The last day of June

The last day of June is always bittersweet, because it signifies that the summer solstice is past, and we are embarking upon the half of the year wherein days ever shorten.

June 30.

It's Duffy's birthday.  His first birthday.

We spent the last week with some of our kids, and I remember being their age, even though everything was different.  Differences not withstanding, there is something universal about becoming an adult, and it seems strangely familiar to watch them navigating their world as we navigated ours.

Driving home across the USA, a little before twilight, I looked out at the cars humming along the interstate around us, a sparse collection, illuminated by the slanted brightness of the nearly set sun.  I saw a red car and a white car; they looked like something out of a movie, and I thought about my parents being young adults, and how they figured out how to live in their world.  And then we came along.  And now we are passing the baton to yet another generation.

Mostly, it makes me tired to think about these things, the gains, the losses, the memories that nobody will remember.

And yet, there is hope, because God remembers it all.  He has stored our tears in bottles.  He has observed every baby birthed into this beautiful, terrible, fearful world, and He has paid attention as tiny flowers bloom on mountainsides.  He has seen tornadoes rip giant trees out of the ground and watched the waves of the sea crush mighty ships.  He was there before electricity was harnessed, before radio waves and TV broadcasts, before the internet.  He will be there long after Artificial Intelligence crashes and burns, and the computerized banks of the world have fizzled into the nothingness that they really are.

Our hope is in the Lord, God of heaven and earth, Creator of time, space and matter.  He is our hope and our glory to come in that day when the summer solstice will never end.

Blooming

Once when I was young, my Grandma Rainbow asked me what I would like to be when I grew up, and I remember telling her, "I would like to be a mother and a writer."  I do not recollect her response, but I'm sure it was in some way affirming, because she was an affirming person, and also, if she had not affirmed me, I'm sure my shock would have been memorable.

All through my youth, novels roiled in my imagination, and even during my pregnancies and years of child-rearing, I fell asleep many a night while mentally composing descriptions of days in the lives of my characters.  "Some day," I told myself, "some day, I will have time, and I will write my novel."

The day is now here.  I have time.  I wake up morning after morning with the wide expanse of a day before me, house mostly clean, bills mostly paid, laundry mostly done, often even with appetizing leftovers waiting in tupperware in the refrigerator.  Yet, when I sit down to write, the novel is gone.  My characters have evaporated, the only remains being empty spaces where my mind used to hold names, faces, personality traits, wardrobes and complex histories.

So I try to prime the imagination with journaling, blogging, perusing paint colors for interior design, reading articles about psychology, trying new recipes (I have learned to do the most delicious ribs), and gardening, which is probably the most helpful, but if I have a thought out in the garden, it is a long way to clean fingernails over a computer keyboard.

The other day I was considering my bedraggled Jacob's Ladder plants, which didn't bloom last year, and don't look likely to bloom this year, either.  I was wondering about moving them, and whether they would flourish better in a new spot, or if the journey would kill them.  I recently killed a languishing peace lily by repotting it.  Well, it's not completely dead yet, but it doesn't look good.  It did great for the first two years, until we had our furnace replaced one February on a particularly frigid day, and the house got really cold, and then--to air out the toxic fumes from the new furnace unit--the repair guy told us to open the front door for awhile, thus precipitating a ferocious rush of sub-zero wind near the peace lily's spot in the corner of the living room.  Between the freezer burn and the bad air, the poor plant has never been the same, although for awhile it suffered along and even threw up a bloom now and then.  I thought I could maybe revive it with some new fertilizer-infused potting soil, but it seems to have been a doomed endeavor.

Which got me thinking, in general, about how different plants do well in different places.  I had a rhododendron when we lived in Liverpool, and for years it slumped, stunted in the front yard.  Finally we moved it to the backyard, left of the deck, near the spigot for the hose, where it grew and bloomed for a period of time.  Then, although it kept growing, it stopped blooming for a number of years.  The summer we moved away, it produced one last, lovely flush of blossoms for me.

Peonies and coneflowers do well in sun.  Impatiens and hydrangeas do well in shade.  My sweet woodruff seems happy in the shade, as do the hostas (of course), and the lavender is surviving, although not with much gusto, in partial shade.

People are like plants.  Different environments have different effects on different people.  Just as different plants have different needs for sunlight, water, and soil density or pH, people have different needs for encouragement, exhortation, and even education.  You have to find the right spot for things, where they will thrive and flourish, and be appreciated.  Black eyed Susans are welcome in some places, but not others, and people can be like that, too.

The church should be about the business of helping people find their spot in the garden of life, the place where they can grow and flourish and provide something of value for others.  This is the great metaphor of the body of Christ, and the truth of spiritual gifts.  We need to help and encourage one another in our use of spiritual gifts.  Sometimes, we even need to sacrifice to enable someone else to exercise a spiritual gift.  Supposing I plant two types of flowers that are supposed to grow to roughly the same height, but one of them grows higher, and the other grows lower, than the label predicted.  If the taller plant is in front of the lower plant, it will shade it out and kill it, but if the lower plant is in front of the taller plant, they can both take their place, blooming in the garden.  We must be willing to back up for those who need to bloom in front of us in life; this is important.  It is an expression of grace and humility, and it prevents us causing great damage.  When we do it right, the cumulative effect is grand and glorious.  God wants to enjoy all of our faces.

A dandelion can grow anywhere, in any light condition, and in any soil, even between bricks or in the cracks of concrete.  Dandelions are a cheerful yellow, and they are even edible, leafy greens packed with vitamins, medicinal roots and blossoms, all-around hearty and useful.  However, they are invasive.  Where they grow, they take over, and kill the plants around them.  If you let the dandelions go in your yard and garden, soon you will have only dandelions.  In churches, people who are insensitive to the beauty of differences can be like that.

I am not advocating the tolerance of unrighteousness, but I think we must be careful what we call unrighteous.  Righteousness is God's way, and His ways are higher than our ways.  His ways can be hard to comprehend.  He creates tender pansies, temperamental hydrangeas and roses, trusty boxwoods, tractable obedient plant, tough daylilies, timid begonias, and triumphant zinnias.  All of these plants will thrive in the right place, under the right conditions, with the right companions.  Likewise, any of them can perish in a bad location and with threatening competition.  God loves them all.  He loves us far more.  He is for us.  He is on our side.  His will is that we all flourish in His grace, reflect His glory, and experience His great love both for us, and passing through us to others.

Some people are quiet, and some are exuberant.  Some people laugh a lot, and others are more serious.  Some people are quick to believe, and see things simply at face-value.  Some people labor over ideas and wrestle with doubts.  Some people need to take time to envision things internally, while others need to learn by doing and experiencing.  Some people like to decide and get to work, while others like to explore and compare all possibilities.  Some people tend to look forward and plan, while others tend to look back and remember.  Some people like to work through things in a group, while others prefer to process privately.  Some people are good at physical jobs, and others are better at intellectual tasks.  Some people tend to be very careful, while others are willing to take a risk.  These character qualities are not intrinsically good or bad, only different.  God loves us all and wants us to cooperate and learn to live together, appreciating one another.

We need love, compassion and humility more than we need anything.  Interestingly, love, compassion and humility are virtually the same thing.  The Bible tells us God is love.  I leave you to work out the connections.

This isn't what I meant to write about, but it was in my head, perhaps channeling through one of the spaces formerly occupied by a literary character who was never brought to life.

It's okay.

I'd like to find my place to grow and bloom, but until I do, maybe I could have the privilege of helping a few other people find theirs.  When someone isn't thriving, that someone might just need a new environment, new companions, and better soul-food.  Oh God, let me be an agent in Your program for transplanting souls to where You know they need to be.

Incidentally, I once wrote a short story called Blooming.  I have no idea what ever happened to it.

The Promises of God

You often hear people tell you to remember the promises of God.

The thing is, we don't often seem to be clear on what the promises of God are.

Some folks seem to think that God's Promises apply when they want something, and they find a particular phrase somewhere at random in the Bible, appearing to address the thing they want, and they claim this phrase as God's promise to them, personally, without even taking the context into account.

For instance (I feel like I've seen this a lot), a person with cancer might gravitate to Jeremiah 17:14--"Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me and I shall be saved, for You are my praise,"--and then claim that this is a promise from God, that He is going to heal the cancer.

Well, God does promise to heal the cancer.  When God brings down the New Heaven and the New Earth, everything will be completely healed.  Everything in the new creation will be free from the disastrous corruption of the sin that infects the old creation.  All things will be new, and there will be no more death, tears, or pain.

Please understand me.  I am not saying that people get cancer as a punishment for their sin.  I am saying that cancer exists because when the original sin of Adam came into the world, it tainted everything, and all the healthy, whole things became prone to disease, decay and death.  Some people get cancer as a result of making foolish lifestyle choices, and other people live careful, wise lives, and still get cancer.  Just as all people--the best and the worst--die, so all people--the best and the worst--are at risk of suffering cancer, or any number of other ailments and calamities.  This is the consequence that fell on creation, on the day when Adam and Eve decided it would be preferable to go their own way, rather than God's way.  Sin precipitated a curse on all creation.  We are all under the curse, regardless of how hard we may or may not try to escape it.  The only escape is deliverance by Jesus, who came to battle sin and undo the curse.

The promise of God was that He would undo the curse of Adam.  The grace of God, demonstrated when He sent Jesus, undoes the curse of sin.  This is the great promise.  This is why the Apostle Paul wrote that all of God's promises find their yes in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20).  A time is coming when sin will be undone, and righteousness will reign, and we will live in health and life and light and glory, for all eternity (1 Corinthians 15, Revelation 21-22).

Promise #1:  God will undo the curse of sin, and make a new creation, a perfect Kingdom of righteousness.

Until then, those who believe in Him will experience grace, but grace is not always aligned with our natural desires.  It can't be, because our natural desires are selfish, and God's grace is perfect.  Our natural desires can be overwhelmingly strong.  Sometimes, when we dearly love a friend or family member, we don't even recognize our selfishness, because we think we are focused on the person we love.  But we are actually focused on our need for the person we love, or our goals for the person we love, or our relationship with the person we love.  Because we think we are focused on the person we love, we completely miss the truth of our selfishness.

God's grace doesn't indulge selfishness in His children.  God will do what it takes to purify us.  This is another one of His promises.

Promise #2:  God will discipline and teach His children, training and transforming them to become humble, and thus Christlike.  (2 Corinthians 3-4, Philippians 3-4, Hebrews 12)

This is both wonderful, and sobering.  It is painful to become Christlike.  I think it is something like athletic training.  I remember doing the uneven bars in gymnastics, in gym class at school, and getting huge, swollen, purple bruises on my inner hip bones.  I remember being so sore after certain stretches or runs in gym class, that I limped the next day.  I never pushed through to become an athlete.  But in God's Kingdom, He doesn't give up on us.  He who began a good work will be faithful to complete it.  Some days, in our process of spiritual transformation, we find ourselves lying on our faces in a pool of tears, because it is hard, very hard, to become holy in an unholy world.  But the Lord God sticks with His children, actually indwelling us with His precious Holy Spirit to keep us going.

Promise #3:  God will never leave nor forsake His children.  (Matthew 28:20, John 14-16, Romans 8:31-39, Hebrews 13:5-6)

The whole point of everything is that our connection with God, our fellowship with God, our relationship with God--whatever you want to call it--was disrupted by sin, and God is at work, fixing the problem, eradicating the sin, and restoring us to an intimate, fulfilling relationship with Himself.  His goal is to live with us in perfect love forever.

Unfortunately, sin placed an impassible chasm between us and God.  God created us to love Him and to be loved by Him.  Sin made us stop loving Him, and sin makes us unable to love Him.  We consistently choose sin; we consistently choose not to love God.  Yet, in spite of this, God has always continued to love us and to work for our good, to restore the fellowship humanity once enjoyed with Him.  "Happily ever after" is the true happy ending that we can confidently look forward to, in the Kingdom of God.

Here is a collection of additional promises:

God doesn't promise us a comfortable life in this world, but He promises to comfort us in the difficulties of this life, and to help us hold onto hope for the glory and goodness of our eternal life to come.

God doesn't promise us riches and prosperity in this life, but He promises us the riches of His glorious inheritance, the riches of His glory in Christ, the riches of His unfailing love for us.  He promises reconciliation through the blood of Christ, shed for us.  The Almighty Creator of the Universe promises to forgive our sins, to adopt us as His own sons and daughters, and to make us heirs with Christ, inheriting all the glory of heaven.

God doesn't promise us health in this world, but He promises perfect and complete healing in the next life, the life that lasts forever.  This healing goes far beyond physical ailments.  Our physical pain will be gone, but so will every disappointment, every trauma, every sin, and every emotional scar.  Our minds and souls will become as perfectly whole as our backs and our knees.

God doesn't promise beautiful homes or fancy vacations or jewels or cars or rising stock prices or good grades in school or fame or achievement or opportunities to complete bucket lists, but He promises to fulfill us.  He promises that we will find our perfect purpose and calling in Him, and He promises spiritual gifts from His Spirit, gifts that come to us through His presence in us, gifts of super-natural power that will enable us to live out the calling He has for us.

God promises that He hears our prayers, attends to them, and answers according to His perfect will.  God never promises to give us whatever we want.  He does, however, promise to give us exactly what we need, His best answer.  God's best might not be what we wanted, but it is best, and as we mature, we learn to trust Him with this.

God promises that we will find our joy in Him, that He is good, that He is full of love.

He promises that those who look to Him are radiant, their faces are never covered with shame.

God promises to forgive our sins if we will only ask, and He promises to cleanse us from unrighteousness.

He promises the power of the Holy Spirit and abounding hope.

He promises peace.

God promises that He is who He says He is,
the all-wise,
all-powerful,
omni-present,
eternal God
of light and life and love.
He promises that if we walk away from our selfish desires
and seek Him and follow Him,
it will be absolutely worth it, far beyond worth it.
We will not be disappointed.

We may face many disappointments, but we will not be disappointed in God.

It's that same old paradox that keeps rolling around:
You have to give up your desires to find fulfillment.
You have to admit your guilt to be found innocent.
You have to die to this world to live in the next world.
You have to admit you have nothing in order to gain everything.

God promises that He loves us,
and He has wonderful things planned for us,
things far beyond anything we could ask for or imagine.

That's what God promises.

How does God see us?

So many times, I've heard people teach this:

When God looks at you, He doesn't see your sin.  
All He sees is the righteousness of Jesus, covering you.

It has never settled well with me.  I am repulsed by the idea that God could somehow fail to see something that is true, even if it is my sins and shortcomings.

Just recently, I heard another famous, respected preacher say something about this, and I struggled.

God knows everything.

And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.   ~Hebrews 4:13

God knows everything.

Psalm 139 tells us that God has searched us and knows everything about us.  He sees everything we do, and knows everything we think.  Yes, He knows our thoughts.  In fact, He knows what we are going to say, before we even say it (presumably even when we do not, when unplanned words slide off our tongues like an avalanche of soiled laundry).

Isaiah 46:10 tells us that God makes known the end from the beginning, or (in other words) from the beginning, He declares what the end will be.

There's a clue there.  From the beginning, God knows the end.  This is in line with Psalm 139:4, which explains that He knows what we are going to say.

It isn't as though He "doesn't see" our sin.  God sees, knows and completely understands everything.

Being creatures who are locked in a time-space continuum, it is nearly impossible for us to imagine an existence outside the boundaries of time. Yet, by the grace of God, He has given us the ability to begin to conceptualize such a thing.  God is eternal, and He inhabits eternity, which means that He is eternally present in the past, present and future, all at once.  It's mind-blowing, but even so, He can move our minds to try to comprehend these kinds of things about His existence, factors completely outside our experience and framework.

God does not foretell the future.  He knows the future.

He knows the future by sight, by experience, because He is in the future, just as He is simultaneously in the present and the past.  Yes, He is present in each moment with us, but He is not limited to the present moment the way we are.  He is in every moment, and He is able to process everything that happens, right along with everything that will happen in the future, never forgetting all that has happened in the past.

In fact, He does not only perceive and process all that happens.  He authors and ordains all events.  Therefore, He not only knows by experience, but He knows by design.  Back to Isaiah 46:10-11, God says, "I will accomplish all my purpose.  I have spoken and I will bring it to pass.  I have purposed and I will do it."

God can proclaim these things because from where He stands, unbounded by time, it is already accomplished.  He is perfectly faithful, and perfectly trustworthy, because He is almighty and eternal.  God can make promises that are altogether certain, because in His realm, He sees them completed.  However, He is completely wise and kind, and He knows that we cannot see what He sees; we do not see the completion yet.  He knows that we are locked in our present moment, and He has astounding patience for us as we fret and squirm under the bonds of time, wondering if He will come through.

Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?  ~Matthew 14:31

In our experience, we wait and worry and wonder.  At the same time, God is contentedly full of peace and joy, because He sees the whole of time and space, history, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology and philosophy in one, big gestalt creation that He has pronounced as very good.

This is amazing.

And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.  ~Genesis 1:31

The more I ponder this, the more I think we are still in the sixth day, and the sixth day is the climax of God's story, the part where the evil villain rises against God's good creation, and God prevails over this evil, through the powerful paradox of the cross of Christ, Christ--our eternal Hero and Rescuer.  Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior rises up in the sixth day to conquer sin and death forever.  It is very good, this epic plot that preceded all epic plots.  The best story.

And that would lead us to the Seventh Day, the day of rest.

The writer of Hebrews mysteriously alludes to this in chapter 4, speaking about certain faithless ones who will never enter God's rest on the seventh day.

The Seventh Day: God is already there, and Jesus rejoined the Father there after He completed His work of redemption.

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.  After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. . . when This Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God.  ~Hebrews 1:3, 10:12

Jesus mediated the New Covenant in His blood, and then He sat down and rested.  All who put their faith in Jesus will likewise rest.

There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.  ~Hebrews 4:9

The Biblical writers could write about our anticipated Sabbath rest from the very first chapter of the Bible, because God, who knows the end from the beginning, was already there.  However, the mystery has unfolded over hundreds and thousands of years to the inhabitants of earth, and we have only gradually come to understand what it means that all of God's promises find their yes in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20).  We will join our Lord in perfect fellowship for that glorious, eternal Seventh Day.  Until then, we practice every Sunday we can!

But this is about how God sees us, and what He sees when He looks at us, and whether our sin is hidden by the blood of Christ.

I think our sin is hidden by the blood of Christ, and God does see the glorious perfection of Christ when He looks at us.  But it is not as simple as a covering, or a lens, or a shield.  It is not about being covered by a veneer of perfection under which we continue to indulge in sin.

When God, who declares the end from the beginning right from the start, when this omniscient, eternal God looks at me, He sees the gestalt me.  He sees me as one being, with all my past, present and future, conglomerated into one, glorious, redeemed child who belongs to Him through the atoning sacrifice of Christ, purified and made righteous by His Spirit.

The Apostle John writes, "When He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure," (1 John 3:2).  And the Apostle Paul tells us that we are being transformed into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).

In our experience, this is a time-consuming process, sometimes an excruciatingly slow one.  But from God's point of view, it has already happened, ever since eternity past when He wrote our names in His Book of Life, when He predestined us for redemption through Christ before the creation of the world (1 Peter 1:20).

When God looks at us, He sees what we will be as though we already are, because He is not locked into this present moment with us.  Because His ultimate purpose is to perfectly conform us to the likeness of Christ, God even now sees Christ in us.  It's not an illusion or a disguise.  It's future reality.

When God looks at me, He sees what is absolutely true.  He sees the finished work of Christ made manifest in me, while He simultaneously sees my sin, my sorrow, my desperation for a Savior, and my present hope that the Holy Spirit is at work in me.  He sees my brokenness, and my restoration process, and my finished perfection by His power.  He sees His artistry and His therapy and His power and His completed purposes, all at once.  He is glorified because I belong to Him, which demonstrates both His goodness to me, and the all-surpassing glory of His grace.

You too.  He sees all these things when He looks at you, knowing that you are His, and you are responding to His grace exactly according to His plan.

Oh Lord, thank you for your sovereign power in our lives.  Lead us to consciously, purposefully rest our faith in you, as we find our rest in you, and we look forward to that seventh day of perfect rest.


Related:

The Eyes of God

Righteousness (part 1)

Righteousness (part 2)

Musings after walking the dog

Today I was walking Duffy,
and the wind felt the same as it had on the day Schubert died,
and it made me cry.

I don't think I was ever able to write about that, and I don't think I can yet, not all of it.  But today I remembered the wind on that hard day, and the way it felt and smelled like God was in it, quiet yet strangely sparked with vitality.  Schubert was in acute pain and distress.  I had taken him out to the front yard.  He stumbled, and lay down in the overgrown grass with his soft little nose turned up to the breeze, the God-breeze, like he was saying that he was ready to go home.  I squatted in the yard behind him, trying to keep breathing, as the tears ran down my face, the way they are now. 

O God, why death?  I know why.  Because of sin.  Jesus wept over death.  Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb.  Jesus wept for all the pain and suffering and sorrow that have fallen on the sons of men.  Then He went to the cross, and died a ghastly, tortuous death, to save us from the folly of our wicked hearts, from the curse of sin we have brought down on ourselves.  Maybe that day outside Lazarus' tomb was part of what galvanized the humanity of Christ to be strong enough, offended enough, to take on the foe through God's astonishingly paradoxical battle plan.

This world is so beautiful, so many leaves swaying in the sunlight and the fanciful currents of the breezes that ebb and flow around us.  Birds chirp.  Water sparkles.  The sky spreads wide and blue.  Strawberries ripen.  God, you made it all, and you delight in it, and you are going to redeem it for perfection, make it all new, unsullied by the stains of rebellion.  You are going to fix all of creation for us, and you are going to fix us, make us fit for your new, perfected heaven and earth.  You will bring it all together and inhabit it with us.  This is our hope if we will only put our faith in you.

O God, sometimes it seems like there is too much, too much to bear.  Sometimes it even seems as though there might be too much for you to handle, but that could never be true.  Thank you that nothing is impossible for you.  Thank you that all things are possible for you.

Rescuer
Redeemer
Merciful Savior
Artist of all Creation
Almighty Lord of the Universe
Commander of Hosts of Angels
Healer
Deliverer
Eternal Father
Promise Keeper
Tender Shepherd
The One who Loves me.

Jesus, you love me.  Help me understand and believe how much you love me.  I desperately need your mercy and your love.  And the people I love desperately need your mercy and your love.  

Jesus, you have already poured yourself out for us, 
but we pray that in the pouring out, 
you will also pour in.  
Use a funnel, Lord.  Pour your Spirit into our hearts, into our very bodies, that we may know you, trust you, reflect you, and shower you into the world around us.