Seventy Times Seven

I went for a walk today. Not an amble or a stroll, but one of those aggressive, shoes-pounding-the-pavement, I’m-in-a-war-with-this-walk-and-I’m-gonna-win kind of walks. And it was going well. I was cruising. Until the way back. With only a quarter of the distance left, I felt it. A hotspot. The burning friction that precedes a monster blister. Right on my baby toe. Had I some moleskin, a knife and a bit of athletic tape I could have patched things up in no time. But I had nothing with me but my keys, my cell phone and the mace my father insists I carry. Not helpful. So, I stopped. I adjusted my sock, re-cinched my shoe and pressed on. It didn’t work. Every step was pain. As I gimped along I considered my options and identified three. First, I could take off my shoes and finish the walk barefoot. I quickly abandoned this option as I realized the Florida-sun-baked pavement would probably wreak more havoc on my feet than my ill-fitting shoes. Secondly, I could simply sit down and give up. But that would only prove a temporary fix as eventually I would have to make it home and pride dictated that a silly blister wasn’t reason enough to call someone for a ride. Finally, I figured I could grit my teeth, bear the pain and just keep going. Unhappily that is what I did, and as I slowly made my way home my thoughts turned to a seemingly unrelated subject: love. A strange segue, I’ll admit, but if you will be patient I’ll make it connect.

Love, man. We’re all about it. We love love, or at least we love the idea of love. Songs sing its praises. Hollywood perverts it into a fairy tale. And the Christian community wields it as its great pride and joy. What beautiful lip service we pay to a concept that makes us feel really good about ourselves. But what do we do with love when it looks less like the Brady Bunch and more like the second half of my morning walk…when every step is pain? Have you had that experience, when grating right against your wound is a very clear call to love another, and either you ignore the call and nurse your wound or you press on in obedience at a cost to yourself? Do we really understand what is required of us in God’s directive to love?

I can say with confidence that what we don’t get to do is sit lofty on our antiseptic thrones, quarantined in our bleach-white laboratory with paper hearts taped to the walls, passing down “good vibes” on the masses too distant to touch us with their mess. Not even close. No, instead we endure the cleaving of flesh as self is torn from our vice grip and we yield to the needs of another. Sometimes love is hashed out in the mud and the blood and the tears. How do we feel about it then?

I can tell you how I feel about it. Ultimately my flesh cries out a loud and fallen desire for self-preservation. Let me state it clearly: I. Don’t. Want. To. Get. Hurt! In and of myself there are only so many times I can placidly endure the reopening of the same wound before my fragile patience and grace is shattered. I am intimately acquainted with Peter’s question in Matthew 18:21, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Lord, how many times…?

I wonder if Peter thought he was being exceedingly generous in extending forgiveness seven times. How often I have asked for a much smaller number. But there, piercing through the pain and the icy desire to seek refuge behind man-made walls, plain as day, unchanging in the face of feelings, is Jesus’ answer, a double-edged sword crippling the pride of self. “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” You keep on forgiving him more times than you can count.”

Matthew 18 lend us a parable that puts our reluctance to love in sharp focus:  A servant who owes his master more than he could repay in a hundred lifetimes. The jaw-dropping grace of the master who wipes the debt clean. The hideous audacity of the servant when he subsequently demands from a fellow man the repayment of a debt that’s a mere fraction of the one for which he’s been forgiven. The dismay, the disappointment, the righteous anger of the master when he learns of his servant’s folly.

There’s no denying, there’s no arguing the truth. No matter how it may hurt, no matter the number of times the blade is thrust in the same wound, I will never, ever come close to touching the edge of the pain Christ bore for me. I will never have to forgive as astronomic a debt as the one Jesus forgave me. And neither will you. And we cannot follow Him while flatly refusing to forgive another. Forgiveness is a function of our directive to love.

Take some time with I Corinthians 13. When we relegate it to wedding invitations and pillow embroidery, we miss the weight it carries. Love has a high boiling point. It’s full of service to others. It doesn’t burn with jealousy, it doesn’t perpetuate self and it isn’t puffed up with arrogance. It acts with respect to what is decent. It doesn’t desire it’s own esteem. It isn’t easily incited nor does it dwell on wrongs. It doesn’t take delight in injustice but celebrates the truth. It goes out of its way to patch things up, sees the world  with God’s eyes, expectantly waits for Him, and does not collapse even under the pressure of a heavy load.

It’s a substantial list and a considerable calling, and we can’t do it on our own. We cannot, in our own strength, love as Christ loves. But for those of us who are surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus, that’s no excuse. He has empowered us with the Spirit of God and given us “everything pertaining to life and godliness (II Peter 1:3).” It is His life in us that allows us to reflect His glory and to love with abandon.

My brothers and sisters, there is a lost and dying world desperately awaiting a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. They need to see and feel and taste and touch the love of Christ, but they never will if we are occupied with self-protection, petty disagreements,  and an unwillingness to forgive. We are in the front-line trenches of a major battle and we cannot afford to sustain friendly fire. We don’t have time to be a body of believers that destroys itself from the inside. We don’t have time to do anything but be a living, dynamic example of the love of Jesus.

Father, help us and have mercy.

Gethsemane

Wet and weary, we trudged amid drops of rain, weaving our way through the gnarled olive trees. Gethsemane. There was solemnity in the air as we huddled together waiting for our pastor to unfold the story of that place. The Savior’s story. Our story.

I had been eagerly anticipating this moment. Gethsemane was my place. I was acquainted with the agony, with sweat like drops of blood, with begging for the cup to pass. I wanted to have a moment, to feel something monumental and grandiose as I stood in the physical setting of a story I had claimed as my own. I hung on every word my pastor spoke.

But it seemed he had only just opened his mouth when my ears widened to soak up every other sound in that place. There was the never-ending roar of the tour buses, their diesel engines chugging up the hill below us. Then the fire-cracker resonance of gunshots somewhere not too far away. Finally, as if the very gates of chaos themselves had opened, the call to prayer came emphatic and intrusive over the loudspeaker. I stood straining to hear the words of truth my pastor spoke, while the cacophony of noise washed over me.

Alternating waves of dismay and outright irritation lapped at my feet. This was not how I had scripted this moment. But as I listened to the clamor increase, a thought crept over the horizon of my mind. Was this not, perhaps, the most fitting of soundtracks for Gethsemane?

On that day some two thousand years ago, when Jesus fell to the ground in fervent, urgent communication with the Father, were the haunting cries of our sin screaming just as loud as the present auditory overload in my ears? The weight of what faced Him, of what was ahead for His disciples, did it roar and groan and swell in a halting and inharmonious cadence? Was the voice of the Enemy there, whispering and taunting, chanting and shouting of a victory he did not know he would never taste? And what of the disciples? While only a short distance away the Master agonized, the so-called faithful succumbed to grief and exhaustion. Was the tumult of the world simply too much for them in Gethsemane? I wondered as I stood there: did the racket of my surroundings echo the turmoil of that crucial night?

Ears ringing and mind racing, I toured Gethsemane with a heavy heart. I felt it, the noise and unrest of that place. But the Lord didn’t leave me there. As I traced my way back through the grounds, a word rang out in my mind like a single, sustained note.

Victory.

This was where the battle was fought and won, where self was surrendered to the Father’s will. From Gethsemane Jesus turned toward the cross, determined to lay down His life as the propitiation for our sin. In Gethsemane Jesus set the standard for His followers. Like our Master, we must lay down our lives in submission to the Father.

Victory.

On that rain-soaked afternoon, I celebrated the victory Christ had beneath the olive trees. And I celebrated the victory He has in my life and in the lives of all who will surrender to Him. It is a battle. There is nothing easy or painless about surrender. But we can take comfort knowing we serve One who understands the deepest depth of agony and turmoil. And quietly He shouts above the chaos, His voice a beacon to guide us in the way of life.

The God We Don’t Want to Talk About

There’s a story that comes from one of my favorite works of C.S. Lewis. It tells of Shasta, a young boy on a mission to save a kingdom. It’s a mission unbeknownst to him. In his mind, he’s just a kid on the run. In his flight, he meets a young girl named Aravis. They travel together with many an adventure, narrowly escaping one predicament only to be thrown headlong into another.

Along their journey they encounter a lion. There are tales from that region of a lion that prowls the land. Some say he is a demon. Some say he doesn’t exist. Some claim he is the King. But the lion that comes upon the children seems to be only an ordinary, ravenous carnivore. On horseback, the children race for safety as the lion pursues them relentlessly. At the edge of a hermit’s walled forest fortress, the lion leaps, grabbing Aravis and raking his claws across her back. Just in time they slip through the gates of the hermit’s home and the lion turns away.

While Aravis’ wounds are tended, Shasta receives an urgent message about an impending attack on the kingdom of Narnia. He is entrusted with the task of warning the kingdom and must immediately remount and race to Narnia. Not long into his mission he finds himself lost in the thick night of a strange forest, alone and afraid. As his horse picks his way along the path, Shasta becomes aware that someone else is with him. He hears the rhythm of the footsteps and the breath of something both magnificent and terrible. His blood runs cold. After minutes that pass like agonizing eternities, he musters the courage to speak. In a faltering voice he enquires of the identity of the one who journeys with him. The answer? “One who has waited long for you to speak.”

As he feels the warm breath of this One, peace courses through his entire being and he realizes this is not the demon ghost of the fairy tales. Soon his sorrows come pouring out. But the One with Shasta already knows these sorrows. Indeed his handprint is revealed in every perilous moment. In each harrowing escape, he was the Rescuer. It is a fact Shasta is soon ready to accept, but for one thing. He asks the One with him, “What of the lion? Where were you when we were being chased?” “I was that lion,” comes the astounding reply. Shasta is horrified. “Why?” is all he can stammer out.

Gently the Lion explains. Shasta was to play a part in saving the kingdom, however the children and their horses had grown weary. At their pace they would never have made it in time to receive the message of warning for the kingdom had the lion not come to chase them. Understanding begins to dawn for Shasta, but he still isn’t satisfied. “Why did you have to wound Aravis? Could you not have accomplished your purpose of hurrying us apart from harming her?”

“My child,” says the Lion, “I tell no one any story but his own.”*

He tells no one any story but his own. He tells no story but His own.

This is the God we don’t like to talk about.

Could it really be that we serve One who would not merely allow, but actually introduce pain into the lives of His children in order that a larger story be advanced, in order that His glory be revealed and knees bow in reverence before Him? It could be, and I believe, it is.

As I understand it, there are countless stories of this very truth throughout Scripture. Less importantly, though no less real, there are countless stories of this in my own life as well. But for tonight’s purposes I look no further than Job.

Oh Job, Job. The book we all wish weren’t in the Bible. How we love to skip to the end where it says, “The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the Lord increased all that Job had twofold” (42:10). I love that verse. But I get stuck right in the first chapter, in what must be one of the more disturbing scenes of the Bible:

6Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. 7The LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” 8The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” 9Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10“Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11“But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” 12Then the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD.

We can argue that God was not the causal force behind the breath-taking pain and destruction that ensued in the following chapters. I’ll allow that, but that isn’t really the point here. You cannot read the text and miss the fact that God set the scene and gave the permission. There is no perfume in the world that can flower over the nose-scorching scent of that reality.

Save the last threads of his life, there was nothing off-limits in Job’s story. He lost wealth, loved-ones, health and all that goes along. His sense of security, posterity, hope for the future, dreams, love, companionship, comfort – all razed to ashes. There he sat amidst the rubble of a demolished life, scraping boils with shards of broken pottery, bemoaning the day of his very conception; and all the while, welling in the background, was the tune of his wife’s destitute counsel, “Curse God and die.”

This is the picture we don’t want to discuss. We’ll dance all around it in hopes of conjuring up for ourselves a satisfactory god, one who fits into our delicate sensibilities. But we will not stare this beast of a question straight in the eye. What do we do with this? It is messy and distasteful and frankly quite frightening. Who wants to serve a Lord and Master who would dare to lead us straight into the flames?

I, for one, do. And am. And will. And I am not alone, but stand with many others. I have no illusions that I will resolve this age-old debate nor put to rest every last question about the nature and character of God. Still, I will tell you of the foundation upon which I stand when – even in the midst of obedience – the calamitous waters begin to rise. I do not cling to chapter forty-two or hopes of restored fortunes, but instead to the powerful elocution of my God which begins in the thirty-eighth chapter.

“Where were you,” God asks Job, “when I spoke the world into existence? What qualifications have you to offer that would convince me to believe you can comprehend the world as I?”

“Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up


And makes his nest on high?

On the cliff he dwells and lodges,

Upon the rocky crag, an inaccessible place.

From there he spies out food;

His eyes see it from afar.

His young ones also suck up blood;

And where the slain are, there is he” (Job 39:27-30)

“You see the slain. You see death and destruction. I see provision for the young and needy.” We see little more than how the events of our life affect us. God sees how they affect us and how they affect everything else. And He is working for the good.

We tell ourselves the question we ask is, “Is God good?” But I think more often what we really want to know is, “Does God fit into my idea of what’s good for me?” Should He really be allowed to (insert your present pain or discomfort)?

We are on the wrong page.

We will never begin to be able to stomach what seems like unending and unmerited pain so long as we are on the throne and God is on our leash. As my pastor says, “Life cannot be understood when man is big and God is small.”

Of the lion in the beginning of our story it was asked, “Is he safe?” And the reply, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”** So it is with our King. There is hope in Christ alone, my dear friends. There is coming a day when every tear will be wiped from the eyes of His surrendered children. We will look upon His face and nothing, absolutely nothing, we have sacrificed or endured will matter one iota in the light of the One who was wounded in our place. With all that I am, I testify: He is good. He is worthy. He has the right.

*The Horse and His Boy

**The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe 

Talitha Koum

Where are you, little girl, who used to dance uninhibited as a puff of dandelion seed blown on a gentle breeze? When did the zephyrs start to gust and toss you up just to let you fall so far from home? Feet that used to tap out a two step-melody — skip, hop, skip, hop — now barely shuffle to a deadened beat, trip, crawl to your feet, cover your tracks, repeat.

 

Where are you, little girl, who used to sing as if your lungs at full capacity could carol notes that would command new life? When did you muffle your voice behind the cynics’ shield? When did your tune become this roving minstrels’ air, to serenade an audience that doesn’t really care, all for a dollar and a cheap imitation of adoration?

 

Where are you, little girl, who used to dream with sunlit eyes, now a doctor, now a princess, now a daring pioneer, leaping rock to rock, racing room to room, mapping the edge of the stars, inhabiting the moon? When did reverie morph to despair and the chimera blur to a wide-eyed, waking nightmare?

 

Where are you, little girl, who freely scaled backyard trees, with little thought to splinters or skinned knees, just reaching hard for that brilliant blue seen shimmering above the leaves? When did your climb become a descent, a slide, a plunge, a head-first dive, down a ravenous, cavernous subterrane, a cave you’ve mined with a spade called secrets and a spoon called pain?

 

Where are you, little girl, who could don rags and oversized shoes and still prance and glow and twirl, because you knew your strength, your worth, your allure? When did you sell your soul to buy the lies in the looking glass world?

 

Where are you, little girl, who used to perch atop your daddy’s lap, wrap your open arms around his neck and drift to sleep to the rhythmic beat, beat, beat of his heart. When did your embrace invite another? When did you stop your ears to your daddy’s cries, blind your eyes to his tears as he paces and passes sleepless years watching, waiting for you to come back, back, back where you belong?

 

Where are you, little girl? Can you hear me? Will you rise, little girl, from these ashes? Will you rise?

Will you rise?

Will you rise?

 

 

“So you can see I know you’ve chosen your own way

And it’s hard but it’s the road you’ve traveled on

And I pray my life, more than these words, will clearly say

That Jesus loves you, He’s loved you all along”

– Jill Paquette

 

The Paradox

On a calm, quiet night I close my eyes and find myself at the window, looking out upon an undisturbed expanse of white. My breath fogs on the chilled glass and with my sleeve I wipe it clean. My sleepy gaze is broken by movement, as stark and contrasting in the stillness as a light thrown on in the thickest night. You are there. This is not a placid stroll through the falling snow. You tear across the frozen terrain, all madness and spinning wheels. You have no destination; just a grim objective, as with screaming speed you trace new scars on the landscape of your life. You seem to clearly see your own demise and pretend not to care, but the bitter air has blinded your eyes to the wounds you inflict, the sutures you tear, in so many intersecting lives. I can’t breathe as I watch you and I can’t turn away. Like a dream in a dream in a dream, I can’t wake enough times to stop play on this scene.  Finally, like the foreign sound of my voice played back on a recording, I hear myself call your name.

“Come away from there.”

The words billow and echo, crossing the frigid miles. You pause when my voice reaches you, then turn, inexplicably, and begin to trudge in my direction. Though we are leagues apart, you arrive at my doorstep with all the speed of this heart that I can’t now slow to a normal beat. You are a bundle of turmoil, like heavy snow on the branch of an evergreen, it shakes and falls from you only to be replaced by the burden of a never-ending storehouse. I usher you in. This place is warm and safe, but you only shiver all the more and shield your eyes from the light. I start to speak and my thoughts pick up speed, an avalanche of all the truth I can recall. Your darkness merely deepens. With each word you retreat, uttering threats that, should I advance, you will unleash an even deeper misery. As if to prove your point, you thrust a blade into my face, but you touch its glinting steel to your own skin. A gale of biting winter air, your desolation knocks the wind out of my lungs. Tears sting my eyes, then well and cascade down my cheeks. I plead with you to hope. The wailing words that fall on your deaf ears scream of life yet worth living. I choke on my sobs, but your only trace of emotion is the cold flame that blazes briefly in your eyes. You scorn my speech. “What life?” you sneer, “It reeks of shackled legs and iron bars.” Strange words from one already so long a prisoner. I sigh.

“Therein lies the paradox. Until you surrender, you’ll never be free.”

My efforts, however earnest, drown beneath the fathoms of your icy waters. Reason falls like so many crystal tears and shatters at your feet. Kicking the scattered fragments, you turn to leave. The door you bar against me shuts with a hollow thud, the resonance muffled by a deep blanket of snow. My eyes fly open and I’m awake in a yawning silence, alone with a pervading sense that I cannot step aside and let you fade into grey. But I hardly move, except to drop to my knees. Again I cry. This time my voice cleaves the ceiling and rends the heavens on its way to the One who commands the deep. I call for my brothers and sisters, the rescued myriad.

“Join me.”

Intercede for these captives who loath release. Cry to the only One who is able to break and to heal.

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you

As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like a usurp’d town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betroth’d unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie, or breath that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except that you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”

–Johne Donne, Holy Sonnets XIV

On Shooting the Sun and Seeing Spots

 

 

 

A Simple Question

I’ve had occasion to laugh at myself a number of times recently. Just this week at Bible study my precious 13-18 year old girls had a simple question for me. They wanted to know what is done the other six days of the week with the large table in the center of my apartment that bubbles with life every Tuesday afternoon.

“I put stuff on it. Cover it with junk, then scramble to clean it off every Tuesday morning.”

My wryness is lost in their sincere curiosity.

“Do you eat at this table?”

“Yes”

“All alone?”

They’re all business now.

“Yes.”

And like that the room erupts as one with the gentle, feminine sounds of pity.

I just laugh. And think to myself that either I am far more pathetic than I imagined or else God has met me with a greater grace than I ever expected for this season of life. I suspect it is the latter.

It’s true that there are times when the whirlwind activity ceases and the silence yawns to a gaping hole that threatens the fragile existence of my contentment. But then, in that silence I hear it – bursting rapid-fire through the walls the staccato laughter of a friend who is choosing joy against the odds. I stop for a moment just to listen to the sound that comes to me like church bells pealing across the countryside, the sound of battle and victory. My heart soars.

And again, in a moment between the busyness, there is silence as I walk alone to my car. In the stillness I feel the embrace of the warm, wet air that follows a southern rainstorm. I slow my pace and breathe deeply, and I am filled with the raw scent of mold and earth and new life. Around me the sun takes its final bow, dipping low on the horizon, setting the western sky ablaze in fiery orange and painting long light on the world below. The oak trees drip with liquid gold as the scattering clouds, rimmed brilliantly in pink, lose the last of their rain drops. My heart pounds.

These are moments of His grace. In the aching silence I hear God. He is whispering, He is screaming, “I am here and I am enough.”

1920’s Garden Wedding in Vermont

Less than two weeks ago, I had the privilege of traveling to Montpelier, VT in the height of fall foliage season to photograph a stunning wedding. The combination of brisk air, aesthetic stimulation and good company was almost more than I could take. When my friends brought me to the location where the ceremony would take place, I wandered the grounds with wide eyes thinking, “It seems wrong that my job should be this enjoyable!”

I realize I have not set this up as a typical photoblog, however that will be coming soon. I’m on my way out to Texas to shoot another wedding and I promised the family I would get a few photos up before leaving. So, until I find time to launch the new website (and since facebook is not likely to change its terrible IP License Terms) this will have to do. Enjoy!

The new family, which incidentally has been joined as in-laws once before. The groom’s brother and the bride’s sister were married two years ago!

I also had the pleasure of taking the bride and groom through downtown Montpelier for a second shoot the day after the wedding.

Here’s the other happy couple (bride’s sister and groom’s brother) who are expecting their first child in January. I promise the background is real. Can you believe this place!?!

And she will sing there

“Behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns…”

In the place of wilderness I run at a breakneck speed. Indiscriminate in direction, I weave among the trees, racing and stumbling, racing and stumbling, eyes half-blind from the blood that runs in my eyes as branches snag and whip my face. I fall and the forest seems to thicken around me. I rise. One. Two. Three steps and a wall before me. To my right – one, two, three steps and a wall. To my left and behind – walls. There in the wilderness I am confined. That the boundaries are there for my own protection registers somewhere in a distant corner of my mind, but even that truth will not yet allay the madness. I pace between the walls. Then pacing turns to frenzied raging and once again I am running; running and railing against the walls that hedge me in. Like a wild and frightened animal I beat against my cage. Fur flying, sweat falling, I scream and pound and tear at the iron bars but my violent frenzy only renders me in a crumpled heap on the ground, bruised and bleeding, broken and out of breath.

“…and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.”

In the second chapter of Hosea, God tells us that those very prison walls are a function of his love. In mercy, He hems us in, crippling our intent to do wrong, stilling the wave we would ride to the shore of our destruction. We are blessed indeed when His love plays out in this way. But don’t read this more piously than it is meant. I know well that place in the wilderness, and amidst that thorny hedge I never feel blessed. I don’t long to cry out in gratefulness to my Lord and Rescuer. Instead, I am turbulent, incensed, embittered.

Tonight I have been pondering surrender – that unceasing belief and dogged commitment to fashion our thoughts, words, and deeds from the truth that the Lord has the right to our life. I have been thinking about how He gives us a part to sing, and by His design we become a choir of voices raised to harmonize a grand narrative of who He is. My musings have turned to those times when the notes He gives us compose a tune of unparalleled pain, when He says “no” over and over again to that which we want, when He hedges us in, keeping us from the paths we desperately long to follow. I have been reflecting on what it looks like to surrender in the wilderness.

Something about the word “surrender” calls up a connotation of weakness. We think only of the instant when hands drop weapons and we give up. But what of the moments just preceding the raising of the white flag? No one cares to talk about those moments, and I cannot blame them. They are messy. They are the scenes of the savage battle raging in the blood and the mud and the filth. And they are where much of humanity spends its time, where I spend more time than I care to admit.

I don’t conceal well the wounds of such a battle. Though I wish it were not so, I wear them on my face for many to see. So, in the fight to surrender, I attract those loving souls who wish to encourage a struggling sister. In words that seek to edify and illuminate, I hear most often this phrase: “There is a reason.” There is a reason for the pain, a reason for the struggle, a reason for that through which God is leading you. And they are right. That is a seasoned principle of God’s Word and I do not dispute it. But doubting that God has a reason for what He is doing is seldom my true problem when it comes to trying to yield my life to Him. My problem resides at the shallower end of the pool. My problem is that I am recklessly selfish and, truth be told, sometimes I simply do not like God’s reasons. Sometimes I don’t want to consider the eternal perspective. Sometimes I want my story. I want to star in my own show. I want what I want and I want it now. Yet God’s Word instructs me that this desire is a rampant and destructive foolishness. I believe that wholeheartedly, but it is not of my own doing, but by His very Spirit that I am kept anchored to the truth. Left to my own devices, my flesh would wildly dare to throw a super-sonic temper tantrum at the foot of the Lord’s majestic throne.

The more I consider it, the more I conclude that surrender is not for the faint of heart. It is not a thing of fairy tales and sugar-plum princesses. It is found at the intersection of destitution and grace. It is birthed in agony. It is unearthed when your song is muffled by your sobs and you cry out to God that you don’t want to sing anymore. You don’t want to sing through the pain from which He will not seem to shield you. You do not want to praise Him in the disappointment, the loss, the roller coaster ride of anticipation and shattered hope. Yet despite what you want and do not want, you do not stop singing. You wail and you whimper, you scream and you sigh but, by God’s unending mercy, you sing on. And the words of your song are pounded out as your fists beat your breast in a deep and welling drum line, “Lord, you have the right. You have the right. You. Have. The. Right.” This, my friends, is the scene at surrender.

Oh, Dear Heart who reads this now in tears, you are not alone in the battle. I stand with you in weakness. But what is of inexpressibly more worth is that Jesus stands with you in victory. He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith – start to finish – and He glories as we grapple and contend to yield our selfish lives to Him.

Hosea chapter two goes on to paint a picture of the dire consequences found in willfully resisting our Maker, but it doesn’t leave us there. It speaks to us of the God who desires to restore us. Though He may hedge us in when we rail against the story He’s written, yet He also meets us in the ashes. He will allure us into the wilderness. In that place of need He will speak tenderly to our hearts. He will make the valley of trouble – the valley where our sin is battled – into a door of hope. And it is from there that we will sing.

(Hosea 2:6-15)

When Going is to Stay

I’ve got it all in this bag on my shoulders, I’ve got it all on my back

And I’ve got nothing in that house that is echoing with sweet laughter and goodbyes

You said go, so I went and I took you at your word

You said I’d know where I’m going, but not until I was there

So, I’ll go where you’re going

and I know that you’re leading me

I’ll follow, even if I never know

where I’m going, I will go

I’ve been on the road and my heart it is buried deep down in this chest

Next to all of the treasures that I could not leave behind, could not let myself forget

but I keep on moving ’cause the wind it is blowing me, oh, but my heart is slow

I want what’s ahead of me more than anything, but I’ve got to learn how to let go

So, I’ll go…

The first time I heard these words I was sitting on a couch next to my dear friend, Kirsten, as she played her trusty Takamine and shared with me the powerful song she had written. I was fresh off the plane, looking ahead to a summer in Florida that held no small number of unknowns. Kirsten explained that this song had been inspired by her reading in Genesis 12, when God calls Abram to pick up all that he has, leave the only home he’s ever known and follow God into an unknown land which He has promised to Abram’s descendents forever. In between the lines, said Kirsten, you will also hear my own story and, indeed, the story of any who have surrendered their lives to the Lord and entered into that ultimate exchange of trust, giving up all that they know for all that He promises is to come.

Kirsten’s song told the story written on my heart as well, and I loved those words straightaway. I knew what it was to leap off the proverbial cliff with no net below, only the assurance that God had asked me to jump and the belief He would catch and guide me to His intended landing. Psalm 84:5 became my life’s self-appointed theme. “Blessed are those whose strength is in You, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” I took that little sound-byte out of its greater meaning and made it my own. Pilgrim. Wanderer. Wayfarer. Bird with wings to soar. These were my identity. And how I loved that role with all its accompanying adventure and emancipation. I relished my take on Abram’s call.

I heard the song again tonight as I sat at my desk. This time the words bit deeply at the core of my being. You see, I am entering the natural season of transition. School is swiftly drawing to a close, and all around me are tantalizing vestiges of my former way of life. Adventures being envisaged and plans taking shape. People making ready to strike out – some across town, some to destinations far, some for a determined season, some whose timelines are less certain, and some who have already uprooted and gone forth. Everywhere I look movement dances about my stationary feet. On March 19 of this year I hit the ten month mark in this sleepy little central Floridian town and gently, without fanfare, broke a personal record: it was the longest consecutive stay in one place since leaving home seven years ago. And, as is to be expected, not long after this mile-marker came and went, I began to feel the winds of restlessness tease my feathers. Only this time I knew I needed not to take flight but instead to don a jacket that would shield the draft. There is the west-wind, sly and changing, and there is the wind of God’s Spirit. When I traded my life for the true Life offered by Christ I made a vow to follow only the wind of His Spirit. As of yet that Wind has offered no release to go. So tonight I sat, elbows on my desk and face in hands, wondering how I weave the words of the song into this present season of life.

I spoke with a friend just a few days ago. When I asked of his plans for the coming year, he answered with the most carefree of smiles that he had no way to know. He could be anywhere. He returned the question and for the briefest of moments I wanted desperately to answer as he did, as I, in times past, so often had. But I could not. “It is looking more and more like I will still be here,” I said. My throat constricted just the tiniest bit. What I am doing? I have never stayed long enough, physically or emotionally, to really invest in the lives of others. Never stayed long enough to get left behind. And that’s the crux, isn’t it? Suddenly I wanted to run.

I ache to assure you at this moment that I’m not unhappy with this place. I have come to love this unlikely community in a way I would never have believed had someone been able, ten months ago, to paint a picture of the future. It isn’t that there is another place on this earth to which I wish to relocate. It is merely the “grass is always greener” notion of going, the self-protection of escape that has captivated me. I took something so good as the call of God and twisted it for my own design.

So, tonight I returned to Genesis chapter twelve, and I read the part of the story to which I had never truly listened. It was right there in verses eight and nine. “8Then [Abram] proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an alter to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. 9 Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev.” God told Abram to go, so he went to the land that had been prepared for him. When he arrived, God told Abram to stay. But there was a problem. The land he came to was a land full of hills, not at all resembling Ur, the place from which God had uprooted him. He paused in that place, even acknowledged God’s presence and provision. Then, as the text so abruptly announces, he “journeyed on” to seek a place more familiar. He found the Negev, a desert dwelling that looked a bit like home and fit Abram’s bill for what God must surely have been promising him.

I’ve been to the land God gave Abram, stood in the very region that was his first glimpse of the promised inheritance, walked on the streets of ancient Dan where certainly Abram must have tread on his way toward his own fulfillment of God’s promise. It was beautiful. As I strolled through that forested land, taking in the sounds of rushing water and choirs of birds, I couldn’t help but wonder how Abram could have been so crazy as to not listen to God’s directive to stay put.

Tonight I understood exactly how he could have been so crazy.

Read the whole story. Abram was blessed that he, in turn, might be a blessing to others. Discontentment nearly trashed that blessing and it certainly conceived a great deal of trouble and pain for Abram and his family. I too have done damage with my own discontent, and God has clearly said, “Enough.” So the work begins. The Lord is gracious and He is teaching me of the contentment that lies in no place nor person, save Jesus Christ Himself. He is teaching me of commitment and what it means to keep my word though at times it pains me deeply. He is teaching me that I am not called merely to “go” but to follow Him, and there is a difference.

I am learning what it looks like when “going” is to stay.