Stop starving

"Your words were found, and I ate them, 

and Your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by Your name,
O Lord, God of hosts."
Jeremiah 15:16

I wonder how it was meant to be, before we fell for the words of a lie and the thing You made was broken. I wonder what it was like, the words leaping from Your lips into the void, one by one, each sound birthing a miracle?

When your God is a God whose every word breathes life, you'd think we would learn to listen. 

You'd think we would do anything for those words, sacrifice anything, go anywhere, do whatever it takes to gorge ourselves on the life-giving love of a good and gracious and powerful Creator. 

Oh, what we were meant to be. 

What we would be if we ate Your words like we were starving, clung to the sound of Your voice like it was the only thing we need. If we believed that every single word is what we are made for.

We have fled into silence, and instead of returning we starve ourselves with noise. 

Our hearts are ringing from the clamor of the lie: You are not enough.  

Your words are the lifeline You give us to draw us through the void. We think that You are absent, that You hide, but You are always here if we stop to listen. And when we listen, You call us by name, which is Your name, for we are Yours. 

Your word is who You are. It is joy, it is delight, and it is enough. It makes me enough for this place. It gives shape to suffering. It satisfies. 

It is the only thing that satisfies. 

Teach us to listen. To still. To breathe in Your breath as if our lives depend on it, for they do. 

Psalm 63

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;my soul thirsts for you;my flesh faints for you,as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live;in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,when I remember you upon my bed,and meditate on you in the watches of the night;for you have been my help,and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.

My soul clings to you;your right hand upholds me.

But those who seek to destroy my lifeshall go down into the depths of the earth;
they shall be given over to the power of the sword;they shall be a portion for jackals.

But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

Stop running from death

“Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the 

devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

It is not the fact of death that enslaves us. It is the fear of death. 

I am slave to the fear of the loss that death brings. Death of my dreams. Death of my possessions. Death of my loved ones. Death of my body. Losing these things means losing myself. It means pain and emptiness. It means suffering. 

But Jesus came and lost it all too, walked into that death and through that death and now death is the way to life, it is the pathway to the freedom he meant for us to have. If my life is hidden in Christ, and Christ sits above death and rules over death forever, then death can hold no fear for me. 

Yet I still fear it and run from it. Maybe if I would just enter into death, then I’d find the life I am looking for. Maybe if I really believed that I am set free from the fear of death, then I would be free. 

“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:6-12).

In order to have his life, I must also carry his death. The word “carry” means “to carry round, to bear about everywhere.” The word “manifested” means “to make visible or known what has been invisible or unknown . . . to make actual and visible  . . . . to be plainly recognized.”

We who live are always delivered to death. But in Christ death is not the end; it is the beginning. The beginning of his life in us. When I carry around his dying, when I bear the death everywhere, I also bear the life. And the more I am given up to the death, the more his life is visible, real, and recognized.

And during this time of Lent, we choose to die. As Julie Canlis says, we have as much to learn from emptiness as we do from fullness. There are things in my life that need to die in the desert. I come to a truer understanding of grace when I am in the desert. “Lent is a desert you impose upon yourself to make room for God.”*

We are supremely distracted. And God is calling us to leave the shadowlands and find life. Death is the way through the shadowlands. Death is not a destination. It is a way. It is not a terminus but a trail, a place we travel through, MUST travel through, to get to life. And I cannot offer life to others until I have died, and the dying is myself, and the resurrection is myself in him.

*Julie Canlis, The Lent Project, http://ccca.biola.edu/lent/#

Not dead enough

We got a bad batch of wood. 

The tree had been dead for a long time--or so we thought--and the split wood looks like it should burn nicely. That's what we need considering we rely on the heat of our wood stove for eight months of the year. But that's not what we got. 

The wood catches fire all right. The inside of the stove lights up with a promising yellow glow. But the fire gives no heat. The flames sputter as the wood sizzles and pops from the sap still lingering within. Eventually the wood burns up without ever warming our home. 

What a waste. What a disappointment to huddle before a fire that offers no warmth. What a frustration to sit in my cold house and watch all that promising timber burn itself out for nothing.

Honestly, lately life seems to resemble that wood. I often feel I am doing everything "right," everyone around me is doing everything "right," but life is a flame with no heat, a fire that pops and sizzles and never offers any true or lasting warmth. 

Am I being too melodramatic? Probably. But I can't help feeling there is some truth here. 

Be honest. Don't you ever feel, like I do, that you are just sort of smoldering? Like we're all going crazy trying to get this thing right and all we ever get is some smoke and some sparks, but no heat? And why are we going so hard, burning ourselves up for nothing? 
 
The best firewood comes from trees that are really dead, but not rotten. Our wood still holds too much of its own life to take in the life of the fire. It burns, but it burns without heat because of the sap inside.

Our wood isn't dead enough.

Bear with me here. Maybe it's a stretch to make this comparison, but I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I've been thinking about all the ways I feel stuck in life, in my faith, in relationships, and about the idea that God asks us to die to ourselves. Not just once, but every single day. 

He says the best kind of life--the only life, really--comes from death. We have to die in order to find that life. But we have this idea of death being the end. We cling to life and we try to pack every single thing we can into it before death takes us. 

But what if death is a beginning? What if we have to die to our own idea of life before we can understand God's? And what if we started looking for ways to die so that new beginnings could spring up? 

Maybe we aren't dead enough. Maybe we are trying to burn bright and hot for God, but we are clinging to a life he wants us to let go of. The old life in our core keeps us from taking on the new life of the fire. 

Maybe we are just afraid. We want the fire, but we don't really want to burn. Because then, really, what is left but ashes? And so we try to burn our own way, and the fire runs sappy with life that shouldn't be there, and in the end we are left with ashes anyway. 

Do we believe that God brings beauty from ashes, as he promises? What if we really trusted that true life comes through death after all? What if we believed our death to self would accomplish a beautiful life beyond imagining?

And if we never burn at all? We end up dead anyway, rotting away in the despair of this world, useless to everyone. 

Maybe this is a crazy metaphor. I only know that I am longing for heat. For the blaze of God's presence. I don't want to just smoke and smolder. I want to burn with him. I want to learn what is holding me back, what life I am clinging to that keeps me from going all in. 

Our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). I want to be consumed by him. 

This morning I stepped into the cold darkness of the living room and built the fire as I always do. I didn't have much hope. But for whatever reason, this wood began to burn bright and hot. My living room filled with warmth, and sleepy children gathered around, and this became a refuge, a warm, welcoming sanctuary from the cold outside. 

We could be that sanctuary, I think. We could burn hot and draw in a world weary with the cold. The question is, do we really want to?

How to die, part 2

"If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there my servant will be also" (John 12:26).

He has just raised the dead. Raised the dead. He let Lazarus lie in the tomb for four days just to remove all doubt of the miracle's authenticity. Now He has ridden into the city surrounded by adoring followers. His name is everywhere. His disciples spend their days controlling the crowds trying to get to Jesus.

It must be fun, riding that wave of fame and popularity. To be able to say, "Yep, I'm one of His chosen." "Yes, I was there when He raised Lazarus. In fact, I have seen almost all of His miracles."

These disciples have followed Him for three years, and if anything, they have learned He is unpredictable. But He is good. And now He is at the height of power. He is changing all the rules in their world. He's going to save them. He's the answer they have been waiting for. They swear they will follow Him anywhere.

We have the luxury of hindsight. We know that only a few days later, Jesus walks right into death, and almost all of His followers flee in terror.

He shattered their expectations. They did not understand a love that willingly gave itself up to suffering. They could not see beyond the now. They didn't know that sometimes He doesn't meet our expectations because He's going to exceed them in ways we cannot imagine.

He was part of a story so much bigger than their little world. And so were they.

It's easy to follow glamour. It's simple to attach ourselves to success and fame. But Jesus wants servants, not fans, and servants follow into death.

"Where I am, there my servant will be also."

Where is He?

In heaven, yes. And He's promised we will be there with Him. But obviously we are not there yet.

He is here, too. And if we follow, we will be where He is.

Where is He?

With the poor.
With the brokenhearted.
With the captives.
With the mourners.
With the desolate.
With the dying. (Isaiah 61)

If you know the story, you know that most of the disciples came back. They did follow. Right into death. Right into a lost and dying world. Into need. Into sorrow. Into anger and rejection and fear. These few men carried the candle of His hope, and it spread across the whole world.

We're all dying. It's how we die that matters.

We can walk into this death with our candles of hope, following where He is. Or we can cling to a life we are sure to lose. The question is, when we lose our life, what will be left?

It all depends on who we follow.

Resurrection Day

Stop, shattered one.

Still the pounding heart

breathe deep.

Unclench fists

drop the hammer

silence your shouting.

Your heart has had its way

hurled its hate

the force of your fear

fixed flesh upon the wooden beam

the scourge of your sin

stuck fast.

The darkness descended

and you shut your hope

in stone

desperately daring it

to defy your rejection.

Kneel, crippled knees.

Look upon your handiwork.

See the splinters of your fortress

stare into the gaping mouth of death

and find it empty.

Breathe deep.

Drink to the dregs

the goblet of your shame.

Then take My hand

and rise.