"Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith..." (Heb 12:1,2)
Have you ever tried to run in heels?
Especially if you've been wearing them all day, they have been chafing and pinching like crazy, and the last thing you want to do is even get up?
OW. Just - OW.
Today I wore some attractive new sandals to work, and by the end of the day, what with walking to the other end of the building several times to pick up print jobs, deliver files or talk to specific people about the work I needed them to do, my "dogs were barking" by the time I trudged to the elevator. Every step was an effort.
I saw our vehicle just outside the door; my husband had come to pick me up. So without thinking, I broke into a slow jog.
Bad move. Those "dogs" started to ki-yi!!
My feet were constricted in certain spots (normal when breaking in a new pair of footwear) and of course the heels propped my feet up into an unnatural position. Anyway, there were a couple of places to go before I got home, but you can bet that when I walked into the house, it looked more like hobbling than walking - and almost the first thing I did was remove those sandals. The feeling of my bare feet on that bare, cool floor was so soothing that I couldn't prevent a gasp from escaping my lips.
So afterward, I was thinking (as I usually do when I make the mistake of wearing heels for any length of time) how these things only weigh me down and hold me back from doing things that - by wearing comfortable footwear - I could do with no problem. It reminded me of the verse I quoted (above). The author of Hebrews was talking about the Christian life as a track and field event. In the ancient world, athletes would train for a marathon or the decathlon for weeks with weights attached to their feet and wrists (like some do now). Then, when the day of the race came, they would take the weights off and be that much swifter, stronger, better. (Well, they took EVERYTHING off to compete but let's not go with that mental picture - oops, too late!)
They laid aside EVERY weight. Hebrews 12 says, "Let us lay aside every weight AND the sin which so easily besets us..." So I'm thinking, "Wait a sec. I thought the weight WAS the sin - you mean it's NOT?"
Wow. This opens up a whole new realm. There are things which are not sins but which weigh us down - weigh our HEARTS down (and this can wear our BODIES down, eventually!) They could be things like:
- the tyranny of the urgent. This is that obsession with doing just this one thing (whatever that may be) before I have time for God. In today's busy world, it's really hard to set that time aside to just focus on Him. .
- the routines that take over. These are things that can wait, things that aren't going to go anywhere if they're left undone for fifteen minutes or a half-hour or two hours. They aren't bad in themselves. Yet we are so bound by them being done at a certain time or in a certain order that the routine rules us. We aren't free.
- the trap of 'everybody else but me'. So-and-so's needs come first, we think. We delude ourselves into thinking that we're making sacrifices and that we're good people for doing it. But what we're really doing is sacrificing something that is far more valuable - intimacy with God, and making sure our own cup is full.
I'm sure there are more. And I'm sure that if we ask God to show us how we've still got those weights on our hearts - and then ask Him to help us lay them aside - He'll do that.
Because - the author of Hebrews is clear - it takes a deliberate setting aside of those things that weigh us down and hold us back, so that we can live this lifestyle of constant contact with God, living and walking in the Spirit, and the only way we can do that is by ... looking unto Jesus.
He started it; He'll finish it.
We just get to participate.
LOVE PEACE
HAPPINESS JOY
The letters sparkle in 3-D, written in light on the wall, on the ceiling, on the floor. Nobody can see them. But he can. He has no idea why - for he has always felt unloved. Yet there they are. They appeared as he, exhausted, sat in a friend's apartment after a very near-death experience which sent him to a hospital in a different city: how close to death, he never knew.
It is like a gift.
The letters dance. They seem to be alive. He watches them grow, shrink, change color. They last - on the walls, the ceiling, the floor, even the bathroom fixtures - for hours.
He's still never been able to make sense of it, now more than six years later. He relegates it to an hallucination brought on by over two days with no sleep (even though he was barely conscious or unconscious for most of his brush with death.) He still struggles with whether God loves him or not. After all that, I used to think. After his life was spared, and he lived to eventually be returned, restored to his spouse, his children, his friends.
But that is the burning question isn't it? Each of us needs to know that he or she is loved - unconditionally.
Not just to know, but we want to have it proved to us. Over and over and over. Whether we like it or not, we are vulnerable in that area; it's where we're broken inside. All of us. No matter how healthy or mature we think we are, it seems ... it's like we have within us that insatiable child mind that constantly asks that one question with each new deed or misdeed: "Do you love me now?"
And sometimes God does prove His love overtly. More often though, He tends to ask us to trust His love, to trust His goodness, when the circumstances scream the opposite. In those times, looking for the divine Yes and always being willing and expecting to hear His answer - or shutting ourselves off from the struggle - keeps us sane. The first has the potential of such joy, yet opens us up to being hurt over and over again - the second relieves the pain, but shuts off our feelings and lets us succumb to despair, to be incapable of feeling anything else; sometimes it is hard to know which is worse, because we can't imagine things being any worse than they are when we are in either one of those two states.
I could give a bunch of pat answers; I have memorized them all, having grown up in the church - which is so full of them it makes me sick! (Of course the church is not the only place those little catch phrases, or similar ones, exist; I've gotten very tired of listening to the smugness of them, no matter where they crop up!) None of them is satisfying to the honest seeker, the one who has tested out those pat, superior, black-and-white slogans and found them sadly lacking. They're colorless. Lifeless. Simplistic. Dogmatic, even. (Do I really need to trot them out? you know the ones I mean...)
People don't need to hear the answers to all of their questions, or to know yet another opinion as to WHY they're going through a rough time. People need love. People need acceptance. They don't need judgment. They need to be listened to, appreciated, validated, treasured. They need to have the freedom to experience honest doubt without fearing condemnation from those that SAY they belong to Him, that they represent Him.
God doesn't need people to defend Him either. He would like for those who seem compelled to come to His rescue .... to stop and realize what on earth they are doing .... and just get out of the way and let Him do what He does best: lavish love on us even when we hate and misunderstand Him, shine light into our thick darkness in spite of our attempts to turn it off, and rain hope into the desert of despair even while we prepare for a sandstorm.
Sometimes (though perhaps briefly at times) we get it. There are rare moments when we understand that no matter what we do, how we feel, what the circumstances are, whether we believe it or not, whether we are faithful or not, whether we are doing the right things or keep falling into the wrong things, His love for each of us is constant and sure. It's there in spite of what we feel we deserve or don't deserve; it is there in spite of how hard we try to drum up love for Him (this ALWAYS fails because there is no way we can sustain it).
God loves. ALL ways. Always. He patiently repeats the lesson over and over because we need it over and over.... LOVE.
That's God. Love.
We love him, the apostle John wrote in one of his letters, because He first loved us.
And ONLY because He loved us first.
I hate waiting.
I always want to skip to the end - to achieve the goal without necessarily going through what it takes to get there. I guess - well, I guess that makes me human. My idea of the perfect tattoo is "NO PAIN NO G/". I'm not big on suffering through stuff, gritting my teeth and persevering. Which is part of why I think God spends a lot of time working on that area with me.
I love quoting Isaiah 40:31, you know, mounting up with wings as eagles and all that. But the first part of that says that it's only a certain kind of person who will be able to fly on eagle's wings. It's the kind that wait on God. Ouch. Wait for His timing, accept what He gives, when He gives it. I keep looking for the Cole's Notes version. But it doesn't work like that.
In the last few years, I've been learning that it helps, when waiting, (and God makes sure I do a LOT of it) to focus on the moment rather than how much longer there is to wait or what the outcome might be when I get there. It keeps me sane! Acceptance is such a huge part of waiting well: acceptance of the situation that exists right now, of the people involved (if any), of the days (or hours, or minutes) as they come, and of my inability to affect the end result. Hand-in-hand with this acceptance goes trust: trust that God is in control, that He loves me, that He will bring to completion that which concerns me, that whatever happens will dove-tail into His plan to make me more like Jesus.
And the waiting - I'm learning - isn't a passive thing. It takes effort to quiet my spirit, to make time for soul-rest. It takes energy and commitment to focus upward. Mounting "up" as an eagle takes work - AND trust - in order to get to the place of resting on those updrafts, soaring above it all. It doesn't come naturally, and I find that I have to be intentional about centering in on God, which brings me to the other aspect of "waiting on God."
I used to be a waitress, in another (pre-children) lifetime. Waiting on people was more than just finding out what they wanted and bringing it to them. It was providing a whole experience for them to feel cared for, important, even pampered: to make their meal memorable and reduce their stress. It was anticipating what and when they might want something to enhance their time together.
It involved constant watching, but not at their elbows. It simply meant being aware of what they were doing and sensing when they might need something beyond just the food or a refill of their beverage: conversation, information, a caring word. Some of my best memories of being a waitress had nothing to do with the delicious food I brought to tables or the money I made in tips. It was the look on people's faces when they realized that the person waiting on them was interested in what they had to say, and wanted to help them in any way possible.
Waiting on my customers meant listening to them - not so as to figure out what to say to them, but to actually HEAR them. I had people tell me after their meal that this was the most enjoyable part: it made them feel like they mattered. It was just as enjoyable for me.
I think that a lot of Christians (myself included) miss this aspect of waiting on God and miss out on a lot of fulfilling experiences in relationship with Him - the tendency is to want God to wait on me and to serve me. You know, as if He was some sort of vending machine - I insert my good deeds, push the button indicating what I want (prayer), and it comes dropping down from above just like clockwork. Well - He kind of hates to be used like that. (I'm a mom - I hate being used like that!) When I listen to Him and spend time telling Him how great and awesome He is, when I listen to Him and want to bless His heart just because, His smile is enough of an updraft to lift me up on eagle's wings.
A long time ago, someone gave me a bumper sticker that said, "My boss is a Jewish carpenter" ... at the time I thought that was a pretty clever conversation-starter.
Then I started noticing bumper-stickers and optional license plates. I started seeing - really seeing - the Jesus fishes, the "God is my co-pilot" stickers and my personal (non)favorite, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." Aside from being amazingly one-sided and elitist from a doctrinal perspective (um, forgiveness is available to ALL, not just Christians) talk about a cop-out excuse for cutting someone off in traffic or behaving in other rude and crude ways!!
Those bumper stickers, license plates and yes, even a lot of the Christian T-shirts out there all run the risk of turning off and driving away the very people they were originally designed to reach: you know, the unsaved. This is because there's an undercurrent of judgmentalism to them.
I applauded a certain young man's right to wear his "Life is wasted without Jesus" T-shirt to class ... and I decried the school board's decision to suspend him for wearing it. To me, it seemed a blatant infringement on his human rights, his freedom of religion, freedom of speech.
As I got more information, however, there were some elements to this story that I found very disturbing and frankly, pretty embarrassing to me as a Christian. I have no doubt that this young man is very passionate about his Saviour. I have no doubt that he wants to reach people with the gospel. It wasn't until I saw his father, brandishing his Bible and ranting on about reading, writing and arithmetic (the 3 R's) that I started to see this in a slightly different light. Yes, the man had a right to be angry for the way his son was treated. Yes, he had a perfect right to pull his child out of school. But the impression he was giving of the faith he espouses is one of a confrontational, condescending, condemning set of rules and regulations rather than the kind of acceptance Jesus offered and still offers to people. Somehow we have gotten the idea as Christians that we have to be the Holy Spirit. Nuh-uh. No way. We walk in the Spirit - and WHEN He directs us to say a word on His behalf, we say what He directs us to say in that situation. Period. And most of the time He will tell us to shut up. Yeah. Shut up and love people just the way they are. The same way Jesus did.
Having talked to people who have experienced so much judgment, condemnation and yes, even hatred, coming from the Christian community that they have refused to have anything to do with the church or its people, I seriously wonder if these single-facet messages plastered over our cars - or chests - really do the cause of Christ any service. And I also wonder if we rely too much on them and not enough on the Spirit to guide us in living lives that overflow the love of God in practical ways to all people - not just Christians, not just the unsaved, and not just people with whom we agree.
Majoring on minors seems to be something we Christians are all too good at. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? should we hold one day above another or all days the same? should we be involved in lobbying, politics or education? should we play the lottery? should we abstain from eating certain foods? drinking certain beverages? ... the list of pointless issues is absolutely endless. Might I suggest that we all concentrate on developing intimacy with God for ourselves and learn to recognize His voice, then ask Him to show us how we can best show (not necessarily tell) the love of Jesus in a practical way, and to show us who that person is ... today.
During a recent evening out with a friend, there came a point when we were praying together. At one point, my friend said, "He's gotcha. He has you. You're okay."
I SO-O needed to hear that! I'd been feeling a little "at sea" - okay - pretty much hanging onto a plank in the ocean of fear - and it was so good to know that God cares, that He has my back (so to speak).
I forget.
Surrounded by judgmental and hurting people who cannot help but hurt people... I can lose sight of the fact that God's got me, that I'm okay, that I'm safe.
As I sat in a therapist's office yesterday, having gone through something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, and wondering what in the world happened to put me in such an emotional tailspin, my therapist put it into perspective for me. "You have this huge fact in your life - the past, the abuse, that wounded part of you. IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY. In recovery, YOU can go away from IT. But it will never leave; it is a fact; it's history. The more you cultivate those relationships first with God, then with yourself, and lastly with others who are healthy and good for you, the farther away from that wounded place you will get - and you will forget that it is there. But if you slip back into old ways of thinking, or coast - or rest on your laurels - you can easily approach that vulnerable place again, and you can be hurt a LOT more easily. Basically put, you relapsed. But you are now getting back on track. And with the tools you've been given, you know what to do in order to stay on track."
Yes I do. And what gives me the courage to stay the course and to relax and trust God - is that knowledge, that easy-to-forget assurance of which I am so glad my friend reminded me.
"He's gotcha."
I was reading in the gospel of John this morning (I know, there's a radical thought to just read the Bible, let its message speak to you and not try to exegesis it to death!)
I came across the story of the man born blind, the one whom Jesus healed by making clay, putting it on the man's eyes, and sending to the pool to wash it off. He did, and came back with his sight. And then the fun started (all the religious people took offense - don't they always when God really starts to do something that messes with their doctrine?)
But what caught my eye this morning was the question that the disciples asked Jesus before He healed the man. "Master. Who sinned: this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?"
Someone has an illness or a problem and it's automatic to wonder whose fault it is. It seems we are all about blaming someone. The thing is, in the final analysis it doesn't matter whose fault it is. Jesus put the record straight - neither this man nor his parents did anything wrong to make him be born blind. He was born that way 'for this moment' - so that God's power would be shown in his life and before all who knew him - so that he would know the truth about Messiah, and that many would come to that same truth. And maybe part of the reason for it was so that people would think twice before judging. After all, he was born blind, not deaf. He could hear what people were saying about him in his presence, as if he didn't even exist.
Most of those born blind in those days hit the streets and begged for a living, and felt all too keenly the stigma of not being a contributing member of society; they saw it every day in the accusing glances of their countrymen. This fellow was no exception. His parents loved him but they couldn't afford to support him. Begging from others was the only way he knew how to pay his own way in the world, to take the burden of his care off his parents.
Yet people passing him by didn't see him as noble or as having integrity. They thought as the disciples did. "He or his parents must have done something horribly wrong for him to be blind from birth."
I've been judged and blamed; I know a little of what this man must have felt. I've seen the looks on people's faces, had to deal with their ignorant prejudices as they judged me for various things: being obese, being an introvert, having chemical sensitivities, having back problems and needing to get up and move around more frequently, using an ergonomic chair or at least a cushion that takes the pressure off my back, suffering from demophobia (fear of crowds). I've been judged for not having self-control, for being a snob, for being lazy, for being a troublemaker and for being an attention-hound. I'm sure there are more labels.
What I'm coming to understand is that I am who and what I am, and I don't have to apologize for that. I don't even have to change who and what I am to accommodate someone else's preferences. This is something I had to learn as an adult because my childhood was riddled with changing who I was to keep from being targeted. I did it so much that I wasn't even sure who I was. All I was sure of was that nobody would like the real me so I had to be a fake me, so people would like me. How sick that was!
As I realize more and more how much God loves me, those old ideas are starting to fall off me. It's not easy sometimes because I still have to deal with cruel and ignorant people. But I'm learning that their 'blaming the victim' is wrong - and that I can stand my ground - and that even the term 'victim' is really prejudicial. I can be me and people can like me the way I am; if they can't, then truth be told, I don't have much interest in knowing them.
