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.

Wade In

Easter Sunday

Feet Series, Part 4

Sometimes things are not what they seem.

Sometimes the things that plague us, the arrows that wound and bewilder and grieve, sometimes these are the deaths that lead to life.

There is One whose feet knew a better way.

Who looked down on the sobbing, suffering, sorrow of this wreck of humanity, stitched Himself to human feet and waded in.

His feet walked into all the dark places. They wore the dust and grime and weariness of each aching day. They were weighed by the impossible burdens of our brokenness. And the day His feet felt most the fatigue of His calling, that day He washed the feet of His friends.

And then His feet were broken, driven through by hate and hung with all the hopeless misery of all the ages.

His crushed feet held Him up for each agonized breath, until they could bear no more.

And these wretched feet, they are the most beautiful of all.

There are places my feet will never go. Because His already went for me.  

These are the feet at which I long to fall. To wash with my tears. To touch the scars and remember how they walked the pathways of hell so I wouldn’t have to.

And then, remembering that, maybe my feet will be beautiful too—the beautiful, broken feet that bear His name. The feet that are stitched to His grace. The feet that wade in.

Not for the Hasty

Feet Series, Part Three

Ann Voskamp wrote today, “Lent’s for the messes, the mourners, the muddled — for the people right lost. Lent’s not about making anybody acceptable to a Savior — but about making everybody aware of why they need a Savior.”

This Lent has been an emptying. Not my own choice, mind you. While I tried—and failed miserably—to fast from “some lush little luxury” (Voskamp again), God knew how I needed to get to the Cross.

It seems I am a slow learner. For all my words of surrender, it is the heart that speaks truth. And the way to my heart, it would seem, is through my feet.

My feet still hurt and I still fume with why. All that I want to do has become all that I cannot do. My heart rages as I choke on the fear.

Who am I without my feet?

Oswald Chambers wrote, “No one is ever united with Jesus Christ until he is willing to relinquish not sin only, but his whole way of looking at things.”[1]

I don’t want to look at things differently. I cling fast to the old me, the me who could do it all and loved doing it. I don’t understand this new way, the way of death. The death is too real, too painful.

I stand below my husband the climber and crane my neck as he scales higher and higher, and I long to be up there with him. I married an active, adventurous man, a man who makes a living with his feet. And the fear tries to strangle me as I feel he is getting farther and farther away.

Will I always be left behind?

And isn’t that what we all face—being left behind? When those pieces of ourselves that define us are suddenly removed, we stand here in this naked fear.

I am not enough.

And more. When all the dreams I built my life on seem to be crumbling away, what is left?

“It is not just a question of giving up sin,” wrote Chambers, “but of giving up my natural independence and self-assertiveness, and this is where the battle has to be fought. It is the things that are right and noble and good from the natural standpoint that keep us back from God’s best.”

I liked being strong. (Or thinking I was.) I liked being able. I liked not only fitting in, but conquering.

All that I had was good. But it was not the best.

“Desire without knowledge is not good—how much more will hasty feet miss the way! A person’s own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the Lord” (Prov. 19:2-3).

Not so hasty, child. Your feet are missing the way. Your raging heart will ruin you.

Have you forgotten the One who endured the cross?

“And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, ‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastens everyone He accepts as His son” (Heb. 12:5-6).

Hasty feet miss the way.

Hasty feet are quick to run after their own desires. They scale the wrong mountains and seek fulfillment in doing and conquering.

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ‘Make level paths for your feet,’ so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed” (Heb. 12:11-13).

How do we strengthen what is weak and feeble?

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength” (Is. 30:15).

He wants to heal us, give us peace, fill us with Himself, but we cannot be filled until we are emptied of everything else.

The way to my heart is through my feet . . . because my feet are my pride.

“It is going to cost the natural in you everything. Jesus said, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself.’ Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence” (Chambers).

The way of trust is not for the hasty.

This slowing is a blessing, God’s gift to me at Lent to show me my need of Him. To turn me in the right direction.

God hasn’t really taken away my feet; He has only given them a new calling. He isn’t interested in a mountain-conqueror. He is cultivating a daughter of the kingdom, one whose feet will approach “Mount Zion . . . the city of the living God . . . to Jesus . . . and to the sprinkled blood” (Heb. 12:22-24).

Do not lose heart.

He is leading you to the holy.

My hasty feet will probably keep seeking this earthly glory. But the One whose voice shakes the earth and makes creation crumble is calling us to more. “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and worship . . .” (Heb. 12:28).

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[1] Oswald Chambers, “The Relinquished Life,” from My Utmost for His Highest, 1935

The Only Race Worth Running

Feet Series, Part 2

To my friend, you know who you are. :)

 

“I have spent most of my life running away.”

This confession from my friend who feels she is being broken, who lives within a cloud of uncertainty in a life she never imagined for herself. She stopped running because there was nowhere left to go.

And now she has stopped and the past, heaving along as it ever does, has caught up to her in a mighty collision of hurt and shame and regret.

We were all born to run.

We were made for it.

But learning how to run isn’t easy and the race can be confusing. Some of us run away and some simply run in the wrong direction.  That kind of running, it hurts us, cripples us, in fact.

We run and run, so sure we are doing things right. But when feet are crippled by disease or the future is crippled by fear or today is crippled by yesterday’s choices, we stop.

And we see our crippled souls, serving fear and lust and ambition.

Moses’ fear took him running to the wilderness, where his feet wandered aimless for years. Then a blazing glory stopped him in his tracks and he met God.  “Take off your sandals,” said God. “This ground is holy.”

Stop, Moses. Let your dirty feet touch my glory. Let me show you your crippled soul.

 “I thought I was so strong,” said my friend. “But now I see I was never anything but a coward.”

It’s when we stop running that we realize we are lost. And all those things we ran after—those achievements and strengths and little heaps of trophies—all those things that once made us confident become little more than rubbish (Phil. 3). And we are just like a would-be pharaoh kneeling barefoot before a blazing bush.

Back in my track and field days, I wrote Hebrews 12:1-3 on a little card and read it before every race: “…Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.”

It seems somewhat ridiculous now that I thought those words were meant to propel me for seven minutes around a track, enduring little more than a charlie horse and the frustration of being slower than my competitors.  

Christ endured the cross.

His feet took him to places of want and need, hurt and rejection and shame, and then to the wood and the nail.

His feet were crippled for me.

His race was to death.

Stop running. Touch the holy.

Now, now, crippled one, now you can really run. Now you can “know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Phil. 3:10). Now you can forget the past, set aside the rubbish heap of trophies and “press toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14).

His call is always to death. But He is the master of bringing life from death, beauty from ashes, strength from weakness. I wonder if that is why crippled souls seem to trust Him more.

You have a race to run. Do not be weary or discouraged. “Do not run like a man running aimlessly . . . do not fight like a man beating the air” (1 Cor. 9:26). While everyone else is running the wrong way, run to “get a crown that will last forever” (1 Cor. 9:25).