How to be radiant

She lived in a dark place. She knew Jesus, loved Him, walked with Him every day, but inside there

was this place of fear. This empty place, a place she didn't truly believe could ever be filled.

In that deep empty place, she was alone.

And so she raged against all the things that couldn't fill that place. Things she cherished but things that were not enough. Nothing was ever enough.

And of course those things failed her. People messed up. Those who loved her most disappointed her the most profoundly.

Everything failed her. Everything.

She longed for more of Jesus. She began to cling to the word, to eat, drink, and breathe the word, maybe more from desperation than from actual belief that it would help.

But there's this thing we discover when the word suddenly becomes our only lifeline.

It saves us.

Because Jesus, He really IS the Word, and when we breathe it in, we breathe in Him. And the word really IS power, and life, and light, and bread, and water, and it really saves us.

Why don't we believe this?

She went to the word and just started living there. And one day, in the midst of one of the greatest conflicts she had ever known, she thought, What if I just responded out of His love--right now, right in the mess? What if His love came out of me NOW instead of afterward, after I screw it all up, when I am looking back with regret?

And she opened her heart, and the most amazing thing happened. Love came into the empty place, and it filled her completely. And Jesus whispered, I can even do this. I can be enough for you in this place you thought would never find enough. 

Her heart was softened and it stayed soft. And the darkness around her did not get better. It got worse. But in that darkness she was this blazing light shining this Love that had changed her heart. I saw it, and I've never seen anyone so transformed. So filled.

Radiant.



That's what happens when we live in His word. Really abide. The word fills us up and floods out of us and we become what Jesus wanted for us all along. We become love.

He said that people would know by our love that we follow Him. But the thing is, we are all so full of fear and failure that we can't love like He did. And so the world sees just a bunch of messed up, prideful, fearful, angry folks who say they know the way but don't truly walk it.

Who would want to follow that?

His way is the way of the cross, and He bore that cross because He knew a Love great enough to overcome it.

The cross is nothing without the Love.

And we are nothing without the Love that is His word, that is Jesus Himself.

I have tried so hard to be His. But I wonder if I'm just a clanging cymbal. I wonder if I am carrying a cross, trying to be like Him, but doing it all on my own. Doing it without the Love that overcomes all the crosses.

What if we really believed that Jesus is the Word, and what if we filled ourselves up with that Word until there is no room for anything else, and all that flows from us is Him?

That's what we all want, but do we want it enough to let go of everything?

What if you jumped?

"The people who walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;

Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined" (Is. 9:2).

What gets me is that He knew all along how dark things would get. This Author who sits above time, who knows the end from the beginning, when He dreamed us up, He saw it. All the suffering that would follow the choice to give us freedom to choose Him. I wonder if it all unfolded in His mind like a movie script, the whole huge holy mess that is the story of us.

And yet He did it anyway. Breathed the breath of Himself into story and song, unleashed all the howling beauty and passion and sorrow and laughter and suffering and all of it--ALL of it--He knew.

This overwhelms. And it could easily lead one to anger and despair. Why? Why would He allow it? This hurts too much! we cry. We didn't ask for this. And maybe He seems cruel. Distant. Unjust. Certainly we do not understand.

But there is another way to see this story. It begins with an Author so full of love that He cannot keep it to Himself--He MUST love. He breathes this world into story and fills it with the people of His love, and He gives us freedom because after all, what is love without freedom to choose it? And yes the darkness descends and we, muddled and confused and choosing the wrong way, we lose the way and stumble along, and really to us none of this seems worth it. And so we climb to places we think are safe.

But climbing onto comfort cheats us of our true story.

The One who is very Love itself knows it is all worth it. He yearns over us, He whispers our names in the darkness, and when we lean out, when we grope for Him blindly, He comes. Love steps down and walks straight into our suffering, walks straight into the death we all must die, because Love is worth it.

We don't believe Him. We are filled with fear. We hold back and rage at our sufferings because we don't believe His love is worth the sacrifice.

But all great love stories are built on sacrifice, aren't they? And when we give up who we think we are, then we discover who He meant us to be all along.

Beloved.

I know it sounds all wrong. It sounds crazy and silly, and even if we say we believe it, very few of us are really living in the freedom that is Love. We would rather cling to our comfort in the darkness.

What if we really believe that His love is worth this story? What if we begin to trust an Author who knows the pain of living is nothing compared to the Love that rescues us in our dying? He knew what this story would cost us. What it would cost Him. Nothing less than everything. But what if we choose to enter in--to come out of the shadowlands and truly live this story?

The darkness is still dark. Unknown. And it costs us everything. But there is this light shining away in the distance, and there is a hand reaching for us in the dark, and I'm starting to see that taking that hand, jumping all the way into the darkness, there is a Love story waiting, a story I never dreamed could really be true.

I have seen it.

(To be continued)

A letter to my children: better than jellybeans

Dear Kids,

I know it doesn’t seem fair. The colorful plastic eggs and the baskets wrapped in shiny cellophane do look attractive. Those jellybeans certainly are delicious. And who wouldn’t want a giant chocolate bunny?

Believe me, I understand the longing for pretty. For new. For shiny and sugary.

It’s been that way from the start. Our eyes want what is nice to look at. Our flesh craves something better, something more.

The hype sounds so good. You want this. You need this. If you just get this—this ONE THING—you will be satisfied.

We tell ourselves we deserve it.

And so we take. We clutch and cling and stuff ourselves silly on all the things we want. We indulge.

But once fed, that beast is never satisfied. It will keep whispering, just one more thing. And in the end we are just tired from all that trying to get stuff. We are left with empty plastic shells and sick bellies and a question:

So what?

What was it all for?

The truth is, kids, you cannot hype your way to a better story for your life. No one ever found freedom by filling themselves up with stuff.

But there is something else.

All that hyped-up emptiness leads us to face the indisputable, tragic fact:

We hurt.

We are wounded souls. The Easter Bunny can’t fix that.

And we can’t fix it either. We tried, remember? So we sink down into that hurt and we live there. We blame. We blame ourselves, we blame others, we blame circumstances. We blame God.

The trouble is, we can’t blame our way to a better story, either.

Between the hype and the hurt is this thin path. It’s rugged and rocky and often hard to see. But it is the way out.

This is the path of hope. And hope is messy and gray; it is light and darkness mingled together. Hope is scary because it leads us into open places where anything could happen.

This is where Jesus lives. It’s the path He came to make for us, and it leads through hard places. It leads through death.

It doesn’t seem like walking through death would really be the answer, does it? It’s easier just to live in the hurt place or keep chasing the hype.

But every good story contains a death. Death is the only way to new life. And every good character must die to himself if his story is to find any meaning.

I know you don't want to believe me, kids, that dying is the secret to living, and I can’t tell you that the hype and the hurt won’t always be trying to pull you away. But Jesus came to show us how hope pushes through the middle. And when you really have hope that meaning will come through death, it sets you free.

That’s what Lent is really about. We pass through winter into spring. All the seeds that died and were buried start to push through the dark earth and breathe. And if you just filled up on eggs and bunnies, you would miss this story, this amazing drama you are a part of.

His death gave you life so your story can have meaning. And the little deaths you die each day, they can free you, if you will let them.

I’d fill you up with all the jellybeans in the world if it meant your lives would be meaningful and whole. But try as I will to stop it, I know the hurt is coming. And when it does, I don’t want you to sink down among the empty shells of a hyped-out life. I want you to know the path of hope. And I want to walk it with you.

* Thanks to Storyline speaker Mike Foster for the inspiration for this post.

A see-through story

First it was the IF:Gathering asking me, "If God is real, then what?" What could we dream, do, live? What could be possible in our lives? Then a few weeks later the Storyline Conference with "What kind of story are you really living?" Who are you, and what do you really want?

Doesn't it just seem like the story in our hearts doesn't match the one where bills must be paid and jobs worked and children and homes cared for? Doesn't it seem like the story writes us rather than the other way around?

I don't know yet exactly how to match up the story in my heart with the real story I am living. Lately I've been given a lot to think about. I hope to share it here, hash it out with you, figure out what our stories mean.

Today is the beginning of Lent. I never used to do Lent. Didn't even know what it was, really. But over the last couple of years Lent has become very important to me, and this year even more so.

Lent is a deliberate thing. It's a slowing and a stilling, an act of setting oneself apart in some way in order to see Jesus. To enter again into His story, thereby finding ourselves.

One Storyline speaker said, "Make your story translucent so others can see themselves through it."

Isn't that what Jesus did, wading into our muck and entering into the mess with us, living a see-through life that pointed directly to God?

We keep trudging along with our eyes to the ground, just trying to survive and keep our stories going forward. We forget that our stories are not our own. We forget that Jesus, He IS the story, and He's made us a part of it, and when we live His story with Him, it fills with meaning. And the more transparent our stories are, the more they invite others to tell their stories too.

Your story matters. Do you know what it is? What will the world miss if you don't tell it? During this season of Lent, why not enter into His story more fully and deeply? Who knows, in living His story, you might just find your own.