Rest

“In repentance and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength.” Isaiah 30:15

For as long as I have treasured, and found comfort in, this verse I had never noticed the phrase that follows: BUT YOU WERE NOT WILLING….” Not willing? Now why would someone not be willing? Well, Isaiah goes on to describe what people did instead. They came up with clever schemes to rid themselves of their problems. They got fast horses thinking they could outrun their enemies, but the enemies were all the more faster. They basically thought they could beat life at its own game…silly people.

We may recall the words of David to Goliath, “the LORD does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the LORD’S and HE will give you into our hands.” (I Sam. 17:47) So God apparently does not use conventional warfare, but that is precisely what I look to when in the grip of suffering or in an overwhelming situation or facing a giant of a problem. There is a certain kind of panic that sets in. I think to myself, “I must get comfort immediately! I must fix this problem by directing all my resources at it. I must face the enemy head-on.” So those silly people Isaiah was speaking about are just like me. That is, I am not willing to rest, to be quiet, and trust because I cannot give up the fierce desire to have comfort at all costs; I cannot give up the power to fight life’s battles by using conventional warfare. I muster the forces; get faster horses, sharpen the swords; make bigger shields; get some anesthetic. But according to Isaiah God does not deliver this way, if he delivers at all.

And what would deliverance look like anyway? To quote the lyrics of Duncan Sheik, “Happiness is never how you think it should be so....” I also suppose deliverance can at times not appear as deliverance at all, or at least the process of deliverance may not make much sense. I mean it does make some sense that if you are facing an enemy with fast horses that you get some fast horses too. It also make some sense if you are going to take out a large city like Jericho that you do more than march around it playing music.

The head-on approach, or what I have been calling conventional warfare, however, leaves out the all-important aspect of trust. Basically trust means accepting the idea that the kind of life I desire cannot be arranged for by my own power. At the same time, my power and my desires are not minimized by this fact. Recall that after David tells Goliath that God is the one who will defeat him, David still picks up stones and flings them at the giant. This is not the “Let God do everything” approach to life. The idea of rest, which is similar to the notion of waiting found throughout the Psalms, is not passive. Rest, trust, quietness, waiting, dependence, etc., are all active, passionate, and sometimes agonizing accomplishments (if accomplishment is the right word).

Sometimes all there is to hold onto is that God is my deliverer, savior, and strength; and what my deliverance looks like I also leave in his hands. This means a radical belief and trust in the sovereignty of God. This is the heart of the matter, and a matter that must be solidified in the heart. But I do find myself saying often, “Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief.”

And there are moments of joy too. But likewise that is a gift, not something I muster on my own. I truthfully cannot say precisely what joy is. It is somehow linked to hope or longing (as Lewis would say). It is also somehow related to peace. I do know that it is not something that can be sought for its own sake. It always occurs as a by-product of a way of life. It cannot be had otherwise. Additionally, it does no good to focus on the joy because it always disappears when I turn to look at it. As I said, it comes as we seek something else, or rather, someone else. But that is about all I know, and I will leave the real analysis for minds and hearts bigger than my own. Mostly because I fear the trials necessary for gaining a real understanding of joy. The people who have the most insight into joy have been through hell. One need read no further than the apostle Paul to know this.

And now we are back to Isaiah because the text goes on to say that God longs to be compassionate to us. That is, he longs to be bring deliverance, it just doesn’t come how we normally think it should come. Somehow in the repentance and rest, and in the quietness and trust, we allow God to be God, which gives real power to what was previously only our own striving. God does take down the giant, but we still throw the rocks.

Brennan Manning likes to quote this "blessing" from his spiritual director Larry Hind, and it seems appropriate here.

May all your expectations be frustrated
May all your plans be thwarted
May all your desires be withered into nothingness
That you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child; and sing and dance in the love of God who is Father, Son and Spirit.
Amen

Longing for Home

There is a great line in CS Lewis’s Perelandra that summarizes a theme found in most of Lewis’ writing and that is, “the sweet poison of the false infinite.” The idea is pretty straightforward, but the wording, in typical Lewis fashion, is just tight. Basically Lewis’s insight is that we humans have a desire, a longing for God himself. That is, we long to be filled with, and satisfied by, the infinite.

We often attempt, however, to satisfy this longing or desire with objects that are not suited to fill the gap. And this is the point: Everything, other than God, is incapable of satisfying our heart’s desire; they are in this sense a “false infinite.” That is, they promise to satisfy, but upon gaining them we find that they held out false promises. What makes the situation even worse is that the “false infinite” can taste sweet; the goodness of the created world is in fact sweet and should be enjoyed, but it cannot satisfy in the way we hope. We can convince ourselves, however, that the lack of satisfaction just means we needed more of the supposed antidote. Hence we become poisoned into thinking that the temporal sweetness was a foresight into a complete and eternal satisfaction that the “false infinite” is actually unable to deliver.

One blatant example of this principle is in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Recall when Edmund visits Narnia for the first time he meets the white witch who gives him whatever he wants to eat. Edmund asks for Turkish Delight of course. But this is magic Turkish Delight. The more he eats the more he wants; the more he eats the sicker he feels, and yet he wants more. This desire for Turkish Delight begins to cause the ruin of Edmund. He can no longer appreciate the common pleasures of other food because the desire for Turkish Delight has become so consuming and yet so unsatisfying. This is basically what Lewis conceives hell to be like; people infatuated with the wrong objects of desire that not only remain unmet, but consume the one who is taken by them. It’s a horrible cycle.

So we find ourselves in an interesting position. We hunger for something that is not given in our experience, but yet things in our experience remind us of that for which we hunger. Hence we are tempted as Edmund was by the “sweet poison of the false infinite.” But to fill the hunger with the “false infinite” will invariably ruin our appetite for the appropriate food, namely, God. To resolve this tension, Lewis suggest we take on the dialectic of enjoyment and renunciation. That is, we are free to enjoy those things that are given to us in our experience. And yet we must all the while renounce them as the real satisfaction to our longings.

As Lewis puts it in The Problem of Pain, “The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe, or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

It is quite easy to be captivated by the “sweet poison of the false infinite”; to keep mistaking the inns for home. And this is all the while ruining our appetite for God. There are so many things I have been trusting in to make me secure and satisfied, but they have in the end shown themselves to be “false.” We do well to pay close attention to the yearnings of your own heart because, as Lewis says, our desires will always reveal the falsity of other gods.

Life Is Good

I saw this sticker on a car not too long ago and was intrigued by the statement. Although it is punctuated with a period I began to wonder whether it was a proclamation (!) or a reminder or a statement of fact or a question. And who was the message intended for anyway? I suppose at different times in life it can function in all those ways, but for me it was functioning as both a reminder and as a question (why else would you need it as a bumper sticker). As I have mentioned before, for me there is this tension between reality and desire: what I have and what I want to have; who I am and who I want to be; who others are and who I want them to be; who God is and who I want God to be. The more I focus on the tension the more it seems to call into question that life is good.

Brennan Manning once wrote, “Every change in the quality of a person’s life must grow out of a change in his or her vision of reality.” The particular vision of reality that Manning has in mind is how we think that God views us. To get us thinking along those lines Manning asks us to think about a question that Tozer once asked: What comes into your mind when you think of God? More specifically, What comes into your mind when you think of God’s love for you? These questions are directly related to whether we think of life as good or not.

To allow yourself to sit with these questions for a few moments can be a time of brutal authenticity. I was surprised myself what floated to the surface as I sat in silence for only a brief moment thinking about God’s view of me. I am embarrassed to even write it, but here are a few things: I perceive God looks at me with disappointment, waiting and watching for mistakes, looking at me with indifference, and waiting for me to get things together. On the other hand, I also perceive God as tender, a hint of compassion in his eyes, and tears for my hurting.

In large measure, these perceptions are projections of my own view of self and not God’s. But that is Manning’s point I take it. That is, I am the one in desperate need of a change in my vision of reality, namely in my view of self. Manning’s challenge stands: Do you accept yourself as the one utterly loved by God? Do you wholeheartedly trust that God likes you? “When we’re steeped in selfishness, indifferent to the poor, tormented by lust, wallowing in self-pity, and flattened by depression, God’s love continues to carry us.”

If you are anything like me, you may have anticipated a different ending to that last sentence. After the last comma I was expecting something like: God can’t use us, or God can’t speak to us, or we can’t understand God properly, God can’t love us, etc. Again, this is evidence that my vision of reality needs to be changed.

Of course, I claim to “know” the correct and proper things about God and myself, but judging from what floated to the surface of my heart I don’t really “know” these things at all. Manning’s suggestion for changing our view of reality is to accept the tenderness and compassion of God for us, and in turn we become tender compassionate people. “Tenderness is what follows when someone reveals to you your own inner beauty, when you discover your belovedness, when you experience that you are deeply and sincerely liked by someone.”

How does one experience that, especially in relation to God? I’m not really sure. I mean I can think of a few ways, but that is merely theoretical right now. The only alternative to authentic tenderness is pretend having-it-together-ness. In the mean time I have purchased a few of those stickers so that they can function as reminders of God’s tenderness towards me. Life is good, of course, because God is good. As Luke writes, “In the tender compassion of God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and to guide our feet on the road to peace.”

Additionally, we should note that God’s tenderness is retroactive, i.e., it is at work even in our understanding of our own past. As Manning writes, “The wisdom of tenderness allows us to love our whole life story and know that we’ve been graced and made beautiful by the providence of our past history…. All the wrong turns in the past, the detours, the mistakes, the moral lapses—everything that’s irrevocably ugly or painful melts and dissolves in the light of accepted tenderness.”

Life Is Good.

Reflections Over Spilt Milk

I was dishing up my normal bowl of ice cream before bed last night, including the all-important chocolate sprinkles that bring back the positive feelings of childhood, when I mis-scooped causing a precious scoop of ice cream to drop flat on the counter. Needless to say (although I will say it anyway) I was a bit disappointed with the situation as ice cream is so crucial to my happiness right now.

Of course there is the 10-second rule, which in the case of more valuable commodities can be increased up to 30 seconds, especially if the counter is clean. But my internal process went something like this:

1. I see the ice cream hit the deck.
2. My heart sinks, just another disappointment in a long line of them.
3. I hear a voice chanting: “There is no use crying over spilt milk.”
4. I re-scoop and enjoy, yet there is the lingering disappointment; the awareness that something is not right in the world.

Now, just to be clear…I didn’t cry over the spilt ice cream. This incident, however, did get me thinking about the saying. I began to wonder: perhaps there really is a use for crying over spilt things, i.e., the ever-present feeling of spilt-ness with regard to life in general.

I suppose the saying is meant to help kids move on past minor disappointments, I mean no one, not even kids, really thinks that crying will put the milk back in the glass. In this sense the saying is dead on. As a kid, however, I thought crying over spilt things had two functions. First, it was an attempt to get adults involved in rectifying the situation. After all, crying couldn’t get the milk back in the glass, but surely an adult could. Second, it was a legitimate expression of disappointment; the sometimes crushing feeling that life is going to hurt.

I don’t think there is any question that in many ways I am still a kid. Perhaps the only difference is that the crying has now been joined by cursing, but the meaning of the tantrum reaction remains. Well, the meaning mostly remains. Now it seems that the crying over the spilt-ness of life is an attempt to get God, or anyone that will listen, involved in the situation, surely somebody more adult than I could do something about it, right? (I’m not just talking about ice cream anymore.) “He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you.”

But also, now the crying is not only an expression of disappointment over the spilt-ness of life, but it is also a source of healing for the disappointment. The cry-er is on the road to recovery because she/he is owning up to the pain, that is, becoming authentic to the disparity between our desires and the way the world apparently works. This point is true both psychologically as well as theologically. As someone famous once said, “Blessed are those that mourn, for they alone will be comforted.” And in a more theological tone: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Thus, it appears that there is a use after all in crying over spilt milk, as long as the crying is done in the right way.

"To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness —especially in the wilderness —you shall love him."
—Frederick Buechner

Paul Klee

Paul Klee: Flora

A very cool picture to tide you over until I actually write something.

Just the Beginning...