the deep, strong, blessed restlessness

But even though errors are numerous, truths are still only one, and there is only one who is “the Way and the Life,” only one guidance that indeed leads a person through life to life. Thousands upon thousands carry a name by which it is indicated that they have chosen this guidance, that they belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, after whom they call themselves Christians, that they are his bond-servants, whether they be masters or servants, slaves or freeborn, men or women. Christians they call themselves and they also call themselves by other names, and all of them designate the relation to this one guidance. They call themselves believers and thereby signify that they are pilgrims, strangers and aliens in the world. Indeed, a staff in the hand does not identify a pilgrim as definitely as calling oneself a believer publicly testifies that one is on a journey, because faith simply means: What I am seeking is not here, and for that very reason I believe it. Faith expressly signifies the deep, strong, blessed restlessness that drives the believer so that he cannot settle down at rest in this world, and therefore the person who has settled down completely at rest has also ceased to be a believer, because a believer cannot sit still as one sits with a pilgrim's staff in one's hand – a believer travels forward. 

Soren Kierkegaard

Why go, and not just give?

David Platt answers a question in his book Radical that I've been confronted with as well in the past. I thought I would share his response with you all.

I remember when I was first preparing to go to Sudan, a nation impoverished by civil war. The trip was going to cost me around three thousand dollars. It wasn't easy to travel into Sudan since they were still at war, and we would have to charter a plane and spend a few extra days to make that happen. I remember one dear lady in the church coming up to me and asking, "Why don't you just send the three thousand dollars to the people in Sudan? Wouldn't that be a better use of money than your spending a week and a half with them? Think of how far that money could go."


I wrestled with that question. Was I wasting these funds in order to go when I could simply give the money instead? Should I even be going? I continued wrestling with that question until I got to Sudan. There I had a conversation with Andrew that shed some light on the question.


Andrew was sharing with me about his life in Sudan over the last twenty years. He had known war since he was born, and he described facets of the suffering and persecution his people had been through. He told me about the various groups, most of them secular or government organizations, who had brought supplies to them during that time, and he expressed thanks for the generosity of so many people.


But then he looked at me and asked, "Even in light of all these things that people have given us, do you want to know how you can tell who a true brother is?"


I leaned forward and asked, "How?"


He responded, "A true brother comes to be with you in your time of need." Then he looked me in the eye and said, "David, you are a true brother. Thank you for coming to be with us."


Tears welled up in my eyes as the reality of the gospel hit home with me in an entirely new way. I was immediately reminded that when God chose to bring salvation to you and me, he did not send gold or silver, cash or check. He sent himself - the Son. I was convicted for even considering that I should give money instead of actually coming to Sudan..... Was I really so shallow as to think that my money is the answer to the needs in the world?"




Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that giving money isn't a wonderful thing. It's beautiful when we sacrifice so that others may have food or shelter or medical care. But going somewhere puts a face on the people to whom you're giving. They are no longer an object of your charity; they are your brothers and sisters. Your dear friends. The same things that hurt them hurt you, and you cry with them instead of just for them.

I remember well when my friend Kevin came back from Rwanda. He worked with a humanitarian organization and grew a deep, deep love for the Rwandan people. It wasn't just that he went, it was what he did when he came back. He talked to all of his friends constantly about how wonderful the Rwandan people are, how kind, how hospitable, how hopeful in the face of heartbreak and past suffering. Because he went, many people, including me, now feel a connection with Rwanda, though we have never been there. We can put faces to the country, and we feel like we have a genuine connection with its people. So not only does going to another country make you a brother or sister to the people there, it stirs a deep love in others when you come back.

Money alone is not the solution. Giving money is just one part of giving our love...and our love - that force that says, "You are my brother, and I hurt and hope with you" - is what really has the power to heal broken nations and broken people.

On Heaven and Materialism

From "Transposition" by C.S. Lewis, in the book "The Weight of Glory."

Let us construct a fable. Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but the dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance, she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen.

She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities, and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that that outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute or two they are at cross-purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception.

"But," she gasps, "you didn't think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?"

"What?" says the boy. "No pencil marks there?" And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition - the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the coloured three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve.

The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother's pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.

So with us. "We know not what we shall be" (1 John 3:2); but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like pencilled lines on flat paper.

....

You will have noticed that most dogs cannot understand pointing. You point to a bit of food on the floor; the dog, instead of looking at the floor, sniffs at your finger. A finger is a finger to him, and that is all. His world is all fact and no meaning. And in a period when factual realism is dominant we shall find people deliberately inducing upon themselves this doglike mind. A man who has experienced love from within will deliberately go about to inspect it analytically from outside and regard the results of this analysis as truer than his experience.

As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism. The critique of every experience from below, the voluntary ignoring of meaning and concentration on fact, will always have the same plausibility. There will always be evidence, and every month fresh evidence, to show that religion is only psychological, justice only self-protection, politics only economics, love only lust, and thought itself only cerebral biochemistry.

/End C.S. Lewis, begin Becky

I'm thinking that while we should avoid a purely hedonistic view of heaven, at the same time there is no shame in picturing it as a place of great earthly pleasures. Not that they will exist there in the same sense that they exist here, but that we must associate heaven with our greatest joy. We can't deprive ourselves of picturing any pleasure in heaven simply because we can't now imagine the form it will take. We can't now imagine the incredible relationship we will have with the King, so we must take our best experiences with earthly relationships and with the Holy Spirit and combine them into a promising shadow of what will be. So the view of heaven provided for us in the Bible, a place of feasting and riches, is not an elementary one, but a way of relating for us the joy we are to obtain. And here is where God is once again so wonderful - on one hand, He tells us things we can't possibly understand and can only speculate on until we die, reminding us of His mystery and highness, but on the other hand He speaks of some of our purest, simplest pleasures being present there - aesthetic beauty and good food.

I truly love summer.

So I picked out some favorite summery poems.

Summer Sun by Robert Louis Stevenson

Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.


Sonnet XVIII: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


Exhortation: Summer 1919 by Claude McKay

Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder,
And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder:
Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!

In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking,
And its golden glory fills the western skies.
O my brothers and my sisters, wake! arise!
For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking,
Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off the grave's disguise,
And the foolish, even children, are made wise;
For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making--
O my brothers, dreaming for dim centuries,
Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!

Oh the night is sweet for sleeping, but the shining day's for working;
Sons of the seductive night, for your children's children's sake,
From the deep primeval forests where the crouching leopard's lurking,
Lift your heavy-lidded eyes, Ethiopia! awake!

In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking,
And its golden glory fills the western skies.
O my brothers and my sisters, wake! arise!
For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking,
Ghosts have turned flesh, throwing off the grave's disguise,
And the foolish, even children, are made wise;
For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making--
O my brothers, dreaming for long centuries,
Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!


Summer Morn in New Hampshire by Claude McKay

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children's feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth's wet breast.

But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.


The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?


Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith by Mary Oliver

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green
stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.


Birches by Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.


Tryin' On Clothes by Shel Silverstein

I tried on the farmer's hat,
Didn't fit...
A little too small -- just a bit
Too floppy.
Couldn't get used to it,
Took it off.
Tried on the dancer's shoes,
A little too loose.
Not the kind you could use
For walkin'.
Didn't feel right in 'em,
Kicked 'em off.
I tried on the summer sun,
Felt good.
Nice and warm -- knew it would.
Tried the grass beneath bare feet,
Felt neat.
Finally, finally felt well dressed,

Nature's clothes fit me best.

My Portion

I read The Taming of the Shrew this week. It was really funny, probably one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. Alongside it, I read chapter 8 of this “companion to Shakespeare” guide to help us understand the times better. 

“The bride’s family promised to give to the married couple a dowry made up of property, valuables (silver and jewelry, for example), and cash. This was also called the bride’s portion…”

Portion. I’ve heard this word before (I mean, other than in the context of a meal). I thought of a line in “Amazing Grace” - The Lord has promised good to me; His Word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures.

If Christ is my portion…if Christ is my portion…that means everything. The church does not deserve to be the bride of Christ. Not one bit. Has there ever been a more uneven match? Has any husband (even the husband of a “shrew”) ever had such work cut out for him? Of purification, of reconciliation, of unfailing love towards a continually adulterous bride? 

In the Renaissance, a portion was a promise. It secured a husband for the bride (her primary goal in life) and ensured that the young couple would survive as they began their lives together. But once there was a bride that was so unsuited for her would-be husband, so far beneath him, that no dowry her family could possibly give would appease her fiance’s Father. However, as unattainable as this perfect husband was, he was the bride’s only hope. Without him her life would be meaningless. Without him she was nothing.

What if, instead of rejecting the bride, telling her there was no hope, that she would never have this husband, the fiance's Father allowed the marriage? Of course, before doing so, he set up plenty of ground rules to make her a better match for his Son and to save her from herself. You would think the bride, in her thankfulness, would be the best wife possible, with a constant heart and a thankful soul. But it was quite the opposite; the son did everything he could for his bride, serving her though he was infinitely above her, coming to her rescue when enemies threatened her, listening to her though he was infinitely wiser, and treasuring her as a jewel though she was far uglier than he. She, on the other hand, desired another man – charming but insincere, deceitful and selfish, alluring and dangerous, who seduced her but said she could not have him until she murdered her husband. 

So she killed her only hope.

After her hope was dead, she ran into her new lover’s arms, only to be repulsed, beaten and laughed at. He left her completely alone in despair. Of course, now and then he would come back, promising that this time he would be faithful, that this time she would find the hope and joy anew that she had killed…but she would always be left alone, scorned, in a frightening and solitary darkness. 

But the Father…the Father, though it would have been just to avenge his son, though it would have been completely fair to leave the bride to die in her hopelessness with her deceitful lover, had pity. He saw this shamed creature, saw what she could be, not the ugly thing she was, and offered her a new identity if she would only leave her unconstant lover behind. Once again, she needed no portion – only to acknowledge the sacrifice the Son had made for her and exchange her ways for his ways. And so, upon her acceptance, the Father took her to a new place, gave her a new name, gave her a new face. He made the ugly beautiful. He made the old new. He gave her the most complete love she had ever known – an eternal security and yet also an eternal adventure. And best of all, she learned that her husband had never and could never die, though he was no longer physically with her. He would forever live on to battle her deceitful enemy, who had wooed her and thrown her away, and worse, who had mocked and attacked him and his Father, until that enemy was no more. And, once recreated, once she had abandoned her old self, she was fit to join him in that battle for Good, to war against all things untrue. And fit to share in the victory when He triumphed.

Nothing less than a perfect Life was a sufficient dowry for this woman. Nothing less than complete recreation could make her see the truth and stop believing lies. And yet the Father, who is in the business of creation, gave it all willingly, for he forever gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.  

Unveiled Faces

From The Four Loves:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the perturbations of love is Hell."


Some days, I look at my life with its "hobbies and little luxuries," its meaningless laughter and diversions, its imitations of love, and see an environment hostile to reality...the fragile creation of a person trying desperately to pretend ownership of my own life. It's on those days that I realize the surest path to hell is not to do evil things, but to never awaken to reality...which is why, in some ways, I'm far more worried about my rich, "good people" American friends than starving children overseas or people who have done terrible things. What do a starving child, a murderer, and a victim of the sex trade have in common? They all know there is such a thing as evil and that we by ourselves are too weak to conquer it.

A distracted environment is far more hostile to the Truth than an evil one.

It's on these days when I realize the current trappings of my life mean nothing, nor are they what I rejoice in. But what I love - that matters. And what I love is Jesus Christ, because He is the only thing that is real in a world full of unrealities, diversions, and deceit. And even when life is dark, I see His Love everywhere! In His Word, in books, in conversations, in people's eyes, in animals, in growing green things. The Creator can be seen in all of His creations, and with the new eyes He has given me, I can see beauty where before I could only see ugliness.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable." My life's goal is to have a vulnerable heart before Christ. To allow Him to hurt me so I can change for the better, to clean me up when I'm dirty and pick me up when I've fallen. To allow Him to bless me when I don't deserve it, love me when I hate others, and lead me when I want to walk in the other direction.

You can't know the Truth if you refuse to be vulnerable, nor can you know Love.


From 2 Corinthians:

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

My dream is for reality...not the ugly reality of this world that will pass away, but the truth of my everlasting God who will one day destroy everything that has caused pain, anger, jealousy, or hatred. That is how I try to live every day, seeking reality. I won't always write things as heavy as this, but it's important that you know why I do everything I do. Why I want to know you for who you are. Why I want us to stop pretending. Why I want you to know this Mediator between God and Man, Jesus Christ.

So that one day, we can all stand with unveiled faces before Him, finally free...and fully loved.