Shadows and Dust

The paltriness of our lives is largely due to our fascination with the trinkets and trophies of the unreal world that is passing away. Sex, drugs, booze, the pursuit of money, pleasure and power, even a little religion, suppress the awareness of present risenness. Religion dabbling, worldly prestige, or temporary unconsciousness cannot conceal the terrifying absence of meaning in the church and in society, nor can fanaticism, cynicism, or indifference.

-Brennan Manning, from Abba's Child

In an interview with Mel Gibson concerning the release of his Passion of the Christ movie, he was asked about his faith, about that which compelled him to make such a movie.

He recalled his ascent to worldwide fame by saying that he'd been to the pinnacle of all the secular world could offer him - he had attained all he'd ever wanted in this life. His wealth, his fame, any addiction that he could conceive - nothing that he'd desired was withheld to him. Anything he had ever wanted, he could get, he could try, he could attain. "And," he said to conclude, "it's not enough."

It wasn't for me money or fame. It was perfection, and meeting everyone's expectations-so-high. I prided myself on my impeccable performance in everything I did. Those things I couldn't do perfectly, I avoided. Those who would dare to see through my façade, I stayed far away from. Until at the end of years of this, I crashed. What I had most wanted I could have if I worked hard enough. But it was all illusion. I remember in the dark of my bedroom one night declaring the same, "it's not enough."

I have forgotten this, though, in the busyness of my days and the striving to do "good works". I've forgotten the reason for the hope I have. It might be only, "because it's not enough," and nothing more. But the desperation for the Enough is fuel to drive us passionately on the journey. Integrity Worship's book Desperate for You says, "Desperate people are passionate people... Desperation can drive us almost as much as it can drive us crazy. It's a fine, fine line. But probably the most worthwhile one we ever walk. If you've ever had that ceaseless ache in the center of your heart, you know the depths of the word desperate. Desperate people ache for fulfillment. And they'll go to any lengths to get it."

As people who have had a taste of that Enough, be it ever so slight, we long, desperately to eat our fill. We are called "believers" not as much because of the creeds we profess and wear like garments as because of the panting inside us that propels us in a desperate search for the One we know we must be made for. And all this talk of feasts and bread and wine and water - we somehow connect with that. It is familiar to us because we have become intimately familiar with our ache that keeps us walking. And we wonder if it's not given to us as a gift, a treasure - or a compass, even.

Because now the words, "Come to me if you are thirsty" make sense. They reverberate in our hearts like an echo down an empty well.

Brennan Manning continues,

Whatever the addiction--be it a smothering relationship, a dysfunctional dependence, or mere laziness--our capacity to be affected by Christ is numbed. Sloth is our refusal to go on the inward journey, a paralysis that results from choosing to protect ourselves from passion. When we are not profoundly affected by the treasure in our grasp, apathy and mediocrity are inevitable. If passion is not to degenerate into nostalgia or sentimentality, it must be renewed at its source.

We will largely be unconvincing and unconvinced disciples until we come to the end of ourselves and realize even with exasperation that there's not enough wealth or fame or attainable perfection in this life to satisfy us. The best moments are fleeting. In this life, all good things do come to an end. That will take us to either the lowest places of despair, or the deepest places of desperation. As C.S. Lewis explains in Mere Christianity, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in my self a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

Because, and here's the hope - it's I think as simple and humble as this - we will one day have it. All. It's still not going to be in the money or fame or booze or that one perfect relationship we are trying to hold onto or sex or performance or that beautiful bag of potato chips or that mission trip to Mexico. Those are just shadows. It will be in Him. All of it.

A few years ago I gave my wife as a birthday gift a jar of dirt. I know, I know, romantic guy I am. I had inscribed on the side of the jar the words "Shadows and Dust." We both knew well what it meant. It is a line taken from the movie Gladiator. Proximo, the trainer who originally purchased Maximus and trained him as a gladiator, had himself once been a gladiator. He had stood in the arena and had heard the audience cheering him on. He had participated in glory as a gladiator, and after he had been freed by Marcus Aurelius, he was haunted by it. "Shadows and dust" became a phrase he used to help him remember the reality of both illusions (shadows) and death itself (dust). Proximo, having tasted of the former glory of Rome, defied the Pratorians who had come to capture Maximus. He was killed at their hands. Moments before they entered the room, his face is set toward the sun and you can hear him whisper, "shadows and dust."

There will come a time when all things will be well, and all manner of things well. We will know God. We will know God fully. We will know and be known. And we will be home. Lewis finishes his though, "I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."

This life that we speak of is our heart's deepest and most passionate desire and the source of its most poignant ache. George MacDonald writes, "The thing that can mourn can mourn only from lack; it cannot mourn because of being, but because of not enough being. We are vessels of life, not yet full of the wine of life; where the wine does not reach, there the clay cracks, and aches, and is distressed..." It is also the most unattainable except by pure, undistilled Grace. Grace that this God who apparently wants us far more than even we could even want Him has lavished upon us. In other words, we get it, we get life. That, my friends, is indeed Good News.

"...Life must be assisted, upheld, comforted, every part, with life. Life is the law, the food, the necessity of life. Life is everything." -George MacDonald

All-Consuming

It’s a busy season. Family to visit. Gifts to exchange. Shopping to do. I’m struck by the way so much of our culture has been able to recognize the deep need in the human soul and sell it, promising the life we’ve always wanted if we just purchase this pair of tennis shoes, or that leather coat, or this necklace for our wives or that extended DVD set.

It can happen with even the most important things. “The church, you see” explains Paul, “is not peripheral to the world.” Oh really? It hardly seems so when you watch television or visit the nearest mall. I wonder if Paul would have thought differently if he’d had a Macy’s or Sears in his hometown. This is, afterall, what Christmas seems to be about. Even many Christians I know seem to be caught up in the consumerism and commercialism of the season. But Paul is unapologetic in the finality of his statement. “The world is peripheral to the church” (Ephesians 1, The Message). The church, meaning the body of Jesus on earth where all the action is, where the life of Jesus happens.

There was a fascinating study done at UCLA where some mice were given injections of speed to see how long it would take them to run themselves to death. Control mice that weren't injected were placed with them. You know what happened? The control mice ran themselves to death just as quickly as the others. It's the nature of the world to run around purposeless, distracted, desperate to fill in the missing pieces with shopping, sex, empty conversation, complication in relationships, and the like.

And so, DeAnn and I have begun pulling back, resisting, refusing to allow ourselves to be taken out and ours hearts to be completely overwhelmed with the "needs" around us – the shopping lists, the family visits, the frantic pace, the buzzing and whirling and crowding. We are withdrawing to the center, turning our gaze to the One who came for us, and starting to remember.

John Eldredge recently wrote a fantastic reminder to the deeper and truer reason behind Advent season. It is so that we may remember and anticipate. “Not only is it an opportunity to reflect – for several weeks – on the fact that God came, it is also an opportunity to lift our eyes towards his return. He will come again.”¹

Together we are seeking out the stories that remind us of God coming through for us, and for His promise that He will come again to set all things aright. We are to love Him. We are to be consumed with Jesus and with His kingdom, with His presence and with His promises. We are to see Him, to set our eyes on Him, as a babe born in a manger, as the Son who came to take our place and ransom us, as a Warrior, as a Friend, as the image of the Father, as our one true love. As Dallas Willard has said, “The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him.”

We are among those He came for, and for whom He will again return. He came to make Himself known “to the humbled, to the fringes of the population, heralded by goats, by sheep, and by astrologers from the east.”²

May we remember. May we awaken to the deep and unbelievably great news that we have been invited into a Great Tale, “a Story that begins, “Once upon a time” and ends “And they lived happily ever after…”²

¹John’s letter can be found here.
² This comes from "Emmanuel, God with Us"

Setting the Stage: Jesus' Pursuit, Part 2

Continued from The Question: Jesus' Pursuit, Part 1

John the Baptist has already been proclaiming some pretty wild stuff out there in the wilderness, wild words to match well his wild clothes and choice of food. John’s a wild man, and a passionate one. He is known as John the Baptist because he has been baptizing folks to get them ready for the coming Messiah. And some people are starting to believe that there will really be a Messiah coming. A lot of expectation is raised, and a lot of anticipation. What will this Messiah be like? What will he do?

Those who are coming by frequently to the Jordan where John is preaching were known now as his disciples, or more simply, his students. They were listening intently to what John had to say. Why? I mean, why would anyone particularly want to hang around this wild man who was dressed in camel skin and ate locusts for dinner? What was he saying to them that drew their interest, anyway?

To answer that, let me back up a bit to tell you about John’s father. His name was Zechariah. This guy was a priest who had been chosen to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the temple of the Lord to burn incense. This was a very rare opportunity for a priest, and Zechariah was no doubt scared out of his mind as much as he was excited.

One of the first things we learn about Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth is that they had no children. They wanted them, but Elizabeth was barren, so their hope of having any sons or daughters was waning fast, and the chances were slim.

Now, even as a priest, it was a very rare thing to get to go into the temple of the Lord. Very few priests were ever able to do so. And Zechariah was the guy chosen to go in. Now, to do so it meant that he would have a rope tied to his ankle just in case he did something wrong and he’d die in there as a result of God’s holiness and the others would need to drag him out. So this was a pretty heavy and serious matter. What made it even weightier was what Zechariah encountered in there.

To be continued...

The Best for Now

You have saved the best till now.
-John 2:10, italics mine

The final project from singer/songwriter Rich Mullin’s prolific career, The Jesus Record, came about because he felt compelled to spend time thinking on the life and words of Jesus. Though there is much to think of in this journey with God, and much he did think of – grief and sorrow, battle, friendship, growing up and growing old and even growing young – this one thing he felt compelled and drawn to: Jesus’ life and His initiation and invitation and ransom through it.

I find that really instructive, and so that’s what I, too, and compelled to do. It was another saint who said that we should “fix our eyes on Jesus.”

So, here’s what I am seeing recently. When I look at people around Jesus, those who interacted with him in the gospels, I see basically two types: those who eventually fell in love with him and gave their lives to following him, and those whose hatred toward him and the kingdom he came to announce became murderous. There was hardly any middle ground. In fact, Jesus himself said as much – “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30).

Out of the four main socio-religious groups of the time – the Essenes, the Herodians and their friends the Saduccees, the Zealots, and finally the Pharisees – Jesus didn’t fit in. He couldn’t be categorized and so he wasn’t so easily dismissed. It’s interesting to note that those who hated Jesus were those whose fury came from their inability to own him, who couldn’t use him for their own agenda. Rich’s words are true here, that “the world can’t stand what it can’t own and it can’t own you ‘cause you did not have a home.”

Jesus came, of course, to bring his kingdom to us, to announce it so that we may be invited in. To open up for us a new way, a new reality, a new world order. His kingdom opens up for us the possibility of a new heart and with it a new and intimate relationship with ourselves, with each other, and, of course first with God. In Jesus, God stooped down to look us in the eyes and say, “I want you to be mine now. Join me. Become my friend.” [Incidentally, the Hebrew for “unfailing love” in Psalm 6:4 (“…O Lord… save me because of your unfailing love”) denotes befriending.] A better picture is God lifting us up to where He is, to a "high and holy place" - Isaiah 57:15. It is a new order outside of ourselves but coming from within, from hearts full of life (Proverbs 4:23).

While all of this is baffling and more than a little shocking in its implications, perhaps the most scandalous notion of all was the kingdom’s availability and presence. All good Jews in Jesus’ day knew something about a kingdom coming. This language wasn’t unfamiliar to Jesus’ hearers. For centuries, prophets have been describing and foretelling this kingdom. Many of the prophets before Jesus spoke on behalf of the poor and oppressed, the rejected and outcast. With prophetic tradition, Jesus spoke of the inward sincerity of the heart and authenticity – again, nothing too unfamiliar (though mostly forgotten) to his hearers. And, of course, just like the prophets before him, Jesus spoke of the coming judgment – that evil would be exposed and named for what it was. Finally, Jesus emphasized the coming of a new order of things, a time in which “in that reality, the poor and rejected will be embraced and valued and brought back to the community. In that new era, what will count is what is in the heart – not merely what is projected, pretended, or professed. In that new realm, evil in all its forms will be exposed, named, and dealt with. In that new kingdom, justice, integrity, and peace will overcome” (Brian McLaren, “The Secret Message of Jesus,” p. 23).

Most of the Jews should have known this much already, but only in the sense that it was far out in the distant future. That’s why for many – Nicodemus perhaps being one of them – Jesus’ arrival (and with him, the kingdom) was such a shock. It exposed their unbelief. When John the Baptist announced, “Repent!” (Matthew 3:2), not much of a raucous was raised. But he finished his pronouncement with, “for the kingdom of heaven is near.” What a fool he must have sounded like! Who would really expect the kingdom to be at hand, really? That came as a contradiction to what everyone thought and expected. No one expected the kingdom of God to happen now. “It could only happen then,” writes Brian McLaren, “after the Romans were ejected or eliminated, which in turn couldn’t happen (for the Zealots) until later, after the Jews were militarily mobilized and led by a great military liberator (or messiah), which couldn’t happen (for the Pharisees) until later, after the prostitutes and drunks and other undesirables were either reformed or otherwise eliminated. Put together, these conditions were so hard to imagine actually occurring anytime soon that they were considered (by the comfortably adjusted Herodians and their similarly comfortable friends, the Saduccees) completely improbable, no, practically impossible. The Kingdom of God? Maybe in some distant someday. At hand, here and now? No way!”

Yet it was just a few days later when Jesus strolled right in front of John and John yelled out, “This is the one I meant…!” The kingdom of God, indeed, is near – standing right before him. Standing right before us.

We get to live on this side of that amazing invasion by the King into enemy territory to bring about this new kingdom. And yet, we often do with it the very same thing those contemporaries of Jesus did. The kingdom of God can only happen then, after… fill in the blank. I go to college. Get married. Buy a home. Have children. Accomplish something big in my career. Get more money. Find a community. Be healed or feel better. Beat depression. The list goes on.

We miss Jesus in our midst because of this, and in the process miss everything that he won for us by the kingdom come – his reign and rule, living in the freedom and fullness of a new heart, offering love and invitation and truth to others. Essentially, we are not really living at all unless, and until, we live in and out of the kingdom of God now here, established in and from us by the King and by our Intimate One.

Father God, it’s true. I have bought into the lie that I have to wait until things change or get better before I can really live in the kingdom. I have squandered the most startling and amazing gift ever given that is fully mine to have, fought for and won for me by Jesus – life, life to the full and free and all that it implies: heart intimacy with you and with others, full expression of your character, glory and honor to you, and the beauty and dire need of your kingdom being established here throughout my own home and community. I have missed it. Why… and how in the world…? Forgive me, Lord. Jesus, come again in the fullness of your Spirit and establish me again into your kingdom as a citizen of it and may your kingdom in turn be established here, in, through, and from my heart, my household, and my domain. I give all of myself back to you: body, heart, soul, mind, spirit, strength. I am yours. Reign here. Move here. Speak here. Bring your presence and blessing here. Open my eyes and ears. You have saved the best for now, indeed. I am taken. I love you. I love you. Amen.

Holy Ground

“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out from the tomb.” -Mark 16:8

Trembling and bewildered. That is the only honest response to what the women encountered and discovered that day in the tomb. It is now the only authentic response to what is revealed in us: that this same risen Jesus has come to dwell with us and in us.

Some of my favorite woods to walk in are nestled behind my childhood home about half a mile, down a steep embankment that extends about 200 yards through thick underbrush, and past an open field. Beyond this lies something out of Lord of the Rings. It is Fangorn, and walking in it I half expect to see an Ent or a Urukai come out from around the bend. It is beautiful and inviting and mythic. The forest itself borders a river that slices and sluices its way through the wilderness like a fledgling Amazon.

I know these woods well; I grew up exploring them and playing army with my brother and cousins in their dark mysteries and overarching canopies.

The long, endless summers of my boyhood days had gone down to the cool of early autumn, and I returned to the company of these old trees as a grown man. I had been drawn to this place by the Lord God. He had summoned me here in his fierce pursuit of my heart and desire to be near me. And he was after something else this day, I suspected. There was something else he wanted to say.

Near the river’s edge I found a large fallen sycamore to stretch out on and enjoy the surroundings and settle my heart into listening, into quieting down. “What do you want to say to me, Lord?”

Nothing. I waited. Nothing still. I waited longer. Still, nothing. The sun was now settling in for the night, and I could no longer stay. As alluring those woods are at day, they are haunting at night.

As I set out and walked halfway through and among those giants of the forest, I heard the Lord very plainly say to me, “Take off your shoes.” It was so clear that I dared not argue. I stopped and removed my shoes. The bare ground was cold and prickly with twigs and small rocks. I stood again, and waited. “This,” he continued slowly and emphatically, “is holy ground.”

Whoa.

As soon as I heard this, I burst into tears. I understood immediately that the holy ground he was talking about wasn’t the forest; it was me. Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable. I think then and there I understood for maybe the first time that this was the invitation of the gospel: a completely new life, a new heart, and God himself living and moving and breathing inside with so much reality that our old life is as substantive as a shadow. We are invited into life with God.

St. Augustine of Hippo once stated that, “Jesus departed from our sight that he might return to our heart. He departed, and behold, he is here.” This is as bewildering and holy a reality as the empty tomb was for Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.

Trembling and bewildered, I stood there in my bare feet as the sun set in the west across the water, casting deep and distorting shadows across the pasture to the east. I saw a bit of my own shadow stretch across the barren earth, and I set off walking again, shoes and socks in quivering hand.

Trained for Battle

So much of my heart’s courage (and with it, hope), passion (and with it, love), and desire (and with it, faith) is either stolen away by these enemies of mine – the world, Satan, or my flesh – or simply squeezed into such a small corner of my life as to be for all practical purposes nearly non-existent. This happens often. Too often.

Recently I had a conversation with the Lord God concerning this battle. I share it here. The italicized portions are the words I heard God speak; the others are my own.

Are you tired yet of so much of your heart being stolen from you?

Yes, Lord! Yes I am.

Then why do you allow it to be stolen?

When can I be released into my giftings for your Kingdom and for your glory, Lord?

My son, I love that desire in you. It is from me. But if you were to be released now before you were able to stand in my authority where you now find yourself to be, you would be destroyed. You must first be trained to walk in my authority. I want to develop that in you. Your giftings are not a replacement for character. Now, are you ready to stand in my authority and fight against all my enemies and yours in my name, enemies that have for too long now opposed that great and mighty work and life in you? Are you ready to fight to the death for your freedom, knowing that to live without it is to not live at all? Are you ready to bring down all strongholds against you and DeAnn and all that sets itself up against the knowledge of God? Are you ready, my valiant warrior, to walk with me into your full freedom and to remain there with me despite the cost?

What will the cost be, Lord?

Ah. The cost is high, my son. But two things you must remember. One, that no cost can be too high for freedom. The reward is greater still. And two, I have already paid the greatest cost. Nothing you forsake or encounter will measure against it.

Of course, my King.

Now, are you ready?

I am ready. I want to stand with you as you say, Lord God. I want freedom and life. I want freedom and life – more than anything – and I believe you came to give it to me and to others through me.

I came to win it for you. You must walk in it yourself. Choose to, and be resilient, fervent, steadfast, and ruthless for it – for your heart, my son, and for others. It will take battle. I will lead you in it all. I will train your hands for battle and you will have skill over even what you have already experienced. You will know what it is to war and to be victorious over your enemies. Do you want that?

More than anything!

Then come with me. It’s time to stand.

The Burden of Love

You know how we (I mean we in the church) often say things like, "I am with you," and "I'll shoulder your burdens," and the like, and we may very well mean them, but after awhile it kind of feels overused, or maybe even a bit inauthentic? I've used them plenty of times before and even as the words came off my lips it felt a little cliché, even to me. I think that happens sometimes because either I'm afraid of really going there with someone right into the mud and muck of life or because I don't think it's the right thing to do. If someone is drowning in quicksand, you don't save them by jumping into it beside them.

But then I don't think that's the case anymore through Christ. I think that image is wrong, and sometimes I just say that to myself so I can feel better about keeping some kind of safe distance from the real pain of another man's circumstances. If anything, Christ is the Vine that I hold onto as I jump right into the center of the bog with my brother and hold on for dear life, if that's what it takes.

And I don't think that we can offer much if we aren't willing to go there. I'm not convinced that I can really contend for someone's heart or life or faith or anything else that's really important if I don't feel at least in a small sense the agony of that very thing lost.

When Simon from Cyrene was given Jesus' cross to carry up Calvary's hill, he felt the weight of that burden and then knew just a small piece of the pain Jesus was bearing, and was shattered by the thought of the ultimate pain he would endure. I think Jesus himself felt the loss of something so precious to him when he wept over Jerusalem while he almost whispered under his breath, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem... how often I have longed..."

I want to be a genuine man, an authentic man, in this world. I want to be real, solid real like cold stone under your feet or the blindingly real, dazzling blue of the sky or the agonizingly real feel of blood dripping from your skin like sweat in the night.

And I think I'm becoming that, slowly, as I learn to love. And it hurts.

My wife teaches me much about this. She has a way of engaging with a person’s life –friend or stranger – in such an authentic way that they often sense her love and trust their story to her. I’m blown away every time it happens, whether in the Wal-Mart check-out aisle or over the phone or over dinner. She will cry with them, or pray, or bring light and laughter in that encounter, and usually a beautiful mixture of all three. She will often leave those encounters with a burden for that person, feeling their pain, carrying it to Christ for them. And her heart is enlarged in the process.

In the end, I think all of the events, weighty with both glory and pain (and sometimes both at the same time), are leading us closer to and further into God. It's as Paul told the Corinthians, that distress led them to become more holy - that is, more God's, and that, in turn, led them to be more alive in all the ways one can be.

You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you've come out of this with purity of heart.

-2 Corinthians 7:9-11, The Message

Remember that in the Old Testament, the priests entering the Holy of Holies had to wear a rope tied around their ankles in case they were struck dead by God's holiness and had to be dragged out. After all, if they were stuck dead by entering into the place, who in their right mind would go in after them to drag out their corpses? Annie Dillard had it right when she said that, "On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return." Concerning the genuine love for others that the Spirit endows us with, I think this is accurate. Jesus has told us as much, that we are in for the ride of a lifetime.

So, even as we ride the high seas and long for the deeper depths, the tides turn and shift, the storm settles by the sound of the One speaking into the night, and our eyes adjust to the grey and misty shadows to see a figure out there walking, arm outstretched, a laugh almost bursting the seams of his smiling lips. This Wild One has invited us further out with Him, further into the burden of love. He awaits us. “He waits to be wanted,” as Tozer said. To Him and with Him we must go. In the light of His life, what else could we do?

The Bridge of Sighs

Extending halfway across a ravine at the far eastern edge of a narrow trail meandering its way through a dense deciduous wood is a small plank bridge. It overlooks groupings of birches and oaks and maples and sycamores, their branches, now stripped of their garments of leaves, forming a thin canopy for the carpet of fallen leaves and limbs below, thin enough for the autumn light from an angled sun to gather in strips and rays here and there scattered across the forest floor.

It stops suddenly as if in mid-construction, but its finished railings and wooden support beams suggest that its intention was to bring a traveler to an end of the trail in as dramatic and poignant a way as is possible here in the shadow of the Ozarks. It is not elevated, but the descending ground beneath gives it a feel of crossing over a body of water or a gorge, and looking down you expect to see a surging river overflowing its banks. Instead, you see scattered piles of leaves, twigs, some small scrub bushes, and innumerable trunks of trees, briars, short stalky weeds, and, if your eyes follow the sloping land far enough into the horizon, the opposite side of the valley.

The Bridge to Nowhere. That’s what they call it.

I call it the Bridge of Sighs.

I’ve followed this trail to its end, and I’m standing now on the bridge looking out into the wilds of creation. There is nothing tame about the wilderness beyond the railings, nor predictable. But there is something veiled, something secret, something hidden.

It’s hidden by the shadows that creep over the rolling hills and in the barren branches just overhead. The wind kicking up the cold soil hints of it. The sun spilling light into crevices in the valley tells of it. The sky, having turned that ocean-deep, cloudless blue with the burgeoning loss of summer’s warmth – so deep, in fact, that you feel as if you could almost dive into it and be lost forever in its immensity – speaks of this something hidden like the waves on a beach break with a certain mystery of the push and pull of currents cloaked within the water’s depths. There are whispers here, haunting whispers – sighs – of something just behind and beyond what I can see, something narrated by all my eyes take in, and all they do not.

A gust catches in the branches like the heart in my throat and a couple of remaining leaves abandon their dwelling in the canopy and migrate slowly toward the ground.

Five months ago I walked these same steps and stood at this same spot on the bridge, but the air I breathed was much different then. It was full, moist, warm, like a lover’s breath, and the humid breeze kicking up through the foliage her kiss. I remember barely able to see the ground through the thick greens and reds and browns of forest life. Small animals scurried underneath me, and I felt the gaze of larger ones off in the distance. Sounds of wings and chirps and wind filled the forest.

But those images are hard to recapture now, the memories have somehow faded through shorter days and longer shadows. So much has waned, so much has been hidden. The trees like skeletons seem to groan now, shivering in their bark, stretching for the sun’s shelter, their long branches like arms reaching in the ache.

These woods are not old. They are, in fact, remains of an abandoned military training camp from some half-century ago, now taking over the landscape. But they feel old, ancient even. And if it is not them, then it is what comes through them that is old and timeless. That hint, that tinge of longing, that pang of ache, that hidden something – it is old. Old and full of wisdom.

I have always felt like the wilderness expanse gives room for my heart to come out, to stand and breathe the free air, to rise to its true –or truer—height and stretch its arms and yawn in its awakening. Something has been hidden in me for a long time, from a time more ancient, I think, than the age of the secrets these lands have to reveal, something echoed in these aching wildlands, something whispered of here. My heart, too, groans and awaits being clothed in its full and radiant and living glory.

Much of what happens when the Kingdom comes is turn the world on its head and shake it up until it no longer resembles it at all. In reality, it is the world that is a poor reflection of the Kingdom of God, not the other way around, a reflection marred badly by the gravity of the fall. In this Kingdom that Jesus came to announce, it is the one who has reaped that gets to sow (Matthew 13:23). It is the one who has much that will get more (Matthew 25:29). It is the last that will be first (Matthew 19:30). It is the poor that will have limitless real estate (Matthew 5:3). It is in dying that we will have life – real life (Matthew 16:25). It is through being held back that we will be released (Romans 8:22-23).

The forest is in a very real sense growing old. Its hair is falling out as leaves from trees, and the same trees’ branches are like the cold, frail extremities of an old body, too easily broken. Color has faded to pale. The breath is faint, the pulse is weak. The only way I can be out here this day on the bridge looking into this dying forest and my heart not break is that I know it will return to full bloom. It has, every year. The life will come back, and it will be all the more glorious for having been gone. The greens and reds, the black earth, the flowers bursting forth, the robins and caterpillars and bobcats – they will return. What is now hidden will yet be revealed.

And the glory to be revealed at season’s change is only a hint, still yet only a whisper of what is to come. It is being held back until we are ready with it to be set loose in the age to come. That memory, too, is weak, and the images faded. But they are being restored. I close my eyes, and stretch my cramped muscles, and imagine when the dam bursts and all is released into our full and true natures.

The wind has turned a bit colder, so I bundle my jacket a bit against its biting force. One more glance toward the trees, and then I turn to head back along the winding path, my heart pregnant with expectant hope and anticipation with what awaits.

From the Silence, Speak

I forgot the wisdom
of the poem is silent wisdom,
the space between letter
and letter.

-from I Forgot by Arnon Levy

Max Picard in The World of Silence says of the Hebrew language that its architecture is vertical. “Each word sinks down vertically column-wise into the sentence. In languages today we have lost the static quality of the ancient tongues. The sentences become dynamic.” His next statement is a piercing metaphor for most of our lives today, “Every word and every sentence speeds on quickly to the next. Each word comes more from the preceding word than from the silence, and moves on more to the next word in front of it than to the silence…”

The same could be said of our lives. The same could also be said too often of those who speak for or to us, our pastors, our talk-show hosts, our news anchors, our politicians.

In the recent elections, how do we know who is who? Who stands where? How do we know when all we hear in the media is what this one says about that and what this one thinks about that one. Everyone speaks, and everyone speaks loudly, clamoring for attention and votes, and so no one is heard. It is like the clanking and clattering of dishes shattering on the floor of a restaurant by an overwhelmed waiter spilling his server tray that deafens friends, even if temporarily, to the conversation they went there to seek. Why is it that a quiet beachfront picnic or an evening over candlelight is more romantic for two in love than a night out at a carnival or a club? It is because there is silence, and in that silence each can hear the heartbeat of the other.

No wonder God often speaks in a whisper, and that in the deafening crowd of the streets no one will hear Him (Matthew 12:19).

Henry David Thoreau said it well. The more we are deafened by the drone and buzz of the noise around us, “we go more constantly and desperately to the post office [or to check our email],” but “the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while…. Read not The Times,” he finishes, “read The Eternities!” Dallas Willard summarizes Thoreau’s thoughts by stating that “conversation degenerates into mere gossip and those we meet can only talk of what they heard from someone else.” While I’m not sure I wholeheartedly agree with Eleanor Roosevelt’s thought that “great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people,” it is true that the mind and the heart itself withers by the constant sounds around and eventually almost entirely disappears, swallowed up by the life, or what we perceive as life, happening in a maddening speed around us.

James warned us to be slow to speak (James 1:19), and I think this is why. It must be from the silence and what we encounter there that words are formed in us – the tragedy of that silence and the weight of it, and the comedy that ensues when we actually hear from God, and the jaw-dropping, heart-stopping reality of what it is He actually tells us.

The Israeli poet Yona Wallach wrote to “Let the words work on you… they'll enter you, they'll come inside… let the words act on you, do with you as they wish.” We would do well to remember that is was out of the Word that Jesus came to dwell among us (John 1:1), a Word that the world didn’t recognize (John 1:10).

And how could it? The days of Jesus were tumultuous ones, no less so than in our present Western, modernistic society. It was only those willing to be done with the grasping to be heard and actually walk with Jesus who would later have the authority to speak, whose words would echo and reverberate from the empty hearts of millions that would follow in the centuries to come. No wonder the Psalmist tells us to “be still and know that I am God” (46:10), using for the word “still” one that means to sink down, to leave alone, to withdraw.

Last week God brought me to Mort Walker trail, a path that meanders through some woodlands in a conservation area not far from where I work. While there, I wrote this in my journal:

I am seeking the presence of the Father more immediate and intimate than I normally experience day-to-day within the noise and busyness of life. It’s in the silence that I am given “ears to hear,” as I have asked Jesus to give me, and the solitude beckons me into the secret place with Him. It always has.

I feel like He had this prepared for me like a secret picnic, a “table prepared for me in the presence of my enemies.” And here, in the deepest gratitude, surrounded by groaning creation as a reminder of what is to come – the feast of the wedding day – I eat. I dine. I linger here with the Wild Lover who wants me not to have him but to be haved by Him, who desires not that I possess but that I be possessed – with Him, with His life – and insobeing remain in Him and He in me.

If I am to speak, then it will be from that place and from that place alone. For it is the place of love, and the Source and Fount of my life.

Mountaintop Intimacy

Had to walk the rocks to see the mountain view
Lookin’ back, I see the lead of love.
-Caedmon’s Call

I can’t tell you why, but I have always been bothered by the phrase “mountaintop experience” when referring to an intimate time of communion with the Lord. It always feels so… isolated, so estranged from everyday reality, as if you have to somehow climb a mountain in order to be with God or experience His presence. It makes me think of the Johnny Hart’s B.C. comic strip, in which the main character ascends a large mountain and arrives at the top breathless. Waiting for him is a man of wisdom who gives him some sage advice to take back down the mountain with him, which he will use when he enters back into his “real life.”

The phrase comes, I suppose, from Moses’ experience with God on the mountain face of the Sinai, where He gave to him the commandments. It was a wild experience for Moses, where the Mount was covered with smoke “and the Lord descended on it in fire” (Exodus 19:18). But it was isolated. It was a once-in-a-lifetime gig. And, although Moses and the Lord would speak face-to-face “as a man speaks with his friend” (Exodus 33:11), it was not constant. Moses, in fact, had to ascend the mountain several times in order to meet with God, and there the Lord would command him what to say to the Israelites, even at one point commanding that Moses bring Aaron back up with him on his next trip up the mountain (Exodus 19:24).

This is what bothers me most about using the phrase to refer to an intimate time with God. It’s used often when speaking about a seminar or a church service or a time of worship. Coming back from a Christian conference, a friend of mine commented that he will now have to “come down off the mountain.” A popular contemporary Christian music group sings, “When I climb down the mountain and get back to my life,” signifying the intimate time with the Lord as something that is sought or experienced apart from everyday life.

Back on March 30th, 2004, I wrote this in my journal: [A friend] told me how he saw me as someone who always sought the mountaintop and didn't live well in reality. I take that seriously, Lord God - because if anything, I want to live in Reality, in light of the Really Real, in the Kingdom of the Real, not in the illusions. Ever since our conversation I've been asking you what validity, if any, there was to such an observation...

Yesterday, two-and-a-half years later, the Lord God answered me.

Three things are going on at the same time. First, I'm facilitating a study this week that prompted me to go back through and explore my journals, where I found this entry from March 2004 and remembered the conversation and question I brought to God. Second, I've been in recent "conversations" again with this same friend. I use the term conversations loosely, since they are riddled with accusation and fear and belligerence. But I want him. I want his heart. I want to hold him to the truth in love. And the third thing that happened yesterday is that I read one of Kendall's blog posts called "CloSe, Hard." In it, he essentially says that with the arrival of Jesus on the scene, the kind of life we get to live, the kind of life we have permission now to live, is , in effect, a constant "mountaintop experience" (meaning up close, intimate, personal) with God. This concerns Jesus’ words to the crowd in John 6, when he tells them that his flesh is the bread, and that “if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” Here, here’s what Kendall wrote:

What if what is so "hard" about the teaching isn't about eating flesh or drinking blood? What if what is so "hard" is that Jesus is saying, "Yeah, that time in the wilderness with the manna and the quail? The whole Pillar of Fire and Column of Smoke being so uncomfortably close to you? The reality of God asking you to trust against all odds, even when the necessities in life run dry? Well, you ain't seen nuthin yet." What if Jesus was saying something like, "I want to be closer to you than I even was back then?"

Kendall continues,

Again, I am reminded that the Israelites seemed to asks for less and less direct interaction with God as time went by. It started mano-y-mano. It eventually became an isolated room in a temple that only a few guys could talk to, with a rope around their waste. Then there was a "silence."

Then, he concludes,

So, Jesus shows up and does some pretty cool things with fish and bread to get their attention. Then he lays it on them that the kind of life God wants is one that is up-close again, only not isolated to a wilderness experience; he wants it in the everyday. He says, "if you eat…I will come and make my home in you." Not just pitch a tent near by, but actually move in.

Through Kendall, God has spoken directly and in no uncertain words to my delimma. In fact, Jesus already addressed it with his invitation in John 6 to "eat and drink." Continuing from the March 30th '04 journal entry,

Why shouldn't I want the mountaintop?? Why shouldn't I want to behold the glory and splendor of my God?? If I am accused of wanting the mountaintop view, perhaps I am really being accused of having too much desire... an accusation I take delightfully. Open me up, though, Jesus, to more desire!

Amen. More desire, Jesus. This is your invitation and your desire. You have come to make your home in me now and forever. The glory of God has come. We no longer need the mountain. We need You. I eat. I drink. Make your home in me.

Welcome to Nowata

My wife and I used to make a circuitous route from the town in Oklahoma where we lived to visit family in southern Missouri. Each time, we would pass through a particular town that stood out among the rest only because there was nothing about it that made it particularly interesting. There was nothing of it that would catch the eye.

It’s a no-man’s town, a place where now only a few remain after the farming and timber boom of the early 20th century died down. Struggling ma-and-pa shops find themselves next to long-abandoned warehouses and boarded-up structures. Houses seem old – not so much as in age, because you think that they could be made new again, antique and classic even, but rather in soul, as if the owners, if they exist at all, have long ago given up on strong look of solid brick and the clean curves of Doric columns and the fresh feeling of gardens and cut grass.

I remember a gas station on a corner. It remains open only because there is still a road that makes its long stretch between real destinations right through the town’s middle – still keeping the town alive but oddly lifeless, like the spinal cord of a quadriplegic. Its name was given to it at its birth, some 120 years ago, and its Indian ancestry has spiritual roots, and I laugh every time I hear it: Nowata. It’s prophetic, I think. We make jokes, matching its name with another Oklahoma town, “Don’t slip on Nowata, Eufala down.” but they never quite fit right, like mocking the homeless or shaming the sinner. It was only later that we learned the name was a mispronouncement of a Delaware word meaning “come here” or “welcome.” Welcome… to what?

We would zigzag through its heart as we glimpsed the occasional American flag in a front yard, a faded and dented stop sign marking its center, an old railroad track reminding us of its vital days when the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railroad Company extended its line down from Coffeyville through Nowata County and on south to Fort Smith, Arkansas, shipping cattle and farming supplies between three states, straight through the heart of Indian Territory. And, ironically, the town thrived precisely because there was an abundance of water from the Verdigris River that fed the abundant prairie grasses with much-needed nutrients. That, and the discovery of oil a hundred years ago.

But what had happened since? What’s its true story? How did it find itself where it now is, and what kind of summer would have to blow in to revive the trees, to clean the streets and alleyways of debris, to caress and invite green life into bloom, bleach the buildings, intoxicate the people? What kind of wild wind and strong storm could sweep the place clean of weariness, of days upon days of hot Oklahoma-sun dreariness, and revitalize its soul from a long, dry drought? Are they ready for a storm like that?

Am I?

One Good Memory

And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation.
-Alyosha, The Brothers Karamazov

I love this line. As the “hero” of the story, Aloysha is the moral and relational center of the novel, and Dostoevsky considers his way of life the way of the heart in relationship to Christ and centered in His life. And Aloysha could not have been more right in stating that “good memory” may serve one day for our salvation.

It is memory that Jesus speaks to in these days through his Spirit. It is recognition. Remember that right before Jesus left he said that the Father would send the Holy Spirit in his name who would teach us all things and remind us of everything that Jesus said to us.

C.S. Lewis was right to understand that we need more to be reminded than instructed. He was not only speaking to believers by the way. Yes, those of us granted a new heart that now beats very much in rhythm with the heart of Christ will be compelled to follow Him simply by memory of where He has gone and what He has spoken to us. Have you ever noticed a bead of water on the windshield during a rain shower will usually fall in line with the one that went before it, forming a kind of wet trail on the glass? This is what Lewis meant. We have not yet tread where Jesus has gone, at least not fully, as there is always more – more depth to explore and more vistas with God to enjoy. But there is a memory of that life, an imprint, a path, a trail. And it is the work of the Spirit to bring us into it.

But Lewis was speaking also to unbelievers there (in “Mere Christianity”), and actually he did not try to make much of a distinction between the two. This is the reality that Lewis knew, that the human heart itself, wicked or not, deceived or not, was made in the image of the Living God. There is a kind of memory there of another life, or at least some better life, than the one we have. It is often only a phantom pain of something better, like the pain in the “hand” of a man who has lost his arm. But it is still poignant. Just take a look around. Almost everyone you see is engaged in a struggle to make their lives better. We want an increase in pay, or a better-fitting career. We often think that children will make our lives better or happier, or maybe moving to a new city or trying out a new wardrobe or a new kind of drug. And this is not just the American Way. I have been to the remotest villages in Africa and have seen the same. It is something intrinsic in the human soul. We know life as it should be, and we do not have it.

That is the dilemma – that somewhere deep inside we know life as it should be, or at the very least we know that somehow this isn’t the life we were meant to have. Not all of us have arrived at that realization yet, but we will. It’s a guarantee that nothing we use to delude ourselves against that reality will last long. Almost everyone you see is in the struggle to have it. The greatest tragedy, however, is in thinking that we can secure it for ourselves. Didn’t Jesus say that this would never work? “If you seek to save [secure for yourself] your life, you will lose it.” (Matthew 16:25)

So what do you do? What do you do with the thought that this life is not the life you were meant to have, that you were meant to live? What do you do with the fact that we are haunted by eternity, and to make it worse, there is nothing we can do to get there. We cannot sneak our way back into Eden, though we would sell our souls if it meant we could.

If you let that sink in and if you left it there, then it would lead you to despair, then cynicism, then despondency, and finally to madness. Some have gone that way. Think of Nietzsche and his philosophy of nihilism, which states that there is no objective meaning or purpose to our existence. Secretly, this view is held despairingly by many.

But there is another way. It is the Way of Jesus…

The Long Stretch

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

'I saw the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will live in hope,
because you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the paths of
life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.
-Acts 2:25-28

I've been looking at the differences between longing (or desire) and hope and faith. I've come to think that longing is something that I will live with now in my new heart, that like an imprint it's there in my heart - like treated lumber as a frame for a house. It's just in there and I must learn to live with it. But it's not enough. Longing or desire is only that unless I do something with it. It's like hunger pains. It doesn't mean anything unless it leads me to Food. Hope is the expectation that you will find that Food and be filled. Faith is enduring in that hope, despite persecution and temptation to take the play off-broadway, in the face of a shortcut or a substitute to sedate the heart or slake the thirst.

I'm somewhere between the longing and the hope. I have plenty of longing, so much that it nearly takes me out. I think this was Jeremiah's condition of the word of the Lord being like a "fire in his bones." But longing by itself leads only to disappointment, then desperation, and then inevitably to despair. Only by allowing hope to grow within will that longing produce in us what Jesus wants: our hearts. That hope brings us deeper into Christ and further along on our journey.

I don't have enough hope that I will one day have what I long for, and that in this life it is my inheritance to have that very thing (deeper, richer, and more abundant life in God). This longing for life is the source of all of my heart's discontent, but the hope for it is the source of all my heart's joy. Hope is essential. "Hope is to the soul like breathing is to the body," says philosopher-theologian Gabriel Marcel. And so this is what I'm taking to Jesus, that I will be filled to the full with "all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13).

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, our labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
-1 Thessalonians 1:3

It Must Be Intimate

I came across today the following exerpt from John Eldredge's book Waking the Dead. It is what is what I need now, and must have, in a fellowship and community. I have come far with God, too far to turn around, and to continue on in any authentic way, it is fellowship with others "one in heart" that my wife and I must have...

Of course, small groups have become a part of the programming most churches offer their people. For the most part, they are disappointing and short-lived—by the very admission of those who try them. There are two reasons. One, you can’t just throw a random group of people together for a twelve-week study of some
kind and expect them to become intimate allies. The sort of devotion we want and need takes place within a shared life. Over the years our fellowship has gone camping together. We play together; help one another move; paint a room; find work. We throw great parties. We fight for each other, live in the Four Streams. This is how it was meant to be.

I love this description of the early church: “All the believers were one in heart” (Acts 4:32 ). A camaraderie was being expressed there, a bond, an esprit de corps. It means they all loved the same thing, they all wanted the same thing, and they were bonded together to find it, come hell or high water. And hell or high water will come, friends, and this will be the test of whether or not your band will make it: if you are one in heart. Judas betrayed the brothers because his heart was never really with them, just as Cipher betrays the company on the Nebuchadnezzar and as Boromir betrays the fellowship of the Ring. My goodness— churches split over the size of the parking lot or what instruments to use during worship. Most churches are not “one in heart.” (Waking the Dead , 193)

From The Ransomed Heart, by John Eldredge, reading 270
Ransomed Heart Ministries www.ransomedheart.com

For the First Time

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspiried and success achieved.

-Helen Keller

How telling it is that Helen Keller would speak of strength and vision. It’s reminds of Ginny Owens, the blind Christian singer/songwriter, whose favorite song is Be Thou My Vision. Helen grew up as a girl both blind and deaf.

I was really moved after watching a video of her life and the dramatic way in which she came to see all that she had been taught by her tutor as her way of trying to reach her, to communicate to her. According to the film, Helen Keller’s tutor had taught her to speak using the tactical sensation of someone’s hand shapes in her palm. Speech would not work, since she was deaf, and sign language would not work, since she was blind. This technique was like sign language for the blind – done in a way in which she could “feel” the words. But for so long, she didn’t get it. She learned and went through the motions, but it never reached her. She spent her days isolated, cut off from others, unable to communicate in the most basic way.

One afternoon, she was fetching water from a well and felt the water running through her hands. She dropped the bucket and stood up sharp, a kind of contorted unbelief crossing her face. She felt the water again, then ran for her tutor. She made the sign for “water” in her tutor’s hand, so hurried and excited she had to repeat it. The tutor, who had finally given up on Helen after so long not connecting, almost couldn’t believe it. She started making the sign for “dirt” and “bucket”, for “dress” and “hair”. She got it. It all came rushing to her like an avalanche, a waterfall of understanding. The entire world suddenly opened up to Helen.

I wrote some words to a song I called “Helen Keller” at a time when that for me was a picture of my entering into Grace. Deaf to His calling, blind to His wooing, He came to speak a language I would grasp. He came to write it in the sand and in my palm. For so long I had missed it. Like Helen, I remember feeling the Water rushing through my fingers, dodging my grasp, and my heart skipping a beat in the moment it all came.

I run my hands through the water of life,
amazed to be alive.
In one flash, in one instant moment of grace,
I catch a glimpse of Your face,
my heart’s home, where I strive to be
but could never reach –
And so your waters rush over me.

And like a waterfall of love
rises the sun
Like the roar of an ocean
is your ceaseless devotion
for your precious ones
for me, your son
And for the first time
my eyes perceive beauty,
though they’ve never seen before
And my ears hear an invitation
from this, my Lover Lord

The breeze it blows to take me back
Into your secret place again

Modus Operandi

I recently read a really great book on living in the love of God called “So You Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore?” In it, a man named John approaches proselytizers on a street corner screaming at passers-by that they will be going to hell. He nears one of the accusers, and, full of sadness, says to him, "You really have no idea what motivates you, do you?"

It struck me as odd, this comment. Not because I’m not also put off by the accusers’ remarks, or by their apparent misunderstanding of the Scriptures or even the heart of God, but by the use of the word “motivation.” Reading through the story, you come to understand John as a man of God, a man who knows Him very intimately.

Thinking through it some, I think in that question John really cut to the heart of the matter, the same as Jesus often does in His approach to us. He is always interested more in what is in our hearts, the “why’s” and “what’s” and “what’s up’s” than he is in our actions, those “how’s” and “where’s” and “when’s.”

I recently had a conversation with a friend where I read a Fredrick Buechner quote to him. In the quote, Buechner essentially states that when we are thinking of a vocation for our lives, we should listen to the voice of our own gladness. My friend insisted that it is better to listen to the voice of Jesus and not our own gladness. I argued that I think this is what Buechner meant by his statement, that Jesus will often speak to us through the desires written long ago in our hearts, that the calling on our lives will be where we feel the most passion and energy. Going back and forth, my friend could still only see the actions that Jesus calls us to, and not the motivation behind them. Possibly the most important question of our time is “What is it, exactly that Jesus wants for us, not from us?”

If only the man known as the “expert of the law” had been able to see that question when he came to Jesus asking what was necessary to “inherit eternal life.” Jesus, probing his heart, asked him in return, “What’s written in the law? How do you read it?” (Jesus could very well have asked him, “You’re the “expert of the law,” right? Your identity is in knowing everything about God so that you can lord that knowledge over others, all the while stealing their God-given place of intimacy with me. So, you tell me. How do you read the law?”) The man replied as he was taught, with the Scripture to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”

And then comes the most confusing verse in all of Scripture. Jesus says to the man, “Yeah, that’s right. Do that, and you’ll have life.”

What? Do that? Do that? How does a man just “do” that, as if it were a task you could check off at the end of the day? For any of us who understand love even a little bit, it is not something you do, it is something that flows. That statement to us who have tasted love is equivalent of saying, “Yes, water is necessary to sustain life in our bodies. Do water and you will live.” It is nonsensical. How do you “do water”?

In the same way, how do you “do love”?

And that was Jesus’ point. You can’t. You don’t “do love.” You live it. You live with it. You feed it. You abide in it. You enjoy it. You let it grow. And love is not the point. Our place with God restored is the point. He is the vine, and we are the branches of that vine.

Immersed in a society that is task-oriented and consumer-driven, most of our ears have been deafened to the call of the heart, much like the expert in the law. We hear “love the Lord your God” as a call to action, not a call to intimacy. We’ve all heard the famous Mountain Dew commercials that declare “Do the Dew,” when, in fact, all you can “do” with Mountain Dew is to drink it. It actually “does” its thing in you – either to hydrate you or to give you a rush of caffeine.

The tragedy of that encounter in Scripture is that the man left thinking he could just add “love the Lord your God with everything you are” as another item on his checklist as something to do to inherit, or earn or get, real life.

Can you imagine if a twig laying on the ground was thinking to himself, “Hmmm. I wonder how I can get nutrients. How can I grow?” He lays there baking and drying out in the hot sun. The trunk of the tree says to him, “You are a branch of mine. What do you think you must do to have life?” “I think,” replies the twig, “that I’ll go down my checklist. First, I’ll try to bury myself in the dirt…” and on he goes. The tree knows, of course, that the only way this branch will live again is to be grafted back into the tree so that the life-giving sap of the tree flows into him.

There is much action in the Kingdom of God. In fact, living the life of God is the most active and adventurous thing we do, but only as an overflow of the life of the heart. He loved us first, and our love is a response to His.

And then, we have life. It begins there, in intimacy with God, and it grows and it extends from it.

Picture Elijah. This fella was a prophet of God, which means that he was friends with God and that God entrusted to him his heart and words to bring a nation back into fellowship and intimacy with Himself. And what kind of life did he get to live? Well, let’s just say he didn’t spend his life in La-Z-Boy flipping through channels. At one point, God called him to Mount Carmel, where he was about to have a showdown with one of Israel’s enemies. 1 Kings 18 describes that encounter.

But even Elijah drew his life and breath from the intimate time he spent with God. Just after the encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Elijah fled in fear and weariness toward a cave. God tenderly ministers to Elijah, twice bringing him food and water. He travels to Mt. Horeb to hide and rest in a cave. God comes to him and listens to his laments. Elijah is worn out from simply “doing” and needs restoration. God sends a great wind to the mountain, and then an earthquake, and then a fire. But God was in none of these. Then, Elijah hears a “gentle whisper,” and it is here in the whisper that he finds God. There, in that tender embrace from God, Elijah’s life is restored. He is not doing. He is, in fact, fainting into the embrace of his God.

In the ‘80s BMX movie Rad, Cru is trying to learn to perform a backflip on his bike. Bruised and worn out from slamming on his back again and again, Christian finally tells him, “You’re letting your body move your head. Let your head lead, and your body will follow naturally.” On the next attempt, Cru lands his flip perfectly.

We’ve all heard the phrases, “Use your head,” or “Get your head in the game.” That’s another way of saying, “Put your heart into this. Let this be your entire focus of energy and passion.” But what if you can’t? What if you cannot put your heart into the game? Can you still play well?

In the Kingdom, the answer is no. The heart is central. The heart is first.

That is why, I think, Hebrews tell us to keep our eyes focused on Jesus. We will follow with action and intention what motivates us in the heart. If our faces are set like flint on the life of Jesus and the love of God, and if we are experiencing them daily as we abide in Jesus, then the effects of love will shine through. Our motivation will be love. Love, and the life of God, will be our modus operandi.

It was the summer of 2003. I and a small band had traveled across the globe to a small village in southern Sudan where we would be shooting some footage for a film we were making on the life of persecuted Christians. Unable to sleep early one morning, I flipped through the Bible and landed on a verse that had before given me a lot of encouragement, Jeremiah 29:11, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Angry for reasons that I could not explain, I left the hot, cramped hut and walked outside. Due to the absence of electricity, I found myself enshrouded in a nighttime darkness I had never encountered before. There, under a billion brilliant stars in a sky that stretched wider than the continent, I lamented to God in despair, “I can’t! I can’t find you, then, because I can’t seek you with all my heart! I don’t do anything with all my heart!”

I didn’t expect a response, but I got one anyway. It was a single word, one that has ricocheted and reverberated in my soul ever since, and one that pierced me with its finality and invitation. It was simply the word, “Exactly.”

And possibly for the first time that night on the other side of the world, I got it. I understand what the cross had really done for me. I am grafted back in. My primary role now is to simply abide there with Christ, and to let His life and love flow into and through me. That will call for much action on my part, without doubt. Except now, that action can be a result of a newfound energy of the soul and desire of the heart. A new modus operandi.

"Life Sucks"

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

“Life sucks, then you die.” My eye caught the bumper sticker on my way to work the other day. I read it again, and then I glanced at the passengers inside the car. I couldn’t tell by looking what had brought them to such a state of heart. “Really?” I thought. “That’s it, then? That’s the final statement of reality on life. It’s simply a drag, then it’s over?”

It’s along the same lines, really, with the phrase I’ve heard a million times growing up in the Midwest, “All you have to do in life is pay taxes and die.” It’s said with a little smirk, and always just following a conversation on all of the duties and tasks that you have to accomplish in any given day. You just spent hours running back and forth between the license bureau and the tag agency to make sure your vehicle is road-legal. You hurry back from working eight hours to rustle up a quick dinner for hungry children before you have to get them ready for bed and prepare their lunches for the next day, only to find just a couple of precious hours left in the day to do a couple of loads of laundry and feed the dog. The doctor has diagnosed yourself or someone close to you with a serious illness, and you have some life-altering choices to make concerning everyone around you. Heavy decisions. Drudgery duties. A line like “all you have to do in life is pay taxes and die” feels at a time like that a lot like consolation, something you say to make yourself believe that these other things aren’t that important in the end, that all of life will be over anyway one day, so why worry so much.

So much of our days are a tug-of-war between worry and resignation, and we manically maneuver back and forth on that tight-rope walk fearful of losing our footing and desperate to balance everything.

And too often the church hasn’t offered much else to that dilemma. Still the most commonly preached message is that we need to shape up or be shipped out, and that if we can just get it all right morally (more to balance, you see), then maybe one day when we die we can find a little rest. In other words, “Pay your taxes (taxing duties) to God or to the church or to those that matter, and then you get to die.” The message is called salvation, but it has nothing to do with salvation, really. Biblical scholar Dallas Willard says that really the word salvation in the Bible could be replaced simply with the word life. Try it out. Give it a whirl. Look up some Scriptures like Psalm 13:5 (“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.”) and Psalm 27:1 (“The LORD is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?”) or 2 Corinthians 6:2 (“For he says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation.”) and replace salvation with life. Is that what those messages we so often hear really offer? Life to the full? Does your heart rejoice when you hear about how much more you need to get right, that not only your life depends upon it, but your eternity? Does it seem as if that message paints the Lord God as a “stronghold of my life,” one who sustains and builds up and brings life to your bones? Does it sound like that message of “salvation” is one of help from God?

Because here’s what I read: “How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him.” That’s from Ephesians 1. Do you hear the passion? “High places of blessing.” Whoa. Really? Okay, my ears are pricked. What’s that about? Paul is exultant. I mean, he is practically jumping up and down in his sandals. Why? What’s got him so hooked, so excited? He goes on to say, “Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love…” And he continues, “…to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.” (Ephesians 1:3-6, The Message)

Look at the key words here. Blessed. Focus of his love. Whole and holy. Adopt. Family. Celebration. Lavish gift-giving. Beloved.

This ain’t your grandma’s salvation religion. We’re talking something wholly better and greater than we have ever yet dared possible.

In his daring book "So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore," Jake Colsen tells the story of working in a large, profitable church but feeling incredibly empty and dead inside. He encounters a man, John, who seems to know Jesus very personally, intimately. The conversation between them goes like this:

“You know what this whole thing is about, Jake?” John sat back on the bench,
crossed his arms over his chest and looked out across the playground. “It’s
about life—God’s real life filling your own. The life of God is not some theological abstraction. It is fullness…freedom… joy and peace of living in him that endures in the face of your worst circumstances. That life was in the Son and he came to share it with anyone who would put his or her trust in him."

“It’s not about working hard, big ministries or new buildings. It’s about life that you
can see, taste and touch; something you can frolic in every day that you live. I know my words fail to describe it adequately, but you know what I’m talking about. You’ve had moments like that, haven’t you?”

No Small Role

What is it about days upon days of busyness that steal so much of what it means to really live? I'm always amazed at how long I can go on fumes, coasting in my most important relationships – with God, with my wife, with friends.

One of the most astounding works or results of the Cross is that the veil was torn away. Nothing separates us any longer from that most treasured and long-desired place of intimate communion with Christ. He came to seek and to save what was lost – what was lost between us and Him, what was lost in ourselves, and what was lost between each of us. He came to rescue and restore all of the lost fellowship of heart that we gave away at the Fall. It has been more than restored, but we must act on that deep work. We must appropriate it and enter into it and ask the Spirit of God to bring it into and over us daily. Otherwise, we end up living in a kind of casual agnosticism where we begin to think of the world as a disappointing but benign place to live and of God as a distant Sovereign King but not an Intimate Friend.

The Invitation of Christ has snapped me back into reality, back into the recognition that there are only two kingdoms in this world, and they are both fiercely opposed to each other, (Colossians 1:13 - For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves…) and back into the reality of our place in it. (You might call the gospel of Christ simply Reality, capital R, in line with Brennan Manning's reference to Christ Himself as "the Really Real.")

This Invitation is an invitation to watch and be confounded by the way Jesus loves, and then be broken by our call to love the same, knowing that to walk where Jesus walks is to inhabit a far more dangerous and far more glorious (and sometimes far less noticeable) role in this world than we ever dared fear or hope for. And it is a role we share.

I recently watched the new X-Men movie. I'm not a huge fan of Marvel comics and all of that, but here's something that blew me away about the story. Essentially there were two factions (or kingdoms) in the X-Men world – those who supported the mutants and those who wanted to oppress them. And you had to be on one side or the other. Those who weren't were sort of just pawns, really, or extras to make the cities fuller and seem more lifelike. They were not important characters. The movie builds to a final battle, one to end all battles. Ultimately, it came down to (no surprise here) the "good mutants" fighting the "bad mutants," but neither side fought alone. Each character had his or her skill or specialty or gifting, and each needed the gifting and call of the others in the battle. Each had their own sphere of influence and authority over certain things in the world – one could manipulate metal, one could manipulate the weather, one could manipulate fire, one could run through walls… you get the picture. To watch any one of these figures you begin to think, "Wow. I'd want that power." And then you see another one and you think, "No, I'd want that one." But then there would be another. Soon enough you begin to realize that, as glorious as each of these characters were in living out their identities, and as powerful as they could be, they are humbled by the giftings of others. The ultimate reason, you see, that each of them had these powers to begin with is because they were needed.

What a picture of our place in the Kingdom of God. Our roles are not small. And neither are they solitary. We will be taken out so quickly if we begin to think they are. Casual agnosticism is a deadly poison, and our Enemy will use the subtle erosion of busyness and distraction (the two greatest weapons used against us in our culture) to slowly euthanize us away from Reality.
"We must reawaken and learn to remain awake," warned Henry David Thoreau, and he couldn't have been more right. How? He finishes with a call away from the busyness and distraction that our modern world offers and into the hope that is the gospel: "Not by mechanical aid [or we might say by the aid of technology or entertainment or programs], but by the infinite expectation of the dawn."

The dawn is coming, sooner than most of us think, when all will be set right, when all manner of things will finally be well. Until then, we walk before the Lord in the land of the living (not the sleeping or the dead, Psalm 116:9) with our eyes firmly fixed on the Rescuing One, whose life is our light in this dark place (John 1:4).

Personal and Free?

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
-Galatians 2:21, The Message

A living relationship with God that is personal and free. A living relationship, personal and free.

We have a lot going on in the church today, a lot of ideas of what it is to live the Christian life. But here, succinctly and directly Paul states the unequivocal, central purpose for everything we proclaim as believers – why Jesus came, what we are to do with it, where we are to go from here. Everything else we may do as believers falls second to that: evangelism, church attendance or lack of it, baptism, walking in our calling, feeding the hungry, Bible study – all of it. These are all fine things, and some very necessary, but they are second to a living relationship with God. That is central. A relationship with God often results in or overflows into these other things. But these are not first.

If I were to ask you, “What is the central reason you are here on earth?” what would you say? Or, maybe, “What does God want from you?” What would your response be? Think on that for a bit.

Don’t rush too quickly to the answers you’ve been given. Let yourself dream a bit. What do you hope the answer to that question would be?

Into Battle

Oswald Chambers once said that if you want to learn how to pray, read the Psalms. I tend to agree. You’ll find there those who really are the passionate and violent at heart, a quality that Jesus said you would need if you were to grasp ahold of the Kingdom (Matthew 11:12).

This morning I was praying a request that’s become commonplace for me, but so crucial, that I would be given intercessors – men and women who would be drawn to pray for my wife and I. It’s so, so vital for us at this point in our lives. With that in mind, I thought I’d stir up a bit of what Christ is leading us into praying for our lives together and for his Kingdom come through us. This is how we often pray for our friends, because it is how we need to be prayed for by them.

That we would enter into full work of the Cross (Gal. 2:20; Col. 2:13-15), the Resurrection (Rom. 5:17; 6:5-11), and the Ascension (Matt. 28:18; Eph. 2:4-6, 1 Jn. 4:4) of Jesus.

That the Holy Spirit to be so near to us, our very present and wonderful Counselor, Comforter, Strength and Guide (John 14:16, Acts 9:31, Eph. 1:13, John 15:16, John 16:13).

That we would have the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we would know God better (Eph. 1:17) and that we would keep in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). We want that we would walk in the fullness of the giftings given us (Eph. 4:8, Eph. 1:3) and that we would be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power (Eph. 6:10-18).

In the same authority as heirs, we summon angels on our behalf (these "Mighty One" as the Psalms portray them, Psalm 103:20) to serve as ministering ones of for us (Heb. 1:14). Remember that it only took two of these glorious creatures to destroy all of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19). Ask for them over us.

Don't buy into the lie that we're supposed to be bleary-eyed and listless, so we should just endure whatever comes to us with smiles. Some hardship is given us so that our hope and love may deepen and our reliance on Christ may grow, yes (Romans 5:3-5, 2 Cor 1:9). But, sadly, some we endure for no other reason than we haven't taken our place yet in Christ or that others haven't been raised to pray for us. Don't glory in that. Rather, pray. Without ceasing, pray.

I want life for my family and friends. More life, more and more life (John 10:10). I want all our brokenness redeemed and our hearts restored, all blindness healed, freedom proclaimed for the prisoners, and the Good News given to us each. (Acts 16:40, Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18-19). I want this. Want it with me, and beat the ground with your desire (John 1:38, 2 Kings 13:18-19).

Paul had his own intercessors, raising the shield of faith and sword of the Spirit on his behalf. He talks about his time in Asia and how some great oppression had him in despair and the grip of death. In his letter to the church in Corinth, he recalls this time, finishing with "On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers..." (found in 2 Cor. 1:8-11).

The Living God has raised up intercessors for us. We are they. One day we'll see that fully. One day we will strip our sleeves and bare our scars and say, "this I took in service of the King in that great battle..." The hits we take for others are for the glory of Jesus, and one day we will share in all of that. That's the invitation. In the meantime, we fight past what we can see, one in spirit, contending as one man for the faith (Phil. 1:27).

And we offer Christ our gratitude for your faith (and with it, vision), for your hope (and from it, courage) and for your love (and though it, passion) - 1 Corinthians 13:13.