On fire for Jesus, burning bush edition

Flame On: Burning Bush

This week I've been reading in Exodus and one verse has stuck with me throughout the week.

There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up." ~Exodus 3:2-3

Here's are the thoughts I've had:

First, apparently bushes on fire are not interesting. Good to know. BUT bushes on fire that aren't being destroyed? Very interesting and worth closer inspection.

Second, if we step back and look at this symbolically, what got Moses' attention was a situation that should have caused destruction didn't. When I think about lives of Christians that have impressed me, I see a common thread of surviving and even thriving despite cruelly destructive pressures--illness, death, injustice, betrayal, etc. Like Moses' burning bush, this is a strange sight and I've got to know what's going on.

Third, if we step back yet again, most of us don't want to be on fire for Jesus this way. When on fire of Jesus means being enthusiastic, "passionate", or pumped, we're ok with that. We question ourselves when our feelings aren't dramatic. Dramatic feelings are good! we think. If being on fire for Jesus means appearing to be caught in a life threatening situation that should, absent a miracle, consume us, we're all ready to check out. I know I am.

On fire for Jesus as an emotional ploy seems like something we can manufacture with enough bass, hand waving, and repeated lyrics. MOAR COWBELL!! On fire for Jesus as a supernatural consuming but not-consumed event--that is outside of ourselves. That is something else. And whatever it is, like Moses' burning bush it is a strange yet attractive sight. I think we need more of Moses' burning bush.

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Paper cut by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik

Incredible opportunity

When I was finishing university and looking around for what to do next, my internet searching brought up a professor doing work that I thought was interesting. So I applied to his department, and they flew me out to visit. It was a fun visit and I enjoyed sitting in on his class and office hours, but I decided not to go to graduate school straight out of college.

In the end, I wanted to learn from him so much, I re-applied to the program, moved to a big city I didn't like, and took his crazy 4-8PM courses for years. At one point, I was sick of that city and sick of the lack of funding in the department and looked to transfer to another program in another city. But I couldn't find a researcher I'd rather work under. And so I stayed in that expensive, crowded city, in that poor department, but with that professor. For all his faults and the surrounding difficulties, being his student was an incredible opportunity.

 [Jesus] must be clearly seen as the most important thing in human life, and being his apprentice as the greatest opportunity any human being ever has. ~Dallas Willard, "How does the disciple live?"

Being a student of Jesus is the most incredible opportunity. It is inconceivable yet true that the one who is right about everything invites us to learn from him. This learning doesn't consist of long-distance, over-the-internet lectures. This learning is an in-the-flesh, moment-by-moment, intimately-near and out-of-love experience. And from it, we can learn what is good, true, and beautiful.

This is really good news. It is a damaging half-truth to focus on our eternal souls when what we really mean is that we want Jesus to get us into heaven after we die. Indeed, it's a logical fallacy because eternity includes now. The good news of the Bible is not about later. The good news is about now and forever.

What Jesus actually says in "Great Commission" is this (which I've broken up for emphasis):

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
~The good news according to Matthew, chapter 28, vs 17-20

There are many points to make here, but what I want to push back against is our Christian cultural emphasis on just going. "Go means Go" I've heard pastors preach. And that's great. I agree. But what's to happen when we arrive? Making disciples. Introducing people to the incredible opportunity of learning all that is good, true, and beautiful with and from the loving Creator God.

What are we to be about? What does being a disciple look like? We'll keep digging into that next week.



  

He is right about everything

For the next little bit, I'd like to reflect on this article called "How Does the Disciple Live?" by Dallas Willard. 

Willard starts off this way:

As Jesus’ disciple, I am his apprentice in kingdom living. I am learning from him how to lead my life in the Kingdom of the Heavens as he would lead my life if he were I. It is my faith in him that led me to become his disciple. My confidence in him simply means that I believe that he is right about everything: that all that he is and says shows what life is at its best, what it was intended by God to be. “In him was life and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4 NAS)

The idea of apprenticeship has fallen by the wayside. Perhaps if you're in the trades it might not have, but among the people I spend time with we don't talk about and don't know about apprenticeship. The best we get is Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But the idea is that a novice learns from an expert by spending time with and being under the direct instruction of an expert. 

Somehow in the Christian-ese I grew up in the word disciple and follower came up frequently, but this idea that Jesus is a life expert from whom I should learn how to live life did not. And this is true even though the word disciple finds its root in the Latin word for student, discipulus, -a. 

Willard pushes this idea even further writing, "...I believe that [Jesus] is right about everything." Honestly, that rubs me the wrong way. I know that he's God, creator of the universe, etc. etc. blah, blah, blah, but "right about everything" seems so inflexible, so hard nosed. 

But then I ran into this other quote:

When the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian. ~ Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer.

The goal is not to become a Jewish carpenter from two thousand years ago. The goal is to learn His heart because that is and can only be right about everything.

Our church has been going through the 10 commandments which my small group went through only a few months before. (That, by the way, is a lot of 10 commandments.) Why would modern, new covenant, post-Jesus believers spend that much time with the 10 commandments? It's not to live a small, legalistic life. It's to live a large and enlarged life. The tagline for this sermon series is "Set free to live free".

Jesus, the expert on life, the creator and sustainer of life, is not just a savior for the down-the-road judgment day. He provides the pattern and instruction for how to live our right-now life. And far from being a ball and chain, the Jesus way is the best, and freest way to live.

The Ministry of Silliness

With preschool aged kids around the house, I'd say our lives are a mix of the sweet, sour, and silly. Lately, we've been in high friction mode with a lot of "That's my toy!" and "But I was playing with that!" followed by "Waahhh!!" Drives me nuts, but also makes me more aware of when the house rings with laughter and cackles. It might only be for 30 seconds, but it's gold.

This week, I've been meditating on Hebrews 4:14-16, particularly this idea of approaching God's throne with confidence.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.~Hebrews 4:14-16

In the text, this confidence appears to rest in two things: first, that Jesus has ascended to heaven as our great high priest, and second, that Jesus lived our human life and "gets" it. An Old Testament high priest offered sacrifices on behalf of himself and the people of Israel for their sins. But the blood of animals had to be offered regularly to cover sins. Jesus, as the high priest, offered himself as a sacrifice not on his own behalf, but on behalf of all humanity for all time. So that's one part of our confidence, that in Jesus, we are expiated, our sins have been paid for and do not prevent us from coming before God's majestic throne.

The other part of our confidence is supposed to be in the fact that Jesus walked the earth and lived human life and can understand our weaknesses. I'm making a bit of a leap here, but I think this works out in all the language used to describe our new relationship with God as one of adopted children.

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry,“Abba, Father.” ~Romans 8:14-15

Yesterday, we were out at a big birthday dinner, and our kids were at one end of a long table happily into all the sprinkly condiments. There was salt and pepper getting shaken out, there was sugar and pepper, pepper in water, sweet n low and who knows what. The parent-self wanted to chastise them for doing it wrong. But the kid-self remembered all those grown-up dinners my brothers and I attended where we entertained ourselves in the same way albeit Chinese style: tea and soy sauce, tea and chili paste, chili paste and mustard and green onions, and so on.

As I think about this and I think about approaching God's throne of grace with confidence, I think this confidence we're to come with is not the confidence of triumph and ability, but the confidence of relationship. It is like the confidence my children have that we find them delightful, that we are after their good, that we desire to help them*. In this, I think we need to spend more time meditating on Jesus' call to have faith like a child.

*We do have punchy parent moments where we screw this up.

The mysterious ascension of Jesus

If you're an orderly-minded person, you should just go find something else to read.

This Thursday is for many Christians the Feast of Ascension which commemorates the Jesus' return to heaven after his resurrection and is celebrated 40 days after Easter. I have never celebrated the Ascension; I've never heard a sermon on it that I remember (although I did have a pastor who loved Acts, so he may have covered it at one point); I basically have never thought about it.

But this year, I noticed, and I'm trying to rectify the issue.

First off, in proportion to the space given to Jesus' sermons and actions, the description of his return to heaven takes up very little space. In fact, if you will indulge me, I'll provide all the scripture describing the event*:

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God. ~Luke 24:50-53

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”~Acts 1:9-11

So this week, I read NT Wright's chapter in Surprised by Hope on the Ascension and Dallas Willard's chapter in The Spirit of the Disciplines, "Salvation is a Life". Both of these guys talked about stuff I had never contemplated, but I'll just present one theme that came through in both author's writing: Jesus had a human body after resurrection that was taken to heaven.

The body had wound marks from the nails. It could eat food. (Luke 24:40-43) This enfleshed being, not some dissolved spirit, was taken to heaven which isn't literally up but is actually elsewhere and near at the same time. Or so they say. It seems wonderful and totally sci-fi at the same time.

So where does that leave us? Well, for one thing, however, heaven and earth are organized and related, if I thought I understood it, I certainly don't now. Jesus, as a physical human, is somewhere in heaven, a nonphysical reality. Do his lungs still need oxygenl? Go to the bathroom?

For another thing, Jesus is not with us, but he did send the Holy Spirit. And that was for our good (John 16:7). And Jesus promises to come back (John 14:3, 18, 28). So in the Holy Spirit, God is with us, but God the Son is not, but he will come back. Clear as mud? I don't know what to do with this, but at the least, this points to the idea that my life and history are not complete. There will be a time of deeper union and intimacy between Jesus and individuals, his bride the church, and earth itself.

Finally, and perhaps most tangibly, the resurrected and ascended body of Christ shows us that the whole life of Jesus could not be stopped by death and so in Christ, our whole, embodied lives are saved. On the other side of death, Jesus had the body that he had lived in to walk and talk, eat and sleep, laugh and cry. It's from there that we get the encouragement that "...whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. (I Corinthians 10:31)"  Our very bodies and all that we do in them, hugging, hitting, holding, hiding, these things Jesus died to save. So that our hugging, hitting, holding, and hiding would become actions embued with and transformed by our loving God.

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*This is not to say that there aren't suggestions in the Old Testament of something of this sort. Nor is it to say that Jesus wasn't talking about this in John 14-17 (although the disciples certainly didn't get it). Nor is it to say that the rest of the New Testament doesn't touch on the implications of this, but as far as the Gospels go, there's not a lot.

Excellence and the Jesus life

I went to college on a scholarship and hanging around other scholarship kids and advisers, I got the sense that we were supposed to win awards and make discoveries and start businesses that were newsworthy. At the same time, I thought people touted as role models of success were obsessed with whatever it took to get there, their personal lives were in shambles, and along the way their ethics were questionable.

It didn't seem like following Jesus and being famously successful were compatible. But it also seemed ridiculous to think that following Christ was a commitment to mediocrity and lameness. I was pretty confused.

Recently, I've been working through Dallas Willard's thoughts on becoming formed in Christ, and while it's really dense material, I'm coming to see that part of what he's advocating is what I call "process over product", a theme I've reflected on often.

I was first introduced to this idea years ago. At that time, I was digesting the idea that defining my relationship with people by whether they made an active profession of faith in Christ was, well, a bad idea--overly product-oriented. Instead, maybe I should be a real friend invested that person's in-and-outs of life--more process-oriented.

This time around I'm digesting the idea that holiness is not an end point (product). Instead, it's the byproduct of life animated by Jesus' life (process). So what I aim for isn't doing holy things, what I aim for is cooperating with God taking over all aspects of my life.  

Willard talks about how salvation isn't about a future ticket to heaven instead of hell, instead our life, our present life, is saved. This made me think about Colossians 2:13 which says, "When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! (The Message)" God through the death AND resurrection of Jesus fills our sin-dead lives with real life.

So when I think about excellence, I'm beginning to think I have been looking at things backwards. Yes, if the goal is public recognition for being awesome, it's easy to lose sight of Jesus along the way. But if the goal is living my life in the Jesus way, or more conventionally, following Jesus, then being publicly recognized for being awesome might be a result. But if it doesn't happen, I think a life lived in the Jesus way isn't going to care that much.

Beauty in tears: Suffering redeemed

I've put off writing this final post on suffering. First of all, somehow all this has been emotionally exhausting. But secondly, we have a tendency to want to jump to the potential good that can be found in suffering. This is for obvious reasons--suffering is uncomfortable--but we miss out on acknowledging that we live in a world that is profoundly broken. But not hopelessly so.

Though suffering is the result of sin, just as Jesus conquered death, He can redeem our suffering.

Lately, I've been thinking that if I could tell people three things I would say:

• You are a beloved child of God.
• You can trust Jesus.
• Say yes to Jesus in big ways and small ways, day after day. 

As I think about finding beauty in our tears, about Jesus being bigger than sin and bigger than the suffering that comes from it, I think these three things redeem our pain powerfully.

You are a beloved child of God. 
Our tendency is to live in every identity but this one. We want to be known for what we have a accomplished, or who we know, or how we look, or how other people think of us. But in our suffering, as we encounter our own powerlessness, we can learn "to release our hold on worldly hopes and put our 'hope in God'."

When we embrace our identity in our belovedness as children of God (Galatians 3:26), then we can live in the tenderness of a Father who is present with us in our pain, who grieves with us, who holds us tenderly. And this Father is so powerful and loving that He can take the ugliness of suffering and use it mature us, to heal us, by "heal[ing] our hearts of self-reliance, misplaced security, fears, and complacence." In this we learn the next truth.

You can trust Jesus.
Reynoso writes in her essay that after the tragic death of her daughter, she understood better why people self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. Pain demands an answer. She says it "drives us to run either to God or away from Him." In God's love and power, we can trust Jesus. When we have the power and perspective, we can trust him with our pains in general. When we have fallen and are overwhelmed, we can trust him with our next breath, the one too painful to inhale.

The claim about Jesus is that "all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16-17). Jesus holds everything together, the world we live in, the lives we live, the breaths we take. You can trust Jesus.

So say yes to Jesus in big ways and small ways, day after day.
Saying yes to Jesus is a good idea even if we're not suffering, but it is crucial when we are blinded by our tears. When we choose Jesus' way, we learn "humble submission in pain and sacrifice"--what Jesus chose in going to the cross-- is where God can work most powerfully and gloriously.

Yes to Jesus and no to ourselves is hard. We think we understand ourselves; we know we do not fully understand Jesus. We struggle to trust Him; we struggle to believe that we are His beloved. Fortunately, we don't even have to successfully struggle.

Paul talks about his struggle this way:

I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  (2 Corinthians 12: 8-9)

We have enough. In Jesus, we have enough, we are given enough to trust, to say yes. We don't have to be strong. It's not about being pretty, successful, or with it. God's grace is sufficient. Our weakness gets in the way of nothing. In fact, it appears to be necessary. "Suffering showcases the work of God in our lives, allowing God to reveal Himself through weakness and great need."

Beloved child of God, hold on to Jesus. As he did for Israel, he does for us. He will "comfort all who mourn...[and give] a crown of beauty instead of ashes."

Quotes from Reynoso, "Formed through suffering" in The Kingdom Life.

Suffering: Taking up our cross

And [Jesus] said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. ~Luke 9:23

We're wrapping up Good Friday when we remember Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary where he was nailed to it and upon which he died though he was innocent in every way. So it is fitting that we consider the sufferings that come from taking up our own cross as we obey and imitate Christ.

For the past several posts, I have not addressed the sufferings that come from our choices. Sometimes, as mentioned here talking about the roots of suffering, we make sinful choices which have consequences. But sometimes we make the right choice, and there's pain. We choose Jesus over our own way and instead of glory there is suffering. That's a really bitter pill to swallow.

I remember at one point in my singleness being super mad at God. "I'm doing my best to live in a way that pleases you, God, and I'm out of my mind lonely." Others in following Jesus suffer small indignities and large. Some are looked down on, seen as foolish, aren't hired, aren't promoted, get reassigned. Others lose friends, lose livelihoods, lose their freedom, lose their life. And it's not fair, and it's no surprise. Such is what we are promised as followers. Love cost Christ his life. We are called to love, and it will require no less of us. And that's frankly scary.

Reynoso ("Formed through suffering" in The Kingdom Life) has this encouragement:

Because we know that obeying God and living by kingdom values will cause us to pay a price, sometimes we choose to avoid suffering and settle for less than God has intended for us. In doing so, we miss out on experiencing the powerful reality of Paul's words, "that I may know Him...and the fellowship of His sufferings" (Philippians 3:10, NASB).

In the garden of Eden, we see a perfect relationship between God and Adam and Eve. One of the main threads of the whole Bible is God's work through history to bring reconciliation between himself and his people, to make the relationship whole. On this side of heaven, while we still live in the fallout of sin, everything that brings us nearer to God has a sweetness to it. So sharing in the suffering of Christ has a promised sweetness in the midst of the pain.

Truths for the Suffering Believer

Paul wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come."

What does this mean when we are hurting? If the world without Jesus hurts and the body of Christ hurts too, what's new? What is the old that has gone?

For starters, I don't actually know. But here are some ideas from the Bible that we can hold on to.

First, as I concluded in the last post, God is not indifferent to our pain and weeps with us. This doesn't make chemo any more comfortable or solve the grief of a lost loved one, but it is nevertheless light in dark times.

Consider this testimony:
"Two weeks after my daughter's [fatal] accident, I was lamenting in prayer over how damaged Paula's body was. She had been an attractive young woman at the apex of her beauty, but in the accident she was thrown from the car and crashed against a concrete barrier. When I first saw her body in the casket, I thought we had walked into the wrong chapel. As I relived the horror of her shattered body with God, His quiet voice spoke inaudibly, "I felt that way, too." I was shocked into silence as I remembered that He, too, was a bereaved parent. (Reynoso, "Formed Through Suffereing" in The Kingdom Life)"

At the same time God empathizes with this woman who has tragically lost her daughter, God's heart is for each of us in our own experiences however we think it compares to anyone else's experiences. Pain is pain; God sees and grieves with all of us.

Secondly, we have the Holy Spirit as our comforter. In John 14, Jesus is preparing his friends for what's coming up. He tells them he's leaving soon, but that he's not going to abandon them as orphans (vs 18). With them will be the Holy Spirit described as the parakletos which gets translated as advocate, counselor, helper, comforter. Common ideas within these translations is that the Parakletos comes to the aid of one in need. And Jesus gives the promise that the Parakletos will never leave (vs 16) and will teach and remind (vs 26).

When we are in pain, pretty much we just want it to end or at least lessen. As we understand it, any supernatural power a god could have should be applied to that end. However, we frequently don't get that and certainly not when we want it. But just because we don't get what we want doesn't mean that as believers the Parakletos is not with us, that we do not have supernatural aid in our need. We may not notice until we're at the end of our rope, but God our Parakletos has been with us all the while actively helping us in our need.

Thirdly, as we follow in the way of Jesus, we come to know that death is not the end. Whether our suffering is spiritual, emotional, physical, relational, whatever it is, we have the hope of heaven. This is not a pansy, precious moments angels heaven. This is a stiff, bracing new reality filled with beauty, health, and rightness.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” ~ Revelation 21

We look around at the pain in our lives and the pain in the lives of others and the pain across the globe, across history and we can ask, "Is this as good as it gets?" And the resounding answer is No. All the good that we hope for will be fulfilled perfectly in eternity.

Where is God in suffering?

We envision God as the source of life, light, and goodness as is claimed in the Bible, and when we encounter death, darkness, and despair, our logical conclusion is that God has turned his back on us. This only adds to our misery.

Yet when we go back to scripture, we see time after time God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit moved and bowed in the face of suffering. I do not understand how this works, but this is a pattern in scripture.

God the Father
Nobody reads Ezekiel; it's a weird book tucked in an obscure part of the Old Testament, but it gives the most amazing description of the heart of God.

In chapter 16, God explains his relationship to his special people, the Israelites, with a story about an abandoned newborn he found in a field and saves. She grows up but is still fragile and in need of care and he cleans her, marries her, takes care of her, lavishing her with jewelry, clothes, and fine dining. She becomes famous across the world for her beauty.

But she begins to trust in this beauty, and the love story begins to unravel. She starts sleeping around eventually not taking money for it, but giving money for it. She takes the riches she had been given and uses them to make idols. Then, she sacrifices her children to them. What wickedness, ugliness, and profanity!

Far from abandoning her in her sin, God takes it in the chin like a rejected father and cuckold husband. Then he allows her to reap what she has sown. And there is verse after verse of his howling pain and anger, descriptions of the results of sin. Israel suffers the consequences of her betrayal, and God the Father suffers right there with her.

God the Son
In Jesus, the infinite God squeezed himself into human flesh and lived among us. That's what we celebrate at Christmas.

God physically enters our world and experiences it from first to last breath--experiences sunburns and mosquito bites, making new friends, losing old friends, family members dying, new births, weddings, physical exhaustion, hunger, and longing. Jesus lived in a minority group in a mighty empire, was born as a refugee on the run from a tyrant, was a brilliant adolescent apprenticed to become a blue collar carpenter. But more remarkably, this Friday we remember his ultimate suffering on the cross, a cruel, publically humiliating way to die slowly.

In the life of Jesus, we can be sure that not only does the great God the Father feel the fallout of sin in mysterious, supernatural ways, but God the Son fully understands our human sufferings.

Isaiah prophesied this about Jesus' sufferings (chapter 53):
...He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.

In life, Jesus experienced what we humans experience. In death, out of love, he took on the compounded, sin-upon-sin of all people and it "pierced" him, it "crushed" him. Far from abandoning us to the suffering caused by sin, Jesus in his crucifixion faced the ultimate suffering, the collective wages of sin.

God the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit, promised to us our comforter and guide also knows pain and grief.

In this next passage, we see the love of Jesus in action, our sin, and a grieved Holy Spirit:

...In all their troubles,
    he was troubled, too.
He didn’t send someone else to help them.
    He did it himself, in person.
Out of his own love and pity
    he redeemed them.
He rescued them and carried them along
    for a long, long time.
But they turned on him;
    they grieved his Holy Spirit.
Isaiah 63 (The Message)

While the Holy Spirit may be generally grieved by sin, we are told he is personally grieved as he accompanies us in our suffering:
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
Romans 8:26

This interceding is a emotional pleading that the Spirit does with us as we pray in our weakness, in our need, in our desperation.

So what?
We expect God to be far from suffering in general, from our suffering in particular. But scripture does not read that way. Instead, we have a God intimately acquainted with suffering in all ways. Whatever we may feel in our pain, God is not indifferent to our suffering, and we are not alone. His back is not turned, his face is upon us and he weeps with us.

What am I supposed to do with my life?

The Calm My Anxious Heart chapter that we're reading in my women's Bible study talks about purpose in life and encourages everyone to have a purpose statement. But it's really short on how to develop one other than to open your Bible and have magic happen.

At the same time, I've been listening to some old talks by Alan Andrews, a former president of the Navigators, and they've made me think of some questions or experiences that can be useful in identifying purpose.

In the first talk, Andrews mentions that all followers of Jesus have 3 callings: to repentance, to discipleship, and to laboring. So the first call is to turn away from our sin and toward Jesus and his saving grace through his death, burial and resurrection. The second call is to discipleship, which Dallas Willard describes as a lifelong apprenticeship with Jesus meaning we learn how to live by watching and being with Jesus.

The third call is laboring which to Andrews and the Navigators is about the work of moving people in the direction of Jesus either in a conversion experience or a discipleship process. I think about laboring as service. Sometimes people need to be served with truth about Jesus or how to have an ongoing walk with Him, and sometimes people need to be served with general acts of friendship, and sometimes people need actual serving that they could never repay.

If these are primary callings from Jesus, then when we throw up our hands asking "Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life?" we can start with these follow up questions:

1. Am I living a life of repentance where I'm walking away from sin and toward Jesus?
2. Do I allow Jesus and what I know about Him from the Bible to govern my choices?
3. Am I faithfully serving others, making someone(s) other than myself a priority?

I think these are important questions because I wonder if we see the purposes God has in our lives as we allow Him to shape our character and reveal our gifts.

We need our character to be God-shaped because purpose without God is like traveling with a broken compass. You'll get somewhere, but it probably won't be where you want to go.

We need to understand our gifts because we're told in scripture (I Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4) that everyone has some spiritual gift and that the differences are like the different parts of the body--critical functions that are different but part of a working whole. And we recognize our gifts and our community recognizes our gifts as we serve.

So if you're trying to figure out what your purpose in life is and you haven't submitted to the rule of Jesus and developed godly character, start there. And if you've done that, then start faithfully serving others. If you've been slacking at work, stop slacking. Do your job (even if you hate it). If you've never helped out your community, i.e. neighborhood, city, local church, do that for a while (even if it is uncomfortable).

You might not be writing a purpose statement during that time, but you're learning to entrust your life to God, and that thrills him, and what's the point to all this if we're not pleasing God?

But let's say you've done all this and you really want to have a purpose statement. I think some quiet time alone with God, reviewing your experiences in God's word, in work, play, and service, I think you'll see themes. That's where the purpose statement comes from.

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I'll write my personal reflections up in another post since this has gotten long. Oh, and before I forget, my favorite book on this topic is Os Guinness's The Call.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead"

Mountain and Water by
Chen Chun Zhong

My freshman year, I was part of a program that made a t-shirt saying, "We didn't want to sleep anyways." So I was raised in a culture that valorized anything that produces exhaustion--work or play.

It's fitting then, this spring break to think about rest because Jesus offers something very different from our apprehensions about not working and missing out and not having enough.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."

 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ~Matthew 11:28-30

"Work hard, play hard(er)"

"There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience." ~Heb 4:9-11

"YOLO" (You only live once)

"Be still before the Lord
    and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
    when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
    do not fret—it leads only to evil.
For those who are evil will be destroyed,
    but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land."
 ~Psalm 37: 7-9

Preparing for Lent

After a few years of celebrating Advent and Lent, I am finding them a nice "spiritual corrective". If in Advent, I am taught a particular lesson, I have a few months between Christmas and Lent to apply that to life, and then Lent starts and I get to reexamine my apprenticeship with Jesus and then a bit more than half a year to practice before another Advent and another season of reflection. Anyways, Lent this year is rather late and starts tomorrow, March 5th.

Lent is frequently associated with "giving up" something of removing something such as meat from the diet, or sweets, or tv, or social media. People have lots of reactions to this. One useful voice in the commentary is this talk on asceticism by Dallas Willard. The language is a bit heady, but it's worth the work to get through.

Lent is typically conceived of as the 46 day period between Ash Wednesday and the Saturday before Easter. A number of people have recommended using the time for focused reading in the Bible. Here are a few plans I found.

Small: The Gospels
Medium: The New Testament
Large: The whole Bible

For something different: Readings from the Church Fathers
EDIT: The above link lists a website for the readings that is incorrect. It should be http://www.churchyear.net/lentfatherscomplete.pdf


God bless you as we journey toward Easter.

Jesus is for Losers

So I am a self-improvement junkie. I'm frustrated by lack of progress, and I really like hitting milestones. Last year I really got into weight lifting, and a big part of it was constantly setting PRs (personal records). It was cool to lift more and more each time I went to the gym. Life, however, rarely indulges my addiction.

Instead, I flirt with depression regularly. For me, depression is like that creepy thing in the haunted house that is eventually going to jump out from behind a corner and scare the daylights out of you. I hate depression.

I'm also a mean mommy. It's really obvious when you lift five pounds more than last time. It's not obvious when you've yelled at your kids one less time this week than last week. I can get totally lost inside my head about really dumb things. The most recent dumb thing was madly searching the internet for the best toilet tab/deoderizer thing. When I get lost in my own head, I am short tempered with my children and husband. It is ugly.

Thankfully, Jesus is for Losers.

Back in my early teens, one of the few times I got dropped off at Planet Music to wander the aisles of CDs, I found a Steve Taylor album with a song called "Jesus is for Losers". This song while musically unmemorable made grace make sense for me.

One of my despairs in my teen years was that I could not understand the book of Romans. This made me feel really stupid. So I'd read stuff like this in Romans 7, and it'd only made the vaguest of impressions:

...but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

In "Jesus is for Losers", Taylor writes:

Just as we are
At a total loss
Jesus is for losers
Broken at the foot of the cross

Just as I am
Pass the compass, please
Jesus is for losers
I'm off about a hundred degrees

And I got it. This was my first glimpse that the Jesus thing wasn't a self-improvement thing. The Jesus thing isn't about shiny, happy, happy all the time. Or in my case, academic all-star, well-behaved all the time.

Of course, there are moments of heart-bursting joy, of beauty that seems unbearable. But I'm a "mature" Christian who is still scared of the depression monster, who still yells at her kids inappropriately, who gets lost in the internet looking for the perfect toilet tab.

Twenty years ago, this song introduced the idea that Jesus is for us while we are lost in our darkness, before we get ourselves cleaned up. And by cleaned up, I mean clean like my two year old after he "cleans up" by evenly smearing his melted ice cream over both hands.

I've been thinking about this idea of "saying yes to Jesus". Initially, I thought of it like saying yes to a marriage proposal. Like YES! Definitely, YES! Woohoo. Let's get this party started.

But lately, I've been thinking that an equally important yes is the small, desperate yes. When I am depressed, yes to Jesus is the tiniest pinprick of light in my darkness, and it takes all my energy to offer it. This is the loser's yes. This is the loser saying with Paul, "What a wretched woman I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Jesus is for losers. Praise be to God.

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."

Morally deficient

Sometime last week, someone on the internet wrote in passing that depression was on the list of ailments that was associated with the morally deficient. Normal people get headaches, the morally deficient get depressed. Ain't that a peach?

Having experienced the pits of depression these past two winters, my doctor and I decided to treat the issue as if it were seasonal affective disorder, and two weeks ago I started taking a low dose of Wellbutrin which is an anti-depressant (and smoking cessation aid, I learned). The point of this is to blunt or avoid completely another winter nosedive. Depression entails a lot of collateral damage.

But let's talk about my morally deficient self. First of all, I don't know that I feel morally deficient. But I admit that since reading that little throw away line, I haven't been tempted to wear a t-shirt proclaiming the ever present specter of depression in my life.

Then again, my daughter's recent memory verse is Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." That's a universal accusation of moral deficiency if there ever was one. And in a recent famous interview of the new Pope when asked "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?" answers, "I am a sinner." At the end of his elaboration on the point, he concludes,

"I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance."

 I find this summary very powerful. It allows me to accept my moral deficiency whether through depression or the lack of patience with my family or judgmental stance toward others. I don't need to pretend that my mess doesn't stink. It stinks. AND Jesus is mericful; I'm not thrown out because of my mess. AND Jesus is patient; he's not tapping his toe, looking at his watch as I fumble around trying to clean up. Instead, he is with me, the morally deficient, with me in love.

It is very uncomfortable to stop there as an American protestant. After Jesus loves me, I'm supposed to clean up my behavior, no? But what if I focused on the present risenness of Jesus in my life? On that infinite mercy and patience? And if my behavior cleans up, it does. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. But what I have done is to train myself to laser in on Jesus and whatever he does or does not do in my life.

In the details that matter

I got to see a college friend's mom today. I first met her something like 15 years ago. She asked how my family was doing. What do you say to that? It's been crazy, intense, and filled with gems of goodness.

There's my dad's cancer thing. Currently, looking less and less like cancer. But along the way, tremendous support from his church and medical professionals at many institutions.

And by the way, my mom was the first one we contacted about helping us after my surgery. THANK GOD she turned us down because of their previously planned trip for a 2 month stay in Malaysia. The week before the Malaysia trip is when all this crazy cancer stuff hit the roof. The two of them have been such a team wading through a 100+ medical articles to figure out what questions to be asking regarding my dad's test results.

There's my shoulder surgery. Unexpectedly, my mother in law came instead of my father in law and stayed 2 full weeks instead of a week after my surgery. A huge help in many ways especially since it took me most of 2 weeks to get back on my feet. Church folk, neighbors and even a lady from the gym have been delivering meals. Some single ladies from our church small group have been coming in the evenings before N gets home from work to help me feed the kids and bathe them. Also huge.

And Sunday, my nephew unexpectedly arrived in the world 8 weeks early yet healthy. My brother's family life has been turned upside down but in the details that matter, they are doing great. Baby CJ is breathing on his own, doing well and my sister in law is also fine. Again, wonderful help from their church friends providing meals and helping with my 2 year old neice.

Jesus talks about coming to earth so that we could have life abundantly. When I'm running late while sweating in the summer-that-won't-end while trying to buckle my kids in their carseats with just one working arm, I'm not feeling the abundance of life. I want the thermostat to turn down, I want my kids to cooperate so I can get the car going and the AC running.  

But when I think about life, how my family is alive and healthy, I am so grateful. I count these moments of alive-ness where my kids pick up every stick and twig and feather, where my niece meets her brother in his isolette, where my dad waves to us over skype, and I collect them in overflowing abundance because in the details that matter, we have been graced with abundant life.

Outliers, part 2: Basic principles

As we watch our daughter develop, we wonder if she too will be an outlier and what does that mean for her and us? Here I mean that she seems to be doing somethings ahead of schedule, and I'm not excluding this possibility for our son, but he's not so startlingly precocious at the moment.

Because of my childhood experiences, I have gone through a period of mourning over this possibility concerned that being different from her agemates would bring her inevitable grief. But as I have processed my own stuff, I have also thought about foundational principles that I would like my child or any child to understand.

I think one such principle is that God created us individually for his pleasure and glory (see Isaiah chapter 43 for one expression of this). This was translated for me in a 6th grade chapel as "God does not make mistakes." What a life-giving message to hear as a preteen, one that I went back to many, many time as a teenager. I wish that every outlier who feels alone and "not right" or "not normal" would be gripped with the reality of a loving God delighting to imbue him or her with just such qualities.

And just as the Creator God gave individual attention to each person, a second principle I want for our children is that the Redeemer Christ died for all. Translated, this means every individual is of the same, glorious worth, bought back with the shed blood of Jesus. So for all the pain of being an outlier,  if you're out there in a socially approved way, smarter, faster, richer, more beautiful, etc. it's easy to believe that you're more special. And that, of course, is bupkis.

If we can communicate these two principles to our kids, I think their hearts will be well-prepared to handle life.

UPDATE: links to Part 1 & Part 3

Jesus for stupid people

Some times life is life, stress is stress and pain is pain.

There's always been a part of me that wants to logic things out, to know causes and their effects, to solve problems, to understand. Over the years and just right now, I'm learning that sometimes what people most need is a hug.

Jesus is for stupid people, for that woman at the well who had 5 husbands, for Thomas who wouldn't believe until he poked his fingers in Jesus' scars, for Peter who denied being Jesus' friend when the going got tough.

My daughter is in a difficult three-year-old phase where she says no to stuff that she likes and is good for her. And by saying no, I mean turns into a screaming banshee curled up on the floor. Where I want to run away and wait for it to blow over, I'm learning to stick by her until she's in a better place.

Sometimes people make financial or relationship decisions that I think are dumb, dumb, dumb. But who cares? I'm learning who cares that it's their own fault they are stressed and crying their guts out? Jesus is for stupid people. He's been for me when I've been tres stupido and I can be for these friends too.

Thank God Jesus is for stupid people. If Jesus only hung out with people who always had it together and always made the right decision, and never made the dumb choice, he'd be kickin' it out in space with the Father and Holy Ghost.

Here in the US, it's another election season and I think this is applicable. Hey, y'all, Jesus is for stupid people. You know, the folk on the other side, the folk who have earned your scorn. I don't know that this would change a vote, but this should change our hearts. We are one of the stupid, loved by God and thus compelled to love our stupid neighbors, the ones with that bumper sticker.

Jesus for 'special' people

My husband and I met at University Presbyterian Church just off the UCLA campus. It was a really different church from the ones I had grown up in. Being oriented to the college campus, most congregants were undergraduate or graduate students with a few people who stuck around after graduation and even fewer who had no affiliation with the university.  Having a Korean pastor, most of the congregation was also Asian; fresh-off-the-boat international students and US-born Asian-Americans. So picture a congregation between 18-35 years old, mostly Asian, with elite university-educated minds.

Nevertheless, what strikes me about my time there is what a motley crew of 'special' people we were. When I say 'special' I think I actually mean odd & needy. I arrived at the church in culture shock after having spent a year overseas; I had very little financial means; I was skeptical of the value of the formal church setting; and I'd had a really bad roommate experience while overseas. I was a mess. And as I think of all the friends at that church, I think about what a mess they were too. Individual, messy stories.

Our leaving LA coincided with our feeling that it was time to move on from that  church. So I'm not saying it was a perfect church. But a distinguishing feature of that community is loving messy people and loving messy people who are supposed to be ok. University elites are supposed to ok, to have succeeded in the past and to succeed on into the future. What I got to participate in for myself and with others was Jesus loving the little child in each of us; the child that we'd hidden away but was scared nonetheless, was hurt and confused.

Now that I've had some time away, I think how small my dissatisfactions were compared to the privilege of being with a pastor and church committed to loving 'special' people.