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.
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