepared. (Which is to say that Logos signifies everything that I’m not—the great irony abounds.)

Rhema means the spoken word. Theologically, Rhema would be prophecy: the word of God for now, that still small voice, the inner light, His work in your life—every aspect of God moving in your life that does not directly involve the book. Rhema connotes something lively, something powerful, something fluid, something flexible…like water.

Again, I hope you can see where I’m going with this. If Jesus himself is Logos, which is the scripture, and he is also “the rock which followed them,” something very stable, what could that water from the rock be but the very rhema-word of God?

OK. Back to Ephesians. “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church … with the washing of the water of the word.” Do you see how the image changes? Before I had Jesus scrubbing his bride with the sound and unchanging scriptures. Now I’ve got him veritably flooding her with a fountain of cleansing… words.

What sort of words to you suppose Jesus is using, to wash over his bride? I’ll give you a hint: probably not many of them start with the word “woe.” Jesus himself said he came to save the world, not to condemn it. His purpose is to sanctify the church, to make her holy, and as I’ve pointed out before, to be Holy is not “to be a better person” or to change who you are, rather it is to become more distinctly who you already are. So the rock of our salvation is constantly pouring out the living water, which washes away all the things in our environment that have tried to change us. He’s saying, “Your feet aren’t dirty, that dirt isn’t part of who you are. Here, let me show you what beautiful feet you have. There, isn’t that good news?”

That’s a pretty powerful image, just as an injunction for husbands in regards to their wives. The manner in which we are supposed to demonstrate our love is not by brandishing them about with the order and understanding of heaven, but rather through life giving words. Not only that, but our words are supposed to be used to define our loved one’s very nature. Do you love the way her not-quite-long-enough hair gets tousled around and curls behind her ears in her frustration? Tell her. That’s who she is. Do you love the way she can put the fear of God and hell in any man, woman or child who comes near to hurting her children? Tell her. That’s who she is. Does her worrying about the future disturb you? Wash off those worries and remind her: that’s not who she is. If the rhema is the prophetic word, then it’s important to remember that to prophesy is to speak “edification and exhortation and comfort.” If it isn’t edifying, it probably isn’t rhema.

But it doesn’t stop in the natural. Husbands and wives are called to be a to the world of Christ and the church. If it’s powerful when a husband washes over his wife with the water of the word, how much more when Christ washes us?

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Can we go back for a minute to that whole “water from the rock” thing? The thing that always bothered me when I was in my “read the bible and you’ll become holy” phase, was that I couldn’t quite understand the exact mechanism by which me reading my bible was going to miraculously produce a holy life and a better relationship with the living God. This Rhema and Logos bit really clears a lot of that up for me.

Let me just run through a couple of metaphors, and we’ll see how many of them I can mix in a single paragraph. Jesus is the “rock which followed them.” He is also the “manna from heaven.” In communion, or the Passover feast, “this bread is [his] body,” and the wine is his blood. But if the blood of Christ is the fountain of our salvation, then his blood is also the water from the rock. So, the solid rock is the Logos, and the flowing water is the Rhema.

So there’s a very interesting irony in the fact that, when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, the first thing he said was to turn stones into bread, since both stones and bread can be said to represent the logos of God. Fittingly, Jesus replies that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Want to guess which Greek word here is translated “word”? Would you believe… rhema? Which makes it pretty clear to me that Jesus was saying that the text is not enough alone, but it must supplemented by the daily specific direction of the Holy Spirit. You might say that logos, the rock, is like vitamins (life-minerals), and that some vitamins must be dissolved in water before we can use them (other vitamins must be dissolved in oil, but I’m not even going to try to make a distinction here between the symbol of oil for the Holy Spirit, and the symbol of water for the Holy Spirit). It’s also interesting to point out that both the bread (logos) and the wine (rhema) are present at communion.

So, no matter how you look at it, you need both the scriptures (logos), and the Holy Spirit’s daily leading (rhema).

But how do we get from the text to revelation, from Logos to rhema? I mean, the text is already sitting right in front of me. But how can I be assured of God speaking through it to me on a daily basis? Where is this unending flood that is supposed to be coming out, washing over me, making me holy and reminding me of who I am? This is probably going to be a no-brainer for you, but it came as a huge… erm, rhema to me.

In John 4:10, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Duh. Ask! Moses struck the rock when he should have spoken to it, a horrible crime against the revelation that God was trying to demonstrate: if we would just keep on asking, he would give us so many good things. “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” If we would just speak to him, asking him for revelation from his word, then He (the Logos himself, Jesus) would give himself up for us, washing us with the living water we need.

One last point, and then I think I’m done: In James it says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” Would you like to take a guess which “word” is used here? That’s right friend, rhema. I always thought that was a nice injunction to adhere to the bible, even though the metaphor made absolutely no sense. What does what you look like have to do with following orders? I thought it meant that a person who reads the bible, but then doesn’t adhere to it, is deceived. Well, yeah, but then we’re all deceived, and in a very general sense. But since it’s rhema that James is talking about, it starts to fall into place. Jesus washes us with the rhema and lifts away the conforming influence of our environment. The rhema renews our mind and reminds us of who we are. But if I get a revelation from God that I am a person who draws near to Him, and who asks for revelation from his word, and I don’t immediately draw near to God and ask for revelation, then I have forgotten who I am. I’m just not acting like myself at all. The rhema reminds us of who we are (in Christ, I guess I should say), and if we immediately go off acting like somebody else, then we are exactly like a person who looks in the mirror, sees that he’s a man, and then turns away and starts looking for an appropriate evening gown.

It simply isn’t him.

It’s amazing the effect that nature has on me. It’s not supposed to. I’m the indoor type, content to spend my time inside, staring at a written page or computer screen. But every time I’m forced outside for any space of time, I find myself eventually staring slack-jawed at the majesty of my environment. Even the stark flat white of the salt plain manages to grip my imagination as the hot, dry wind whips the sweat so fast that the body stays completely dry. The horizon blends blue and white, and your mind belies the fact that this was once an ocean because it is so impossible to be anything but dry there.

Everything is always so much more than it seems in pictures. The sensory rush of every aspect of a place is so almost-overwhelming that a photograph can be little more than a gentle seduction that entices you to wonder what exactly it must be like to look two miles down to the bottom of a canyon, or place your hand upon a tree so wide it takes two minutes to walk around it.

You can’t escape your surroundings, no matter how hard you try. The fact that I live among trees or wheat fields has an inevitable effect on how I think. And by living and being human, I can’t escape carving out my niche from the materials I find, changing my everything around me, even while I’m being changed.

But in these northern temperate zones (the realm of civilization), we sterilize ourselves, push the environment far away from us, creating pristine preserves of “nature” the size of nations which we visit on vacation. We isolate the time and place when we may be affected into discrete doses, a dietary supplement of raw environment. We call our wildlife sacred so we do not eradicate it.

Not so in southern, undeveloped countries. They cannot afford the genocide of removing so many people from their historic homes. We pity them when we see them: the poor, the indigenous, inadvertently raping their environment to light the morning fire. They carve away the mountainsides to make a place to live, replacing cliffs with concrete erosion walls, and coating the barren earth with political agendas in the tradition of painted caves.

Every morning, on a mountainside in Guatemala, my counterpart, a nameless farmer, wakes. He tills his nearly vertical plantation, or makes a smoldering fire of unused husks or stalks of maize to refertilize the soil. He pauses for a moment, leaning on his hoe to watch the smoke as it rises to mingle with the clouds. He glances out across the valley, filled with a thousand painted-concrete huts, each billowing with smoke, to the opposite mountain ridge, a thousand feet above his own, lined with a single oil-slicked road. Behind that mountain lies another; and further, in the hazy blue, another, each filled with uncounted concrete villages like his own.

He sighs and lifts his instrument again and thinks how beautiful, how beautiful the earth is.

There are a lot of things I could write about this morning. I haven’t written for several months, and I probably owe everybody at least a little bit of an explanation beyond the fact that the internet was only available at school and it wasn’t very convenient. I just got back from a mission trip that had the most interesting impact on my life. I am currently enduring the most excruciating cold I have ever heard of. I had no idea that something as simple as a runny nose could cause these kinds of physical reactions. But the thing that is burning in my awareness is the sovereignty and power of a living God.

It’s amazing how easy it is to lose sight of how important he is. I mean, you’d think—creator of the universe, only one capable of getting anything done in this world… There’s a war going on, for crying out loud! You’d think I’d remember to pray. But the truth is I’ve spent more time praying about my parents’ finances than about the war, and even then it was more out of fear than anything. (God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of love, a spirit of power, and a sound mind.)

I guess I could make up a list of excuses explaining why my relationship with God wasn’t functioning according to the proper standards that I know, stuff about the environment that I’m in, the situations that I’m facing. But I just got back from a mission trip, and even if everything else hadn’t been as spiritualized as I would have liked, I spent nearly half the nights there staying up late with a group, singing worship songs Something should have clicked. But it didn’t. I came back from the trip and jumped directly into my old secular, worrying habits.

Worry is a form of pride. It says, “If I just gnaw on this thing long enough, I’ll be able to figure out a solution on my own.” It’s what we do instead of praying, instead of reminding God of his promises to intervene for us. Worry usually falls under the general heading of “Sin.”

What brought this situation to a head though, was not my own situation. I’m usually prideful enough to think I can muddle my way through my own problems. It was trying to help my friend that finally got to me.

Every month or two, Valerie gets completely stressed out. It has to do with the way she approaches her schoolwork. School for me is a kind of game, only vaguely connected to the goals of my life. There’s no direct correlation between an English Degree and owning a Christian book store and having a large happy family. If the work begins to bog me down, I remind myself that it’s mostly irrelevant and go do something else for a while. However, there is a great deal of correlation between a Biology degree with a pre-med concentration and becoming a family practitioner. And Valerie has been preparing to be the best doctor ever born since she was five.

Every year, she strains as hard as she can to get the best grades possible, so she can get into the best medical schools possible, so she can become the best doctor possible. Fifteen years down; only six more to go. It’s a very focused lifestyle. When she gets frustrated, she doesn’t have the vent of reminding herself that it really isn’t that important. It is important. Medical schools do care if you had straight A’s from kindergarten.

She’s been particularly frustrated lately by taking a required course best described as “global citizenship,” which requires you to pretend you are representing various governments for the UN. In a predominantly liberal liberal-arts college, it becomes apparent rather quickly that the most acceptable way of getting an A is to be a good liberal. It’s almost more than a registered Republican can stand. Especially during a war as controversial as this one.

So last night Valerie hit a wall. How does one write a 7-10 page paper on the future effect of Austria on the world? Normally what happens next is that I make everything better. We cry. We hold. We talk about the unfairness of it all We talk about how its almost over. And then we go back to work. After a while though, it becomes apparent that my ministrations aren’t taking effect. Doesn’t “almost over” really mean only six more years of this? If you cannot keep up with the footmen, what will you do when the cavalry comes? I can comfort; I can encourage, but I can’t get to the root of the problem: this woman’s tired. Tired in her bones. I am not gifted with the power to massage away weariness from the soul.

It must have been two hours before it occurred to me that there is only One with that ability. And as Valerie was driving me home it finally occurred to me to pray. The first thing that occurred to me after that was that I didn’t have the right to pray, because I hadn’t spent the proper time previously developing a good relationship with God. I hadn’t been getting up every morning for a powerful prayer time, so now when the crisis comes, I don’t have the right to pray. Fortunately, I have enough education to know where that line comes from, and how to stand against it. He’s right. I haven’t prayed. I haven’t been living the victorious Christian life, and I’ve probably been merrily sinning the whole way. Nevertheless, it isn’t by our righteousness, but by His grace that we can come before him. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us. So I started my prayer, silently, by confessing that I’d missed it, and asking for forgiveness. Then aloud, I began to pray for Valerie.

I won’t give you all the details of a private personal prayer, but I will say that the Lord reminded us that there is an enemy of souls and that discouragement comes more from him than any particular discouraging circumstances. Valerie has been encouraged to view the weariness more as a personal attack than as a failing in herself and I went to bed with the conviction that I finally did the right thing.

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I woke up this morning with a stuffed up nose, a tickle in the back of my throat, and a general shakiness of limb and leg. When I got up, it was a full two minutes before the pressure drained from my sinuses to the point where I could actually see. But I had a song running in my head:

God of wonders beyond our galaxy
You are Holy, Holy!
The universe declares your majesty
You are Holy, Holy!
Lord of heaven and earth…

I haven’t heard from Valerie to know if she feels any better than last night, but I am so aware of the power of a gracious God that I can’t help but be confident that things are heading up. I’m almost excited this morning: He is so good, and he is everywhere.

For Margie

Philippians 4:8 says “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” So here’s some things to think on, if I can do them service:

Each time I come back to Oklahoma, I get a new welcome sign to remind me of
how wonderful it is to live in a place like this. Last summer, I knew I was home when i hit the border just in time for a perfect sunset. The land had just reached that place where it is perfectly flat and there were only a few clouds in the sky. I was hit with this 270º array of bright oranges and reds. It was heaven.

This Christmas, I got to Oklahoma at about 11:30. I missed the sunset I really was hoping to see. What’s more, all the way through Arkansas there was a horrible cloud cover and storms and ice. It wasn’t very pleasant. The sky was completely overcast the entire time.
That night the sunset that I was expecting never came at all. When I hit Oklahoma, though, a miraculous thing happened. The sky suddenly cleared up and, for once, the
wind died down. I was driving I-40, almost to the Muskogee turnpike, about an hour away from home, when I looked up and saw the sky. It was the clearest sky I had ever seen. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The only lights on earth that I could see came from an occasional passing car, and there weren’t many.

For probably the second time in my life I realized exactly why the Greeks called it the Milky Way. That sky was positively infested with stars. You almost couldn’t see the space between them. My favorite constellation, Orion, was just outside my window. I hadn’t realized he was that large. He seemed to take up a full eighth of the sky. And he
was apparently so happy to see me that he was standing on his head. The lighter parts of him, like the club in one hand and the slain animal in the other, I could see with a
clarity I don’t think I ever had before. I almost imagined I could see what animal it was that he had captured. I resolved that, when I reached the turnpike, I would get out and take a few minutes enjoying the view.

About 20 minutes later, I finally passed the turn on to the turnpike. I drove another quarter of a mile, stopped the car, turned the emergency lights on, and stepped outside. I waved at the semi truck and two cars that passed me. They were probably wondering what was wrong with my car that would send me outside in the cold, looking at the
sky. They probably never guessed that it was the sky, and not the car, that drove me out. By this time, the wind had picked up a little bit and was blowing a biting chill, but I barely noticed it. Those stars were too beautiful. What I did notice was that my eyes were watering. I had left my glasses on so I could get the full effect of the view, and normally the glasses would have blocked most of the wind coming at me, the same as my windshield, but I was looking straight up, so the wind was blowing directly into my eyes.
I wish I could say it was the beauty of the moment that was causing me to cry, but it was a chilled wind that blurred my vision and finally forced me back into the safety of the car. But, for that five or ten minutes, what a sight! I suddenly wished that I had studied more astronomy. That star up there that looks out of place, do you think that maybe that’s a planet? No, I was told that planets aren’t supposed to twinkle. Where’s the Big Dipper? Which one is the North Star? Maybe if I just stood here and waited to see which way the stars are moving…

I sat in the quiet of the car for a few minutes while my vision cleared, and then while my now fogged glasses also cleared. The only sound I could hear was the momentary passing of a few cars. It was a beautiful night. Then I started up the car and headed on. Within a mile or two, I began to see the first man made lights again, sitting on top of silos
and far distant radio towers. A few miles more and I began to see the first glow of the city on the horizon. By the time I got to Broken Arrow, the sky had clouded, civilization had taken the landscape, and my moment was gone. But Oklahoma had once again kept her appointment with me at the border. This time she had sent the stars to welcome me home.

I met a man today. It was a spontaneous trip to the Krispy Kreme, and we were sitting in the drive-through, locked in our place. We could see him, working his way down the line of cars, the red jacket bending over as he stopped at each car window. We knew what he was about. We could see it coming. I pointed him out to my friend, and she locked the door. We steeled ourselves for the oncoming conflict. One more and it was our turn.

How do you ignore a man outside your car window, wearing a had and a hood and at least two jackets? How do you sit in line at a donut drive-through and yell through a window that you don’t have any money? The truth is, we didn’t have any money. She had no cash at all, and all I had was the single twenty I was preparing to sacrifice on the altar of a half-dozen box. There was no way I was going to be giving my last bill to a dirty stranger. But the one thing you can’t do is lie. She rolled down the window.

The guy was apologetic, and polite. He kept repeating himself. “I’m sorry, sir. I to be doing this, ma’am. I don’t wanna be no trouble, sir. But it’s cold. It’s cold, so what I’m doing is… what I’m doing is walking down this… It’s cold, so I’m asking people, whatever they can give. I wanna go into a restaurant so I can get warm. I don’t wanna be no trouble or anything. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

There are certain cries the Christian must respond to, if he wants to call himself a Christian. One of those is the cry of the helpless when there is anything he can do to ameliorate the situation. He wasn’t even panhandling for money, really. He didn’t want food so much as he wanted out of the cold. I asked him if he wanted us to get out of the line and go into the donut shop and share our donuts with him so he’d have an excuse to be in the warm.

“No man, I don’t want no donuts. I need real food. I wanna go into a restaurant and get some real food so I can get warm. It’s cold out here!”

“Oh, so, like McDonalds, or Wendy’s up the road here.”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“A restaurant? Like McDonalds or something?”

“Yeah. McDonalds is good.”

“Well, tell you what: Hop in the car and we’ll go to McDonalds or Wendy’s or something”

“Oh, no sir. I don’t get in nobody’s car that I don’t know. Momma told me never get in nobody’s car that I don’t know. My momma died and now I got nothin. And I can’t trust nobody. I’m sorry to be doing this to you, ma’am. I don’t wanna be no trouble. They just dropped me off here, and so I’m just trying to get some money so I can get warm. It’s cold and I’m…I’ve got three coats on….” He started to unzip and show his layers.

“Ok,” I said, reaching into my wallet. I was convinced. This was no panhandler. This was just a guy who was cold. “All I’ve got is this twenty, and I can’t give you that. When I get through to the other side of this line, though, I’ll give you something.”

“If you’re just trying to get rid of me, that’s okay, I’ll just move on, I mean, I don’t want to be no bother. I’m just…”

“No, we’re not trying to get rid of you,” Valerie said.

“No, I just need to get some change, is all,” I said.

“Ok.” He wandered off, away from the line of cars.

“Do you think he believed us?” Valerie asked.

“I don’t know. I hope he doesn’t just leave.”

“Maybe we should just go in.”

“Do you think I’d be faster?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The cars in front of us finally started to move.

“Here we go. I think he did believe us. Or he would have gone on to the next person.” I looked into the back seat. The only article of clothing was a sweatsuit I’d used to sleep in at a friend’s house the night before.

“He doesn’t need any more clothes. He needs a place to stay.”

“Yeah. But he won’t get in the car, so we can’t take him any place.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t even know where any shelters are. We can’t let him stay in the dorm: they won’t let us.”

“I know.”

“Did you smell alcohol on his breath?”

“I think so.”

“Doesn’t really matter, though, does it? ABC store is closed.”

“I think the closest one would be a really long walk away anyway.”

“Well. At least he’d get warm. But even if he was going to get drunk…”

“Yeah. At least he’d be warm. I think he’s on the other side over there, by the IHOP”

“IHOP’d be better than McDonalds. Here. When you get the change, give me a the ten and I’ll run up and get him before he gets away.
She gave me the bill and jumped out of the car. But there was no worry. The guy had believed me and was waiting patiently by the IHOP building.

But this is where it gets tragic, and I wish I could remember the words. I gave him the ten and told him it was a ten, but he didn’t go in. More than he was cold and hungry, he needed a friend. He apologized again, and told me how cold it was. He told me about his friends that said he could stay with them, but kicked him out after a few weeks. He talked about his mother dying again. I asked him when she died, and he couldn’t remember exactly. A month ago, maybe, he said. I couldn’t bear to ask if she had had the dignity of a funeral. He told me again, how it was cold and how he had lost his only family. “My momma was all I had” he said at one point. I think that was about where he started to cry. People told him to go the shelter, but the shelter was full. The Salvation Army was full, and they made you fill out all these forms. “I got ID, man” he said, and pulled out his wallet and showed me his license. The man in the picture looked so self assured and secure, hardly the hatted, hooded man that was in front of me. He told me his name. Twice, he told me, but I never quite understood what he said.

When he looked like he was about to go away, and had said everything he was going to say at least once, I decided to take the risk. I offered to pray. I don’t know why I thought it was a risk. People in that position are open to any kind of help they can get. But it was a risk for me. I suppose if I had been better prepared, I could have used the opportunity to share the gospel with him. I didn’t. I couldn’t see how the sorts of things that would lead me to salvation would be very useful to him. What good is prophecy fulfilled and the freedom from the shame of sin and divine purpose of every man, to a guy who can’t think about much more than the fact that he’s lonely and he’s alone and he’s hungry and cold? I guess I could have talked to him about how He’s Jehovah Jireh, the God who is looking out for you. I could have done a spiritual sis-boom-bah about how it was God who sent me to him. But frankly, I would have liked it better if He could have sent somebody who could have actually gotten him a place to stay. I wasn’t even allowed to let him into my own house. So I prayed a simple prayer. I prayed something along the lines of “Father, help!” I prayed for direction for him, to find a place to stay and a way to keep warm and fed. I prayed for food. I prayed for better help than me to come.” When I finished, he said “And protection. I’m from the country. The city scares me. I’m afraid somebody’s going to hurt me.” So I prayed again, for a shield around him, for safety, and for angels on every side to guard and protect him. It was a prayer of faith, because I didn’t feel a single goose bump. It was a prayer of weakness, because being with this man made me feel weak. I was so aware of how little I could do to help.

When I was finished, he said to me, in his repetitive sort of way, that his momma had told him that white people didn’t like him. I tried to say, that although some white people didn’t like him, I had no problem with him. But it came out wrong, and I could tell I was interrupting. He told me that although his momma said that white people didn’t like him, it was the black people, his friends, who had kicked him out of their house, and it was white people who had given him money and given him clothes. I think this is where he said that “Momma was all I had” and really started to cry. Valerie had circled around twice and was parked across the street. I went to her and got some napkins for him to wipe his eyes, and told him that I had to go. “Why you have to go?” he asked. I couldn’t give him a very good answer, except that I had work to do, which really wasn’t very true, since I knew that my chance of getting much work done after this was pretty slim. But as he dried his eyes, he finally turned to go toward the front of the restaurant. There wasn’t anything left for me to do, so I got back into the warm car, and we drove to our warm school dorms, and on the way, we ate our fresh warm donuts. There wasn’t really anything else to do, but to pray and feel bad that there was so little we could do.

Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do also to me,” and there’s a whole host of prophets that talk about the importance of showing mercy and justice to the poor. But when the problems stand up and get right in your face, it’s almost impossible to imagine what you could do that would ever be enough. I know what that man needs. He needs good food and a warm, clean place to stay. For about six months, he needs nothing but stability and compassion and the gospel of Jesus Christ. You could say that would be enough to make him human, but socially speaking, it would make him little help to anybody else. He needs education; he needs to be taught how to behave and how to keep a job, maybe even how to start his own little business somehow. He not only needs the seed put in him, but to have his ground tended, so that when the seed springs forth, it will have somewhere to go. I couldn’t give that to him tonight, but I pray that will lead him somewhere where he will get it.

I suppose there’s a certain kind of Christian who from here would want to launch a juggernaut. He wants to petition the government to create an agency to help people more effectively than they already do; or he wants to launch his own ministry, create another Salvation Army, expand services somewhere. But I’m a bit more conservative than that, and don’t trust large organizations to do my work for me. All I can think about is how someday I want to be rich. I want to have a spare room in my house, completely separate from the rest of the house, with an outside door and everything, so I can invite people like this, that I don’t know, into my house without making the people afraid that I’m responsible for. I want to be in a position where I feel that I really can help somehow.

I met a man today. I couldn’t really help him. But he reminded me, at least, of where my focus needs to be.

The least of these is hungry.
The least of these is sick.
The least of these needs clothing.
The least of these needs drink.
The least of these knows sorrow.
The least of these knows grief.
The least of these has suffered pain,
And Jesus is His name.

~Petra.

If everyone were perfect, no one would be free.

At some point there must be a line between liberty and the injunction to “walk-uprightly.” If everyone exercised their rights to freedom, then no one would walk uprightly. God established this tension in the beginning when he made the two trees. By making the trees of life and of the knowledge of good and evil, he created an option to choose” the most basic freedom. “If you eat of this tree, you will surely die.” “Die” can easily be understood as “not live,” the opposite of the tree of life. Either-or, not both-and. A definite freedom of choice. A the same time, He made clear which is the right choice”Life. To this day everyone acknowledges the basic principles of freedom and righteousness. The debate always falls in the grey of what is right and how much freedom takes precedence over forced righteousness. What is wrong and how much wrong must be punished how severely in this lifetime.

God, we deem, adheres to the highest levels of both righteousness and freedom. Even the slightest smear of sin, according to Paul in his letter to the Romans, will send you into Hell. But at the same time, God himself has rarely interfered with people’s freedoms, or threatened punishment in this life. It is the civil hammer of society that insists that some freedoms are so offensive and disruptive that they must be hindered here on this earth. These are called crimes. The American ideal sets as a crime any expression of natural freedom which directly interferes with those of another. Many religions extend the term to apply to those things which may disrupt the peaceful flow of society, such as certain cultural expressions, or even health and hygiene. Some writers have expressed the idea that at certain times God has used society to curb certain extremes in this life.

In the end, though, the actual line drawing is still given to men. How much may we be free?

I had planned to get up this morning and write a small apology to say that I wasn’t going to do many new creations this semester, because my private life was screwed, but then I thought better of that phrasing. The best explanation is that my public life has been swallowed up in my academic life. It is very unlikely that I will write anything new this semester, except perhaps in church, because I will be too busy doing homework. Then I was going to post some random poem still left in my cache and go on to that homework.

But then I got up this morning, realized what day it was, and thought that saying nothing in tribute would be impossible, almost sacrilegious.

I’m not a particularly patriotic person, in the sense that I laughed when the army recruiters started calling my senior year in high school. Of course I would die for my country. I’m one of those people who considers his life of very little value. I would die in a heartbeat for any stranger I saw on the street. Unfortunately, I have such little sentiment, that I don’t consider anyone else’s life of particular value either. I hear of travesties that happen around the world, of people starving, of planes crashing, of millions dying every day, and my thoughts are typically, “These are terrible things, and we should do everything in our power to resolve and prevent them. But there’s nothing to get upset about, really. They happen every day.” I’m also not a very sentimental person. It is only with great effort I usually remember special days, like birthdays and Christmas.

I’ve always been vaguely embarrassed about my values in that area, felt like such a tyrant for not caring properly. But it’s difficult for a person, though force of will, to make himself care. I don’t know how to do it. I only know how to act like I care, and I don’t like pretending. So strangely, one of the emotions that I experienced a year ago today was relief. For the two years before this one, I had a voice lesson every Tuesday at exactly 10:00. I came out of my lesson, in a very good humor, joking around with my teacher when we ran into someone in the hall who told us that passenger planes were being used as now. I only barely believed her. But once it was made clear to me that these things were really going on, I was relieved. I was devastated, and I was so glad to know that I was human enough to have so much feeling about something, in my mind, so very far away.

The thing I remember most about that day: It was a perfect day. The sun was shining. The air was a perfect 72. There wasn’t a breath of air moving, and everything was silent. I don’t know exactly where a thousand students, or the hundreds of cars that drive by my school every day, went, but the loudest noise on my whole campus that morning was the quiet chatter of the birds with the squirrels. It seemed so inappropriate, and somehow so appropriate, for everything to be so beautiful on the ugliest day of all. What on earth, really, could be an appropriate response to something like that? In chapel that Thursday, one of our school leaders (a student) declared a week of fasting and prayer for all who were willing. Among private colleges, ours is not a particularly religious school. Beyond the obvious, military responses, which show honor and vigilance, what could possibly display the appropriate depth of emotion?

Perhaps it is again my own lack of true depth of feeling, but it seems to me that all the four-hour fundraising specials could not do enough. There’s a series of services planned in a main thoroughfare at school today. I don’t know that I’ll be able to attend any of them. Yahoo has a site for people who want to make an online memorial. I don’t know that I’ll be able to look at all of them. Somehow it seems to me that the best expression for that day is the sense of irony I felt, that such terrible things could happen on such beautiful days.

I know a lot of “famous” people, and I used to think that maybe I wanted to be famous. But now I think not. Because Jesus said that if you’re famous for something, you already have your reward. If I’m famous for my ability to sing or to dance, if I’m famous because people know I’ll do just anything that pops into my head, then my reward is that people everywhere know me for my abilities. If I’m famous for being smart or skillful, then that’s it: I’m smart and skillful and my reward is that I have lots of people standing around just waiting to watch and to help me be smart and skillful.

Here’s what I want to be known for: If you gathered up everyone who really knew me and asked them to tell you one thing about me, I want them all to agree in unison, “There’s one thing I can tell you about Kyle: He loves me.” That’s what I want to be famous for: love. I want people think, even if there’s no one else, Kyle I can always trust. Because, see, if I was famous for that, then I would have all these people standing around just waiting to help me love. It’s what Jesus is famous for. Think about it: yeah, he was perfect and all. Sure, he never did anything wrong. But what’s he really famous for? He died because he just couldn’t live without me. And unless he died he would have been without me. And now look at Him. He has all these people standing around just looking for a chance to help him love. You notice no one’s trying to help Him be perfect.

No one else in history has that kind of record. Even Paul is more famous for his teaching than for his love. I mean, yeah, he had love and all, but that’s not what he’s really remembered for. I’d like to break that record. Let me be the other one who’s famous first for love. I want to be known as a for what love is.

Picture this: Paul said we should run the race in such a way as to win and Hebrews says that we should throw off anything that holds us back in this race. But if that race is this just your life, then the winner is just the one who finishes first. If that was the truth, then we’d have people committing everywhere just to finish the race first! But how many stories have you heard about people who got to look ahead to the judgment and they were rewarded according to one thing: did you learn to love? That’s the race, and that’s the goal. You win the race when you learn to love. And you are rewarded according to how well you run.

Bob Jones had one of those judgment visions, and everyone he saw that didn’t win, it was because they were too much tied up in the things of this life that they were focused on. One man was focused entirely on the bottle he drank from. And in the judgment, he was stuck inside that bottle with his head sticking out. He could barely move! Another one was focused on his gardening. And in the judgment, he was tied by a garden hose to all his hoes and shovels and bags of seed. Poor fellow, he was tied up and held down by all these weights. Another lady, who did win the race, as she entered into her reward she was surrounded by angels ministering to her. Her focus was on love, so the only things she was tied to were people and instruments that helped her to love.

It’s possible to run the race and not even compete. Imagine if you saw a hurdles race and one of the contestants refused to jump the hurdles? He’d probably finish first, but he wouldn’t win the race. He wouldn’t even be considered a competitor, but a distraction, a hazard to the other runners. James 1:12 says, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will received the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” That crown of life is a reference to the ‘crown of laurel’ given to the winners of the ancient Olympic games. Another view of this verse might say, blessed is he who jumps all the hurdles, because then when he finishes the race he will receive the medal. Jump those hurdles! They were put in your path on purpose. Because, after all, if you don’t go through trials, then you are a , and not a true son (Heb 12:8, KJV). And who, if given a choice, would be a ? Illegitimate children will never enter in (Deut 23:2).

But I want to enter in. And more than anything I want to win. I want to win. I want to throw down every weight, deploy every seed I have instead of merely carrying it. I want to persevere through every trial I encounter and never run around it. I want to be surrounded by that great crowd of witnesses, who cheer me on and push me to my utmost. I want to be tied only to those things which lighten my step, and I want to win that crown of laurel, be it marathon or sprint. In the end, Lord, I do want victory and fame. I want to learn to love.