The gift of belonging

You will never really enjoy other people, you will never have stable emotions, you will never lead a life of godly contentment, you will never conquer jealousy and love others as you should until you thank God for making you the way He did.
~Hufstetler in Calm My Anxious Heart by Dillow

The Hufstetler quote paints a very stark picture. It boils down to this: You can't live with others until you can live with yourself.

This quote comes from the 3rd chapter of Calm My Anxious Heart  which focuses on Psalm 139. A psalm prompts us to embrace the intentions of our Creator. In Genesis 1, the creation story, God looks at what he has made and he says, "That's good." In response this writer cries out in agreement, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." He highlights the loving attention God lavishes on you and I from our bodies, to our thoughts, to our feelings, even to our habits. Despite having memorized this whole chapter in 7th grade, I later still struggled to thank God for making me the way He did. In fact, I wondered if he had been asleep the day I was born.

I was born to Chinese parents in the American South. I stood out; in school, in the stores, on our street. Nevertheless, all my closest friends in childhood were also Chinese. My friends' moms and dads were my "aunties" and "uncles". I merrily lived in this happy bubble of Chinese-American life until my teen years.

In the midst of my teen angst about seemingly everything, I remember thinking, "I wish I were Chinese born in China or American (White) born in America." The constant feeling of not fitting in because I didn't understand homecoming and Friday nights out and the Breakfast Club and sleepovers crescendo-ed into an inability to accept that I was not some cosmic mistake. God must have been asleep that day and gotten confused. A Wong Yuen-Ling should be born in China. And an Andrea White should be born in America. But Andrea Wong? What is that other than a mistake?

At 18 or 19, I finally noticed Ephesians 2:19, and it reorganized my inner sense of geography. I'd remembered the beginning of the chapter where Paul lays out the state of humanity: In sin, we were dead. But God, in his loving mercy rescues us in our utter helplessness through Jesus. This rescue is so complete that not only does life overcome death, but that old division between Jews and not-Jews is obliterated. Now here comes verse 19: "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household..."

Paul was speaking to his friends in the city of Ephesus about their identity, but I needed to hear this about my own identity. All I could see what my own strangeness and alienation, the many ways I didn't fit in. I needed to know that whatever I felt about my status as a person in my community, as a person who belonged or not, in Christ I had new citizenship, new household membership. In Christ, I belonged.

Calm My Anxious Heart makes the point that if we knew how purposefully and lovingly God created us, we could give up some of the hang ups (or dare I say it, self-hate) we have about ourselves. That strikes me as right, but in my own life, the reality of belonging to God's kingdom through Jesus regardless of my own true and perceived traits has been the key to following the second half of the second greatest commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Fiat Lux

Yesterday night, we (almost) rang in the new year watching Space Cowboys. The movie describes the efforts of four men to finally make it into space 40 years after they were ripped off the program. Of course, they make it to space and one turns to the other and says, "This was worth the wait." The cosmos is awe inspiring, and the mere footage of earth below never ceases to grip me.

Today, I read Genesis 1-5. It feels like it's been a long time since I read over the familiar words of Genesis 1. This passage gives an account of God creating the universe. "Fiat Lux" is the concise Latin rendering of "Let there be light." In fiat's verb form there is imperial power where speech and will are transformed into substance and action. It's like the curl of the conductor's baton that sets the orchestra in motion. That power is unleashed repeatedly as God forms and fills the earth.

The magnitude of that power highlights my miserly faith. Instead of living confidently that such a God can take care of me, I doubt and laughably attempt to apply my will and my force to bend the universe to my needs and wants. What a joke. Right? Reading the creation story is always like spiritual chiropractry.

But then comes verses 26-28, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.'"

Just as I am feeling exceptionally small, feeling in absolute awe of a being with the power to hang the earth in its orbit, I read about being made in the image of God. I imagine that if I were kneeling before the Queen and she told me to stand, that these might share similar feelings. I want to poke myself and say, "My flesh and bones are made in the image of God?" Not that I know precisely what that means. I mean, up to that point, all that has been discussed about God is his ridiculously amazing, creative power. Does that mean I have something like that? Whatever it exactly is, it feels ennobling like I've been given a mission and responsibility. As it turns out, after designating humans as creatures made in his image, God designates them rulers over the earth and tells them to be fruitful and increase in number. Mission: be fruitful and increase in number; responsibility: rule and subdue the earth.

While I don't think that every couple has to have kids, it does seem that a goodly portion should if that increasing in number thing is to happen. Another new mom and I are wondering what the Bible has to say to us as mothers. We are both highly educated professionals who feel a lot of tension between our child rearing and our careers. I think this passage affirms the goodness of our role and responsibilities as mothers, an affirmation we do not receive professionally. I also think it affirms our professional work insofar as our labor extends the dominion of God, something that can be discussed at greater length another day.

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This post is part of an ongoing series I am writing along with the author of On Expecting