Difficult

I am having a difficult time preparing for all that looms over me these days.  Selling a house and packing to move are two of my least favorite activities in life.  I think I'd prefer giving birth.  For one thing, giving birth never required me to make any decisions.  For another thing, people come around and help you when you give birth.  Although, I have to say, many people have been extremely kind in offering to come help me pack.  It's the winnowing before the packing that--literally--triggers my gag reflex.  Wrapping things in packing paper and tucking them into boxes is the fun part, if you can get to that point.

Anxiety, paralysis and diarrhea are my three most salient symptoms these days.

I find myself out in the yard, weeding my flowers, watering, deadheading, mixing up sprinkling cans full of Miracle Grow solution.

Because who would want to be working with this stuff--

(note that many of these boxes have never 

been unpacked from the previous move, 

or even moves previous to that one)

 if she could be outside with these beauties?

It's bittersweet to putter in the garden these days, knowing I won't be around to see it next spring.  My sweet woodruff is thriving, but I never got to see it bloom.  I wonder if sweet woodruff grows in North Carolina?

I try to use this question, as I struggle to make decisions:  "How sad would I be if this were lost in a fire?"  I try to think of these days as a nice, long opportunity to go around and salvage what is most important to me.

Then I find a big stack of Bernstein Bears books in a box, and picture myself reading them to grandchildren, and I get all confused.  Sometimes I feel injured, that I am being forced to give up my family's past, and I wonder why.  Why me?  But I know that when I start asking that question, I'm delving into self-pity and I need to stop.

Yesterday I found some old journals.  I sat down and read through one.  It was from 2002.  Some of the things I've written in the past make me cringe.  Others reassure me that God has always been with me and will continue to help me.  I guess I should be encouraged that I have grown over the years to where I can clearly see problems with my past thinking and assumptions.  Should I burn everything I am now ashamed of?  Or is it an important part of my journey?  What about the parts where I wrote about things that I have since learned on excruciatingly deeper levels?  It's the oddest sensation, to read something I wrote down in 2002, and realize that I relearned it last year, and thought it was a new lesson.

I don't really have time to blog.  I just want to end by alluding to Myers-Briggs personality theory and saying that I wish I had an SJ around to help me, a Samwise Gamgee.  All of us absent-minded, dreamy, distractible, indecisive, intuitives (N people) need capable, practical SJs to cheer us along.  Sometimes we resent being bossed by them (hence, I married a fellow NP), but in times when we have an overwhelming job to accomplish, we desperately need them.

Strengthen the weak hands,

and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who have an anxious heart,

"Be strong!  Fear not!

Behold, your God will come with vengeance,

with the recompense of God.  

He will come and save you."

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

~Isaiah 35:3-5

The newest thing

This rose is the newest thing in my yard, as of right now.

My nice new next-door neighbor told us we could have it, because she found it growing under a big old hosta in her front yard, and roses do better when they are not beneath hostas.

So Shawn dug it up, and I soaked its roots in a bucket for awhile, because after our monsoons from April through June, the rain stopped and the earth dried to a fairly uniform, crispy, pale yellow.  We (Shawn) dug a nice big hole, and we planted this rose with plenty of bone meal and water.  Shawn does all the work, but somehow, at the end, mine are the hands caked with mud.

I'll leave the fading, fragrant blossom alone tonight, and deadhead it tomorrow.

Another new thing, or, as they say, in other news, we are moving to North Carolina.  Yes, this will be a new thing.

True to form, when I ought to be painting, purging and packing, I am planting roses.

And blogging.

May the Lord have mercy.  May the Lord send me help.

How the mighty fall

So Joshua Harris is separating from his wife.

It's like a kick to the gut, you know?  I wasn't all-in with his dating (i.e. non-dating) advice, and even wrote a bit on the topic a few years ago.  But he did some other work that was quite good.  We even went to hear him preach at Covenant Life Church in Maryland once when we were in the area.

So, it is a sobering point to ponder:  The foremost voice on Christian dating and abstinence is separating from his wife.  NPR and Fox are all over it.

O Lord God, protect Your Name and Your Reputation.

Of course Joshua Harris is not the keeper of God's reputation.  God Himself keeps His reputation.  If we believe in the Sovereignty of God, we must believe that God Himself is separating Himself from certain aspects (at least) of what Joshua Harris taught.

The world is broken and messy.  I fret because I fear that the world will throw out everything Joshua Harris ever said, and the Bible and Christianity in general, rather than only the things that were wrong.  This happens frequently.  We call it throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  It seems that many, many people are unable to separate the objective truth of a statement from whether it came from a credible source.  Once a source is deemed unreliable, people automatically earmark everything from that source as erroneous.  This would be a more valid response if we were dealing with, for instance, water.  If the water from a certain spring is polluted, then it's polluted, and you have to avoid drinking it.  But the teaching from a man is not as homogeneous as a glass of water.  One man's voice can speak both true things and false things, one right after the other.  Additionally, even with a water source, there may have been a time when it was not yet polluted, and some people might have--sealed in their refrigerators--a few jars of water drawn before the pollution occurred.  Those jars of water are still safe to drink.  Similarly, the water source could be purified, and after the impurities have been filtered out, it may be perfectly healthy to drink the water again.  Likewise, a flawed teacher may still teach some things that are true.  You need to be careful to evaluate what you hear, but you have to be careful anyway, with every teacher (Acts 17:11).  There has never been a perfect teacher, except Jesus.  This is why we need to read our Bibles and think for ourselves, and not accept spoon-feeding from any man, neglecting our responsibility to evaluate in light of scripture.

Poor Joshua Harris is just a guy.  He wrote his first book when he was 21.  What does a 21 year old--who isn't even married--know about love and marriage?  Yet, he became a best-seller, and a Christian celebrity.  He rode high atop the shoulders of powerful Christian leaders, and catapulted into senior leadership himself, at a tragically early age, in a very large church.  1 Timothy 3:6 warns of the danger that an unproven, untested man can fall into pride if he becomes a leader too soon.  The passage specifically warns about new converts, but I think we can extrapolate to any who are less proven than others.  Churches should seek out the most tested and tried men available to be leaders.  Churches should not pick young, exuberant men for high positions of authority, merely to enliven the atmosphere.  Sometimes a church will need to appoint a new believer or an inexperienced young man, because there are no elder men able to serve.  But when there are elders--older men who are wise, available and willing--the younger men should wait and watch and learn.

One thing we may be able to winnow out of this debacle is that celebrity Christianity is dangerous.  Bandwagon Christianity is dangerous.  Christianity that derives too much influence from youth culture is dangerous.

If it's new, it probably isn't true,

and if it's true, it probably isn't new.

(~I'm going to credit this to Alistair Begg)

Last week in church, we sang A Mighty Fortress is Our God.  I remember not so many years ago, "worship leaders" who mocked this amazing hymn and called it silly, impossible to relate to.  However, as I sang the words with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, my heart quailed.  I wondered if I were strong enough to be vocalizing what it said:

And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear for God has willed His truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him,
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure...
One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them abideth.
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also,
The body they may kill; God's truth abideth still,
His Kingdom is forever.

In case the old fashioned words are hard to understand, I will give a (non-rhyming) paraphrase:

Even though the world is full of evil powers that work against us, trying to take us down,
we do not need to fear, because God plans for His truth to be proven by His power sustaining us in our weakness, making us strong and triumphant (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).  God's grace breaks the power of sin (Romans 5:20).
Satan is a fearsome enemy, but we do not tremble before him.
It doesn't matter how angry Satan gets, because he will not win in the end.
One word from God--Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh (John 1)--has triumphed and will finish Satan off at just the right time.
The Word--Jesus--is above all other powers and authorities and abides in victory despite demonic antics on earth.
Furthermore, Jesus fills us with His Spirit and grants us spiritual gifts to use in the battle of love/righteousness/life over selfishness/sin/death.  He is on our side, and He works in us, through us and for us (Romans 8:31-34).
We can let all earthly things go, everything that is seen and transient (temporary--see 2 Corinthians 4:17-18).  Our enemies can even kill our earthly bodies, but they cannot separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39).
We will live forever in paradise with God.

We need to remember the time-tested truth of the ages, from antiquity to this present day.  We need to look to the lives of those who finished strong, and see what we can learn about how they did it.  We must never think that we, in our modernity, have discovered some sacred truth that nobody else in history ever knew before; that is the epitome of pride.  We must respect our forefathers in the faith, the ones who persevered.  We can learn from new voices, but we must beware of people who impose a new structure on us.  Whether we are considering new rules, new freedoms, or even new music styles, we must hold them up to the standards God has given us:

1.  Does this add to or subtract from what God has said in His Word?  

(the answer must be no, neither)

2.  Is this a manifestation of God's grace and love for all people?   

(the answer must be yes)

3.  Does this promote humility or pride in those who participate in it?  

(the answer must be that it promotes humility and does not promote pride)

4.  Does this increase my awareness of my need for Christ, both fundamentally and moment by moment?

(the answer must be yes)

All four criteria must be met.  To accomplish that, the Spirit of Jesus Himself must dwell inside us, illuminating the way.

Thoughts about summer

(I planted gladiolas this year, 

but I should have staked them.)

Summer.

Summer is the time of heat and hard work.  Planting, weeding, watering, harvesting.

Summer is also the time for vacations.  Beaches, mountains, glasses of icy lemonade on the deck, laughter and stories around a campfire.

Lots of people love summer more than any other season.  Others find summer exhausting, stretching, draining.  Long hours of sunshine blend into long, hot nights of struggling with sweat-soaked bed linens.

If spring symbolizes our childhood, and autumn symbolizes the golden years of maturity, summer is the time in our lives when we are building families of our own.  New babies are like the first shoots of seedling flowers emerging from a garden plot.  Children who go to school and learn about the world, perform in beautiful concerts, and interact with stimulating friends are like stunning, blooming roses.

But what of the difficult days of summer?  We just came through an intense period of heat that frazzled grass and drove us all inside to air-conditioning.  Watering was imperative, and when we ventured out to do it, we sweated violently until we finished and went back inside, carrying the heat on our clothing and our skin, like hot loaves of bread drawn from an oven.

Some people's lives are like a beautiful year of strawberries, roses and apple harvest, while others experience the brunt of seeds that won't sprout, plants eaten by insects and mold, and brutally disappointing harvests.

Life is beautiful.  Life is hard.

God is good, and it will be okay in the end.

"I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten," says the Lord.  (Joel 2:25)

He will make all things beautiful

I guess Satan didn't like my last post, because I've been quaking since I wrote it.  Honestly, panic attacks get old, but I can't figure out how to avoid them.  Shaking hands, shortness of breath, a lump in my throat, abdominal spasms, pressure in my chest.  I sit and try to do deep breathing: smell the flowers, blow out the candle, smell the flowers, blow out the candle.  (Did you know that breathing in through your nose somehow seems to fill the lungs more deeply than gulping air in through your mouth?)

I pray.  I read Isaiah 35 again and again.  I feel like I need to stop reading and praying, and be physically productive.  My back goes out.  I dream about cats at night.

But.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; 

the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the the crocus; 

it shall blossom abundantly 

and rejoice with joy and singing . . . 

They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.  

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.  

Say to those who have an anxious heart, 

"Be strong; fear not! 

Behold your God will come with vengeance, 

with the recompense of God, 

He will come and save you."  

(from Isaiah 35)

Yesterday, Shawn and I went for a walk in the park.  You have to do these things while you can.  The park is beautiful right now, full of a lacy green ground cover beneath the trees, shady and mysterious.  Recently, on an evening walk, we saw three tiny spotted fawns, feasting on the abundance of summer.

Yesterday during our walk, Shawn pointed out massive, woody poison ivy vines winding upwards around tall trees.  He's had a couple of serious bouts with poison ivy, and respects its dangers.  "You wonder how the settlers ever made it," he mused, "when even the plant life was dangerous and against them.  Nature is not kind."

I've been thinking about how awful things can be, and struggling to make sense of the paradox.  A rapper has been arrested in Chicago on numerous charges, mostly clustered around child pornography, sex trafficking and sexual abuse of children.  Jeffrey Epstein has been doing the same for decades.  How do you make sense of a world where child sexual abuse can go on, where people collude to provide children to perverts for monetary gain, and money buys the rich their license to do whatever they desire, with apparent impunity?

How can God bring beauty from this kind of brokenness?  Sin spreads its web from one person to another, corrupting hearts and minds, bodies and souls. Why must there be such ugliness, such incredible darkness?

I can intellectualize it:  The glory of God shines brightest in the darkest places.  When we see how far we sink into degradation, we are all the more grateful for His great and powerful salvation.  He really can redeem even the most damaged and broken things.  He brings beauty from ashes.  This is the miracle of salvation.  I can see a logical case here.

Yet, when it gets too close to my own life, I struggle.  When tentacles of sin ravage my own people, and their eternal destiny seems to hang over the precipice of hell, I despair.  I cannot understand how such darkness and destruction will ever be cured and used to display the glory of God.

No, I cannot understand how.  But I must believe that He will.  It is not my job to know how God does His work.  I know that Jesus died beneath the curse of sin, the curse of the sins of all mankind in all of history.  He died to overcome, and then He rose from the dead, perfect, complete and holy.  Sin has no ultimate power anymore.  The grace of Christ broke the power of sin.

But why then is there so much painful fallout from sin?  We have hope in our eternal glory to come, but today we hurt.  Today we cry.  Today our hearts pound with fear in anticipation of the pain we will still experience until we are released from this place.

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, says the Lord.  (Joel 2)

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts, says the Lord.  (Isaiah 55)

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.  Amen.  (Ephesians 3)

We have to go back to the things we know:

1.  The world exists.  We exist.  Space and time and matter exist, and they had to come from some Source.  Nothing comes from nothing.  We are here, and we are conscious, and we crave love and joy.

2.  The world is full of awe-inspiring beauty, and people long for beauty, love, joy and meaning.  This indicates that the Source, the Creator, is good.

3.  The world is broken and full of pollution, pain and death.  Crime, disease and disaster loom everywhere.  The beautiful world is a fearsome place.  Something bad has happened.

4.  There is a book, unlike any other book.  Most people never read it, or only read small bits and pieces of it, although many people think they know what it says.  Many people hate it without giving it a chance, without thoroughly examining it.  It is unlike any other book, because it is a collection of writings spanning approximately 2000 years.  Although we aren't exactly sure who all the writers are, we are quite sure of many of them.  Around 40 different people wrote from different times and places, over the course of many centuries.  All their accounts fit together to tell one story, of a God who created the Universe and placed people in it, to display beauty and glory and love.  The people rebelled and didn't trust their Creator to know what was best for them.  They messed with the Laws of the Creator (which are similar to, but different from, what we call the "Laws of Nature"), and in so doing, they brought brokenness, decay and death into what had been a place of perfection, abundance and life.  But God did not give up on them.  He has been implementing a plan of rescue and redemption ever since His promise to send a Son who would crush the serpent's head, in Genesis 3:15.  This book--The Bible--taken as a whole, is the story of that Son, of Jesus Christ, Messiah.

5.  Jesus was born, and time was organized around His coming.  Whether you call it BC and AD, or BCE and CE, it pivots at the time when Jesus walked the earth.  A simple carpenter from Galilee is the fulcrum of time.  Imagine that.  How can it be?  Only because it is God's plan.

6.  Jesus was a humble man, no noble birth, no riches, no political support.  He spent His days on earth healing people, feeding them, comforting, teaching and offering hope to the hopeless.  He did not garner support among the influential.  He went to the poor, the needy, the sick and the cast-off.  He challenged the status-quo, those who were using religious systems for personal gain.  They were very angry with Him for threatening their power structure, so they had Him crucified.  They could not prove any real charges against Him, so in the end, they crucified Him for claiming to be the Son of God, which was exactly who He was, although He was reluctant to talk about it.  We have documented evidence that He lived and died.  After His death, His crucified body disappeared and was never found, although He folded His grave clothes neatly and left them behind.

7.  Jesus, who is God, who was present with God at creation and is the source of life and beauty (Colossians 1), this Jesus died, surrendered to death, willingly . . . because if He had not surrendered willingly, nobody could have possibly killed him.  This is the paradox that we cannot understand.  How did the death of Christ, the murder of God Himself, bring life and redemption to the sons of earth?  We do not understand how it works, but the record states, and we believe, that He is risen from the dead, seated in glory on the throne of heaven.

We do not understand how it works, but it does.  And somehow, in a similar way, all the ugliness and horror that we live with will be okay someday.  He will sort it out, and in His perfect, life-giving, cleansing, healing hands, it will become beautiful and whole.  This is our hope.  This is the eternal weight of glory that we wait for, expectantly.

Faith is thanking God for what He is going to do in the future,

and we can rest secure, because He is outside of time, so from where He sits, it is already all done.

God: always good, always loving

Today I found this quote from John Piper on Instagram:

Even though God is displeased when His people sin,
He never looks on us with contempt.
He's always for us, never against us.     ~John Piper

This is balm to my soul.

I live in fear of doing things wrong and being punished.  This is a fairly constant fear.

When I stop and think about it, I know it is not right; it is from the enemy.

Jesus did not come to condemn the world.  He came to save the world, in love and mercy, because He knew we were trapped in sin, in desperate need of rescue.  (John 3:17)

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.                    ~1 John 4:18

What then shall we say to these things?  If God is for us, who can stand against us?     ~Romans 8:31

The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?          ~Psalm 118:6

Right now, Shawn and I are heading into some big transitions, big adventures, big undertakings, big jobs.  My body is weary and my heart is timid.  I have a morbid dread of walking outside the will of God and being crushed.

But God is not a God who crushes those who desire to follow Him.  God loves His children and works all things for our good, to form us into the image of Christ and beautify our souls.

God is love.  God is good.  God is merciful, compassionate and gracious.  He does not treat us as our sins deserve; rather, He remembers we are dust and shows compassion to those who fear Him (Psalm 103).

He will never leave me nor forsake me.  Jesus is with me.  He did not leave us as orphans, but came, through His Spirit, to indwell us and fill us, to live in us and empower us.

The Spirit of Jesus lives in me.  Christ in me, my hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

A couple of days ago, I heard Ann Voskamp say, "God is always good, and I am always loved."  I need to keep things as clear as possible in regard to where the love originates, and I am partial to the active voice, so I am editing this statement, and keeping it close to my heart:  God is always good, and He always loves me.

God is always good, and He always loves me.

This truth is medicine from the leaves of the tree of life, for the healing of souls.

But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.     ~Romans 5:8

He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?     ~Romans 8:32

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.     ~2 Peter 1:3-4

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?   ~Psalm 27:1