Feeling the Weight (Wait?)

In my days B.C. (before Christ) – or at least before my awareness of the Risen Christ within - the greatest pain I experienced was lonliness and utter lostness, the fearful drowning in the dark waters of terror. Since coming to Him, receiving Him, the greatest pain seems to be being misunderstood. Especially as I grow in my familiarity with my own heart and my understanding of the heart’s centrality in the Story in which we’re living (or should be living, because it’s Reality), the more my heart is missed or minimized, the more painful it becomes.

This week has been full of misunderstandings – initiated in various ways by the Adversary, by the Accuser of the bretheren. I don’t know what to do with the pain all this brings… Except that these lines bring some level of hope and courage: “the pain is an ocean, tossing us around, around, around, but You have come, Greater Waters, and Higher Mountains have come down…”

Indeed, the mercy and life and love of my tender wild lover God is like a waterfall, his tides and breakers washing over me in swelling waves (Psalm 42:7).

I long to feel this: the strength of my body, the passion of my heart, the prowess of my mind. I want to feel the weight of truth behind my words, the muscle behind my fists, the intention behind each step, the hope behind my faith. I want to be in touch with the core underneath the visceral, the desire underneath the seen. Christ, You are the What and the Who I want. You animate me, give me life and heart, breath and passion and the invitation into the greatest romance… and these are what I stay alive for.

Emmanuel, God with Us

It is perhaps one of the greatest understatements of all time, full of hope and mystery, and ushering in the greatest raucous that has ever burst forth on this earth. To a fearful group of wayward shepherds, keeping weary eyes open to watch their sheep late on a clear night, appears a powerful member of the Angel Armies who, upon seeing their shocked and trembling countenances, says, “Don’t be afraid. I bring you good tidings of great joy…” And so, on such a small introduction follows the greatest promise we can have, given to the lowliest and poorest of us all.

God has come. He has traveled the furthest distance from the Throne room to an unknown cave, fighting through all the forces of the Evil One arrayed against His plan, to make Himself known to the humbled, to the fringes of the population, heralded by goats, by sheep, and by astrologers from the east. Here, in this tiny infant – vulnerable, helpless, needy – rests not only our hope for life, but our restoration as well, our invitation to take our place once again in the story God has been telling for a long, long time. It is a Story of heroic proportions, of daring rescues, of passion and pursuit, of battle and adventure, and of intimacy beyond our wildest imaginations. Of heroes masked in wrappings of spittle and enemies masquerading as angels of light. It is a Story that begins, “Once upon a time” and ends “And they lived happily ever after…”

We are they. And the depths of our hearts burn with the anticipation of all that awaits, of all that began so, so long ago, of all that concludes with our full release into all we were created for…

Haunted by Waters

I am haunted by waters.
- Doogie McClean, A River Runs Through It.

There's this verse, this line, that keeps coming to my mind and -- well, since the day I first fell into it, it has been haunting me in my days and following me to bed at night like a creeping shadow. It's a constant pain, and has really become more for me, its sharp edge piercing my side like a thorn causing something inside me to flow and churn and burn.

It's a phrase that Jesus Himself said, so I'm pretty sure it's important and bears listening to and heeding and, I suppose if Jesus hadn't been the one to say it, it wouldn't make me hunger so much. It's John 10:10. The line is, "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly."

See, here's where it rocks me. I wonder: if Jesus really meant that, and that is truly why God sent His Son here, then what does that mean? What's this "life" He's talking about? And, how can I have it, because I live “life.” By that I mean that I go to bed, I wake up, I work, I plan, I do these things that I think are important in living. Sure, this is “life”, right?

But then, there's this verse, you see.

There was another time when Jesus said something a lot like this. He told us to come after Him if we were thirsty, because He's the Living Water. And, I think some of us relate to that. Because, if you've ever been thirsty, then you know what it's like to drink water and have that driving, consuming pain of thirst quenched and relieved.

I think maybe it's the same with what He said about life. Because if you've ever been dead and remember, then you know how much you miss when you're dead. There's not a lot there. Except maybe the pain of not living.

And I remember being dead. I have fought my way back from the dead.

What does life look like? What does it mean to have this life that Jesus talks about, and how do you get it? I don't know the answer for sure, and even if I did, I don't think the hunger for it would hurt any less. But, I think it has something to do with seeing: seeing that there's Someone madly, crazily in love with you, seeing that He'd stop at nothing to see you through. I think it must have something to do with hearing: hearing a call, and following that Voice for the hope set before us. I think when we see that, we shed our thick skins and walk in a bit more freedom. I think living is tied irrevocably to a Cross: a place where we know begins our eternal life, but where the finished work, I hope we remember, has already happened, and so our eternal life has already begun. I think it has to do with knowing we are already citizens of heaven and having the guts to hope big for what in the world that means. And, seeing the life of Jesus, we know it is nothing if it is not full of active, not passive, love and pursuit of a Father who rocks and rolls, serves surf and turf for so many prodigals.

Lazarus would know, I'm pretty sure. So would the thief. So would Mary. So would Peter. And I have a feeling God gave us His Spirit to lead us, not just in life, but into life as well.

After all, it was after the Cross that Jesus said, "You will do even greater things than these."

Whoa. Greater things than these, Jesus?

I think ...sometimes, I think maybe I'm the shadow that goes through these days that are not my own, clinging and following something else that's really weighty, really heavy and substantive and real. And that thing is real Life, not my version of it. And someday, someday really soon, I'm going to enter into it completely. May these days, like an engagement before the wedding and the marriage thereafter, be filled with the anticipation and hope that drives us further and further into life.

I am haunted by Waters.

Chronicles of Freedom

I feel this morning a bit like Prince Rilian in The Silver Chair, the sixth book in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series. He was held captive by the evil White Witch, who put a spell on him. Every day, if I remember right, he truly believed himself to be hers, owned and sealed in her service and cruel kingdom. But at night, the enchantment broke for a few hours. He would remember who he truly was, what the White Witch was about, and his place in Aslan's domain. Each evening, then, they would tie him up to a silver chair deep in a cave so that he could not act on this deep truth. By morning, he would have forgotten it all once again and would be free to roam about unchained, the guards knowing he would remain enslaved to the witch through her spell on him. But finally, in a dramatic scene, the children free him from the chair and so broke forever the spell on him.

That's my story. Something has come under cover of night broken a little more the chains binding me to the chair. I see a bit more clearly today. It's almost beyond imagining what the Rescuer can do even with our sin, our hiding, our refusal to leave the slums for the offer of a holiday at sea, in Lewis's words. In my current favorite song (Missing Love by PFR), there's a line that says, "Teach me to live as one who's free." Yes, that's it.

I remember a story of a lion in a zoo that had been pinned up several days in a small cage for repairs to his larger (though still constricting) domain. He had room only to pace in a circle, which he did continuously through his imprisonment. When finally the zookeepers opened the door, he didn't step out, but continued to trace his circle in the floor of the cell, his head so drooped that he couldn't see that the door had been swung wide open. To free him, they had to prod him from the far end of the cage. He first seemed to take it as cruelty, and became angry and violent towards them. Only finally did he find his way to freedom.

Father God, I want to go on in my journey, and to do so I realize a couple of things I need to see.

First, I need to see it as good, and as a journey You have invited me on, equipped me for, and will see me through, a journey where You have wanted me to embark on, with Yourself, for such a long time. It is a journey of healing, of restoration, of intimacy and friendship, of fellowship and battle, danger, mystery, and staggering beauty. And as such, it requires my heart fully engaged -- worshipping, seeking, finding, desiring, hoping, seeing, following, leading, discovering, expressing.

Second, I need to see it as a journey that I'm not disqualified from taking. Not my sin, not anyone I know or don't know, not any snare of this world, not all the work or intentions of the Enemy -- nothing -- can keep me from Your love and all of the friendship and intimacy, all of the work of redemption and restoration of my heart, all of the heroic battles and adventures that come with, spring from, and lead toward Your love.

Open my eyes, Glorious Father, and give me deep conviction of the truth now of my place in You and the invitation and new heart and all that -- the Gospel, as it's called. I recieve You, Christ my Lord, as the Truth and the Full Revelation of the heart of the Father and of my own identity as Your image-bearing one. I love You, trust You, worship You, and say Yes! and Amen! to You.

I think my thought, and fancy I think thee.
Lord, wake me up; rend swift my coffin-planks;
I pray thee, let me live -- alive and free.
My soul will break forth in melodious thanks,
Aware at last what thou wouldst have it be,
When thy life shall be light in me, and when
My live to thine is answer and amen.
-George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul

Into the Depths

Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'.
-Andy, The Shawshank Redemption

I want to write. I want to illustrate. I want to tell stories and relate them to this journey of walking with God. I want to tell the Gospel, and tell it well – beautifully, passionately. I want to relate the journies and battles I experience to the Great Story, to draw others (and even myself, maybe especially myself) deeper into this Life, this adventurous, risky, balls-out, all-or-nothing life with Jesus, Creator, King.

I want to communicate. I want to bring faith into focus. I want to bring clarity to peoples’ lives and show them what it’s really about (“What’s up with Life?”). I want to stir up the passion in peoples’ hearts to live full lives, full in the fullness of God, to offer fuel for the fire in their bellies. I want to kindle and stoke up the flames of love in the hearts of prophets and kings and lovers of God.

I want to tell this as I see the unseen as the heavier, weightier Reality. Really, maybe as the only Reality. I want to do this in story. I want to do this in word. I want to do this, maybe most importantly, with my own life.

I want to walk with Jesus on the water, this water, this tidal, wind-tossed sea that is at times so, so beautiful beyond telling and at others the most frightening force in the universe, the most dangerous. This life with God, both living it out and telling it (telling it with words and with the story of my own life) is romantic. And romance is both the deepest thing in life, deeper even than reality as G.K. Chesterton put it, and also the most dangerous, scariest thing in life, scarier even than death. Because death doesn’t demand anything. Love demands it all.

Remember those words that Jesus has spoken to me? Remember how deep and true and compelling? Remember how Real they were when I heard them, how they drew me into the depths like some hard-hitting harpoon? I remember. I remember the feeling of being pulled in. I remember how I both feared it and fought it for all I was worth and knew I had wanted this for a long, long time. I collapsed into it, surrendered body and soul to the Deep.

I will never forget writing my resignation letter from the bookstore where I first found God and fell in love with Him. I experienced Life and I knew immediately what wasn’t it. When we deterred from it unrelentingly, it was time to leave, and to leave with strength and hope. The feeling of these words coming out of me, these words that had been forged in fires of fear and passion, of angst and experience of the deepest intimacy with the Someone… it was… it was a ride. I felt these words, lived them, believed them from my heart. I had a right to them. They were not just words dripping like honey (or codliver oil, be it as it may) from my lips, born by my tongue. No. They were from the depths.

This last October my wife and I took our first vacation together since our honeymoon. We chose Cancun as our destination. While there, I had the opportunity to go scuba diving. They took us a half mile off the coast to a reef. In 30 feet of ocean I explored the reefs and all it had to offer me – exotic fish, stingrays, poisonous plants, underwater seashells. What I couldn’t help but pay attention to in this underwater world that allowed me to move in all directions was the force of the tides and swells even 30 feet under. They were forceful. I realized that the surface movements were either the cause of these underwater currents or the result of them. And maybe it was a combination of both.

The day I wrote my resignation letter, the surface tides came from the currents within.

I’ll never forget the day God gave me the words from E.M. Bounds. It wasn’t just a quote from some guy I didn’t know that sounded cool. It was God – this wild Lover and Friend – who spoke to me something about His own heart. He revealed Himself a little more through those words. Oh, and the night He gave me Psalm 18. Or the night He told me I am like David – that this was the man I could look towards to know something of my own heart. That was why I was so attracted to his story and life.

I’ll never forget the way Michael Yaconelli’s book A Dangerous Wonder had blown me away, had left me flat on my back with some ecstatic hope that I could just be myself and surrender to God and realize that walking with Him would be childlike. Or the passion of Rich Mullins’ voice and song that told me that this life with God could be that desirious, that romantic.

I remember, and will always remember, the time I learned that Jesus’ statement to the disciples, “Shalom. Peace I leave with you…” in the Upper Room were words meant to tell them that He was leaving Himself as the Peace. It wasn’t wishful thinking or a sanguine pseudopromise. It was words of life, and He acted on them when He breathed into them the Flame of the Holy Spirit – His Spirit. Himself.

There were the words from the Psalms more recently that He is like a roaring waterfall, His waves and breakers having washed over me, and how I got to tell David Crowder about those words and the way God used them to free my heart to receive from Him at the bootcamp I attended. And how, even more recently, He’s given me the names Wagon Builder and has been showing me what that means. And the name Son of Thunder to tell me also about my own heart and through that His own.

What about the conversation I had with my wife really recently about our friends’ opportunity to be ministers of the Gospel through their rental business and how they pretty much miss that and instead spend their money on cruises and vacations and one day hope to sell their rental property to go “into the ministry”. But right here in front of them are opportunities to love and give until it hurts.

And what about my own giving till it hurts? What of the opportunities right in front of me to also be a minister of reconciliation, a prophet of the Gospel of Grace?

I remember still the book titles God’s given me – I think as a starting place, a launching point. Will I let go the ropes and let the wind and waves take me where they will, trusting in this God who has spoken so much to me, brought me into so much life, redeemed the ways I have posed and faked my way through just to survive, revived my heart so dead? Will I set out with hope and trust and write those things He’s given me, that He’s revealed and spoken to me, believing that they are really from Him and not just for me but for a world lost in darkness and desperately needing his Life? What of “A Few Good Men” and “What’s Up with Life?” and the others (there are so many)?

Jesus, I come to you so often asking You to free my heart, to bring me deeper into freedom. I wonder if that’s the wrong thing to ask. I wonder if the truth is that You have brought me into freedom, having purchased it with Your own blood. It’s done, it’s already finished. Now, I need to learn to live as one who is free. To walk out of the cage that has already been opened. To stand up, to open my eyes, to walk forward in Your strength of heart, in mine. To throw myself into You and Your work – the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Ascension.

Thing is, Jesus, and I’m sure You must know this perfectly, that I cannot go it anymore without You. The road from here on out, if I am to walk it at all, has to be taken with my eyes firm on You. It ain’t no yellow-brick road. It’s the tossed tides of the ocean. That's where I am to walk. I must fix my eyes on You and be undeterred, undistracted (both from my own fascination with walking the waves and with the stormy sea itself). This is the faith I need. And this is faith: the evidence of things Unseen. That is, utter and total consecration to and dependence upon This One who walks the seas, who calms the storms, who frees the captives, who gives sight to the blind, who teaches the lame to dance.

Teach me to live, Jesus, as one who is free. Cause I want to be like You.

If I didn't care, more than words can say,
If I didn't care, would I feel this way,
If this isn't love, then why do I thrill
And what makes my head go round and round
While my heart stands still...

Missing Love

Lots of hurts have been exposed in the recent battle I’ve found myself in. I’m broken. Feel like I’m waking up to punctured lungs. I’m breathing, but it hurts. Found this song in shuffling through some CDs. Sitting here weeping hearing it. I hope you’ve heard it, because the passion of the music is half of it. But here are the words.

Missing Love
PFR

I spent my life learning to survive.
Walked down these roads
hoping each one might lead me home.
I learned early on
That trust can come undone
And leave your heart guarding its deepest part.
But you got in through the marrow and bone
Shed some light where none had shone

I lost I found
I was missing love missing love
I fought to stand my ground
I was missing love oh missing love

Can you teach me
to live as one who’s free
From fear from shame
and the lie that I’ll never change
Help me to see myself through a lover’s eyes
No more mask no disguise

I lost I found
I was missing love missing love
I fought to stand my ground
I was missing love oh missing love

You found me
and made me whole again
My savior my friend

I lost I found
I was missing love missing love
I fought to stand my ground
I was missing love oh missing love

That’s what I had done – learned to survive. And trust always came undone, left me to guard the deepest parts of my heart from the God who created it. And I want to learn to live as one who’s free. I don’t want to be set free now – Jesus has already done that. Now I need to learn to live as one who is free. And oh, to see myself through a Lover’s eyes, and stand naked before Him, no masks, no disguise. And I love how he sings, “I lost. I found I was missing love…” I feel like in these last couple of weeks that I have wrestled so hard, struggled with so much. So now, in light of “losing” a wrestling match (if that’s what this has all been about), there’s hope of finding more. Russian poet Rainer Marie Rilke said that what we choose to battle against is so small, and the victory itself makes us small. But what chooses to battle us is big, and we are birthed into life by our defeat. And so, this is what it is to be birthed into life: being defeated by constantly bigger things. Maybe this is a part of that for me. The thought of letting go of the possibility of some things I had held onto so tightly for hope brings up a lot of disappointment and a lot of uncertainty. To say that those are just part of the Mystery in this journey is true, but it doesn’t feel all that helpful. What is God up to in all of this? I’m not sure, but if the song gives any clue, it may be my defeat, so that I may walk up out of a river gorge with a limp but also a new name (“to see myself through a lover’s eyes”).

Lord, where are your friends?

Divide and conquer. It's a first strategy of the Enemy. Separate them, confuse them, cloud them over with a fog until they wander from each other in search of a clearing; or better, pummel them, blast them with cannons of fire so dense they hunker to the ground in defense, slowly losing heart as the shadows of fear or indifference have advanced upon them like an invading army.

I've felt this today. It starts subtle, but the lie goes along these lines, "You are alone. Look around you; no one 'lives from the heart' or seeks God or desires Life or loves or lives in the Reality. Just give in. Just take it easy and let loose your guard. Hakuna matata. No worries."

In the only way I know how, I'm coming against that lie. Like Elijah, I need to remember my allies... my friends and His. I’m so grateful for those I’ve been given to journey with who answer the following questions with a resounding, “Here I am.” Their response is a signal flare on the battlefield telling their position, giving me courage to remember in whose company I battle and journey.


Lord, where are your Friends?

Where are those girding themselves with the armor forged in the fires of passion to fit Your waist, Your breast, Your arms, Lord?

Where are those who have yet to beat their swords into plowshares, and whose weapons are crimson with the blood of war?

Where are the crying, the wailing, the sick and broken pouring out tears of rage against the accuser for their own?

Where are the mourning and rejoicing travelers to the heavenly kingdom who pause long enough to help those too tired to walk?

Where are those thirsty, hungry, desirous and sensuous men and women who are preparing to take their place as the Bride in the eyes of her Lover,

And those who have made their beds, never to lie in them again until the return of their Groom?

Where are the seeing who know they're still blind and the wise who know they've understood so little?

Where are the weak and rejected, the poor among us longing for a better Home?

Where are those who have felt the heat of the Fire and who have crossed over the line to jump into the burning flames?

Where are the wobbly-kneed who have felt the earth give way beneath them and know it is passing so soon?

Where are those who have heard the Summons and are removing their sandals with the thought ringing in their minds, “In light of this, what else could I do?”

Where are those faces set link flint, whose unblinking bleary eyes are ready, waiting?

Where are the passionate, the consecrated, the holy lovers that have gone down to the village to meet with the one for whom their hearts were made?

Where are those searching their hearts for the answer to the question, “What is it you want?”

Where are the brave and foolish that have tasted and are wasted now for Life?

Are they doing their day-to-day duties, alone, under the scorching midday sun – carrying water home to one of their many bedfellows?

Are they peering from their view in the fork of a tree through the crowds, stretching to hear, pressing in to catch a glimpse?

Do they scream in the streets for knowledge of Who it is among them?

Do they clamor and tear without caution at the roof to find an opening so they can be near, and so their own friends might live?

Do they walk up, wet with weeping, to the feet of the Fearer to tell of their dying daughter, remembering with what authority He came?

Do they sing? Do they know their breaths are the exhalations of the One so close, of the One within?

Do they peer now, with hearts laid waste by Love, into the souls of those near them, just for the joy of knowing the greatest of all creation and the beauty placed their by the Master?

Are they alive? Do they work and journey and fight with conviction and compassion because of some deep joy set before them?

Lord, where are your Friends?
©2005, Brian Fidler

Begging the Question

What does God want – not from you, but for you?

I’ve been thinking about this question for weeks now, asking myself what it is that God wants for me. The question has real power, I think, to disrupt me from religious thinking, from the slow, subtly creeping notion that God’s just someone else that’s asking just one more thing from me. It has power to dislodge from my heart the view that I must do something for God and all that flows from that and replace it with the view that God wants me to simply be (Which is so much deeper… instead of the typical, “What am I supposed to do for God” response, now the question begs, “Lord God, what am I to be – who have You created me to be and for whom have You created me?” It is a much more personal way to relate.)

I’m dwelling on this question, beginning to ask God what it is He wants for me instead of from me. In response, I’ve only heard so far something to the effect of, “I’ve shown you my heart. What do you think I want for you?” Maybe he’s asking me to go deeper into the question, like he did with the man at the pool of Bethesda.

What’s really striking, though, about the question is my first reaction to it. At the very first, I thought to myself, “That’s not a very good question. Is that really what the Gospel is about – God giving us something? No way, it’s about what God expects of us.” How revealing of my own hesitation to accept “the handout of amazing Grace,” that God in Christ really has come to give me what I lost and could never get back on my own: Life.

Somehow, to really trust that all God’s thoughts toward me are bent on bringing me into that, that all his actions and ways towards me and all his plans for me are aimed with that purpose: to give me life… I think it would change everything. What a perspective. What a way of seeing.

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
-Romans 5:5

The Cost of Freedom

Father God,

I feel light, tossed. There is a weight to my heart that I have felt, that I have seen others glimpse. It frightens me – less so than it used to, but the fear is still there. Somehow, though, I think I more fear living from something else than I do living from it. I think I fear not living at all and am beginning to understand where real life is found – walking with You, even into and through the dark nights and winding forests of this world, fully alive to You from my heart.

But I play it safe. I sit at the shore and dig for seashells – dead temples to once shimmering creatures. I build sandcastles to occupy my time. And so the waves ebb and flow. These castles I build are, come high tide, dissolved and taken, particle by particle, into the depths. All I hold to, all I grasp, runs through my fingers like soup through the hands of a starving vagrant.

And so I’m left standing empty-handed...

...But, and this is a great mystery to me, I'm empty-handed, but not empty-hearted. There’s a call here. It’s subtle, mysterious, but powerful, like the invisible pull of the moon on these waters now washing at my feet, slowly pulling away sand from where I stand so that I sink a little more. Oswald Chamber’s words come to me, “The call of God is like the call of the sea. It can only be heard by those with the essence of the sea within them.”

Ah, yes. Diving right into the long end of the endless immensity of the sea sinks the setting sun. Its reflection upon the waves is like a long hand outstretched in invitation. Its heat still light upon my face is the echo of a deeper warmth, a deeper burning, emanating somewhere from within.

Christ, too long have I come to the edge of the world and looked over the cliff cautiously. Too long have I refused the jump yet wandered back and chattered as someone flying. I speak well the scuba-depth language, but with only sun-scorched back burned from too long snorkeling. My heart, in desperation, resounds the cry of St. John of the Cross, “I no longer want just to hear about you, beloved Lord, through messengers. I no longer want to hear doctrines about you, nor to have my emotions stirred by people speaking of you. I yearn for your presence.”

Come, Jesus, rescue me. I give myself back to You, to be Your man, Your friend, Your beloved, Your son of thunder.

Amen.

Surrender

As originally posted on relevantmagazine.com


It's an early summer day in May. I'm high in the Collegiates of Colorado. The sky stretches over this raggedy-edged part of the earth like saran wrap over a heaping bowl of cookie dough. I’m beat – defeated by this enormity of this land. The climb behind me was grueling; I’m deaf to all but my fast, rhythmic breathing, and I realize that I can't turn back. If the climb this far was this tough, this dangerous, then the descent via the same path would be brutal. No, my eyes are set ahead of me – only a few more feet to the peak, and it’s there the real Adventure awaits.

I put on the harness, snug the belt, and double-check the clips. The belayer fastens to me the single rope that will become my lifeline, the only thing to tether me in my drop. He directs me to the edge of the platform. Did I mention I’m backwards, facing the cliff, my backside turned to face eternity? I listen intently to my last bit of crucial instructions, and then it comes. The Ruth with Naomi moment. The decision to jump into the unknown or go back to something safer (if that’s even possible now). I have to sit into the harness. Sit. As in, the harness becomes a chair that dangles me over what feels like an eternity of nothingness. Backwards. My legs must become horizontal, my head level with what was my footing. The bottom of the 100-foot cliff feels a mile away, but I can’t think about that now. I’m concentrating on the surrender into the belts, the rope, the belayer. After slacking a few feet down, I’m ready for the vertical descent…


…and I go for it… all the way… no holds barred. I find myself flying down this mountain face, the horizon stretching forever away from me, the clouds increasing their distance, the vertical rocks my road. No, my runway. I am lost in the thrill of the dare, in the desire for the heights taken form as a freefall into nothing, in the pursuit and adventure so big all I can do is surrender. The words of Aslan, the Christ-figure in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, resound in my ears, “Do not dare not do dare.”

A few jutting boulders, a slippery bit of graveled edge, forms my stopping place. It’s not the bottom of the mountain, not by far. But it’s here I unleash myself from the harness. It’s here I rest for a bit from the momentum, here I look up to my journey thus far. What I ride, I hear myself say under my gasping breath. My legs, weakened by the surge of adrenaline through my body, barely give a firm stand. It’s not over, but it’s here I find the courage to be still after the dare of saying “yes” to the invitation to fly.

For a few seconds I’m thinking on the fear that had held me down from here, that had kept me from taking the trail that led to the peak in the first place. Would I make it? Would I find the strength to get far enough, or would I have to back down? Would it be good if I did make it? And once I climbed and reached the destination (that wasn’t really a destination at all), would I have the courage to let go? And if I did find the courage (I since learned it wasn’t so much about courage, but rather desperation and surrender), would the Tether hold? Would I have what it took?

Mountain aspen is thick in these parts. Their stature is bold, noble. They swan dive straight into the sea of sky above. Their might is tested in the winds and the storms that rage across the landscape. But they don’t shrink back. They don’t hide in shadow and shade. Their surrender to what they were made for becomes the glory of their Creator.

And so it is in me.

The Innocence of Pursuit

I heard this yesterday from a fellow traveler out on the road ahead. It came to me like a wave, picking me up and then pounding me into the sand with its tidal force. These were the words:

The awakening of an irresistible thirst for Christ, the pursuit of joy in God, is not only innocent, it is essential. The birth of that pursuit of joy is the birth of the Christian life.

A portion of my own clutched cynicism, lifeless and impotent, was exposed; a piece of a system the world has handed to me and I’ve grasped onto in a moment, or perhaps several moments, of unbelief was revealed. How often I trade the invitation, simple and resurrecting, of a God who first knit me together in my mother’s womb, who wove into my heart desire deep for life and Himself, and then sets out to fill those desires, to draw me out and into all that I am made for, for something smaller, something manageable and controlled and gelded.

I’m at work today. I have a list of to-dos that grows by the hour, and with each one that I check off, I feel a tingling inside – something jumps up and says, “Ahhh. One more down. Well done, thou good and faithful worker.” And in the same minute, I glimpse at the ever-increasing list with a sense of duty, obligation, and eventually disdain that robs me of any amount of desire and passion I have for the work. But the expectations come my way, expressed either in a pat on the back when I’ve done well in someone’s eyes, or a disappointed look and sometimes words when I haven’t lived up to other’s ideas (or my own) of how well I should have performed.

And so the boat rocks, and I am pummeled by the swelling waves of wanting to please. I want to feel good about myself, so I spread wide the sheets of my bed for the comforting whore of pride and self-achievement and accolades.

Oh, they’re subtle. I don’t consider myself moved by what others think of me. But that line comes back again and again to my heart and I’m exposed: “The pursuit of joy in God is not only innocent, it is essential.”

What is my Christianity about? These works I profess are all good, make no mistake. I work to minister to people, and my desire is genuine. It’s not a bad thing to finish these tasks at hand. But what am I trading in exchange for the soup of expectations for my starving frame? Could it be an inheritance and a place with my Father that, would I but hold onto the hope for just a bit that it’s greater and more extravagant that I could ever imagine, would blow me away?

It’s useless, really. Grasping for the wind. Someone described it much like soup running through the hands of a starving man. A saltwater sea when you’re dying of thirst. The God-given blessed thirst is there, but where do we go with our desire? Where have I gone? Is it into the depths? Is it into the Waterfall of God? Is it to the Living Water? Do I even recognize this irresistible thirst as the beginning of something so, so good, and that living well and living abundantly means by definition that I will always remain partly thirsty, that my heart will always be somewhat empty, until and only until Christ Himself becomes for me the Water for my Sahara Soul, the Bread broken for me, and that He has become this for me already, that nothing hinders or prevents or disqualifies me from having that, having Him, and that it is only I who now can faint into Him, who can desire Him like I desire breath?

I’m the woman at the well. It’s hot, the midday heat scorching my neck as I dig deep for something cool to sooth my cracked lips and sticky mouth. But could it be – could it be that He has made Himself to be the joy of our hearts afterall? Could it be that the story I’ve been told so often, the story of complete this, work to finish this, count your points, tally up your score, hasn’t been the whole Story and nothing but the Story? What if the Real Story is so much better. And what if the Bigger Story is big enough to hold my heart still largely thirsty, but finding Him to be everything.

Clear days are no longer our pursuit, and sunny days no longer our reward. He is. And He is better – the Pearl of Greatest Price.

Christ, I stumble, trip, and faint after You. You’re all I want to want. Amen.