KILL your DARLINGS

It's humility that's got me down these days and I suppose that's not a bad place to be after all. I have no wish, desire, or need to draw any more attention to the recent happenings in the faith-blogosphere in internetdom. If you caught whiff of it, it was enough, and if you were in the unfortunate position of being a blogger yourself who is used to having people look at you for what to tweet and retweet next, well, even worse. I learned my lesson with KONY 2012—acts of division among the body are not my cup of tea, no matter what's in the water.

I sent a draft of a post of political nature to a blogger friend last week along with the question: should I post this? It wasn't the post itself, though, that made him warn me against posting it, but the subject: "People don't come to Sayable for this, they come for grace, for encouragement, and for the gospel." Or something along those lines. I deleted the draft and went on my merry way. In college a creative writing prof quoted William Faulkner in our class saying everyone needed to "learn to murder their darlings in their writing, and for pete's sake, Lore, would you quit murdering your darlings?" I've never been too married to my words.

But if there is one thing that these sort of hurricanes in the blogosphere teach me, it is that we maybe ought to perhaps at least divorce our darlings, sit down quietly, and let the Holy Spirit do what he does best—namely, to teach and guide his habitats into all truth (John 14).

So I've been thinking about humility this week, how low can we go, and all that.

John said, "He must increase, I must decrease." And Paul determined to "boast nothing but the cross." And I think we could learn a bit more from these apostolic fathers.

At the root of pride is the feeling that we have the corner on the market (or theology, or politic, or semantic), and the price of meat is just going to keep on rising. We feel, in error, that if we do not guard this piece of the pie with everything our mamas gave us, the whole world will go without pie. And what a pity that would be.

But the cross? The cross levels it. It somehow levels the misapplied doctrine, the faulty readings of scripture, and the sinner who can't stop sinning. We don't like to say this because we don't like to murder our darlings. We don't like to cross out the possibility that upon this doctrine He will build His church. But the truth is He's building His church and He's invited you and me to come along—pick up the bricks and slather the mortar. He's building it with or without us.

He's building it of people who know the only way to be first is to be last. He's building it of people who know the difference between close-handed and open-handed theologies. He's building it of people who will reach out to the least of these (even when the least of these thinks they're the greatest of these). He's building it of the little people, and dare I say, the little bloggers and tweeters and facebookers who think more than twice about stamping their feet, calling foul, and jumping on bandwagons, or defending their ilk with wit, sarcasm, and theology.

So maybe you didn't weigh in this week or maybe you never weigh in or maybe you were hanging laundry, shuffling littles, and clocking in at work this week and never caught a whiff of anything amiss. Whoever you are and wherever, He's building His church and He's looking for the lowly and humble to come along with Him.

He's looking for people willing to die on no mountain but the one on which cross stood tall and offered all: righteousness in Christ alone.

WHO is GOD?

The roads are pockmarked and uneven, my step is steady and forward. The sun is rising over the horizon in front of me and this past weekend's sermon sounds in my ears. The Holiness of God.

I have struggled for many years to understand the character of God. A misunderstanding of it ultimately led to a crossroads where I had to ask the question: am I saved at all? And I don't think that's too extreme. Some would say that He is a mystery, and I would agree, but for me to know Him at all the veil had to be torn in two, and He did that for me. He did that for me.

This morning I am reading Psalm 145 which is like flash fiction or the cliff notes for the story of God. His character there, splayed out on a quarter of a spread in my bible, mercy, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, enduring, gracious, greatness, righteousness, glorious. If ever I find myself waning on the character of God again (And I do. And often.), I can turn here and get inoculated for yet another slew of tiring, confusing, humble, failure-ridden days.

I don't have to be, because He is.

He already is, so I don't have to be.

And some, myself included, might argue that until they are flush in the face and full of can-do-itiveness. And some, myself included, will undeniably fall again, fall short of holiness, miss the mark, falter in faith, and try their best to make a mockery of God.

I ate dinner with a friend last night and as we stood by my car we talked about how God cannot be mocked. Paul said it to the Galatians and as much as I want to defend my faith against the cajolers and mockers of it, the truth is that left to my own devices, I make the greatest mockery of His name of anyone I know.

"It's why the cross." I think this morning, over Psalm 145 and my coffee. It's why the cross, I have to remind myself when I feel tired, confused, and ridden with failure. It's why holiness, perfect character, hung on a cross—so the veil could tear in two, so I could enter into His holiness with my wretchedness.

Are you struggling to believe His goodness today? I am. I'll tell you, I am. But here's something, friend, He knew that. At the end of Psalm 145, after David exholes the grandeur of God, he comforts the little people with this: The Lord is near to all those who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

All I know some days is that He is all that I know to be truth and that's good enough for me. He is good. He is my good.

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SILENT FIGHT

It is hard to win the battle when you don't feel like fighting.

Depression is no stranger to me, even if he has been the crazy uncle who was ousted from the family a few years back. He was kicked to the curb in 2010—I stood in my doorway and told him to never come back.

But he's been peeping in my windows and knocking on my doors recently. The other day I saw him in the swirls of paint on my bedroom ceiling. I lay there quietly, willing him away, asking him kindly, ignoring him, and finally looking him full in the face and telling him in no uncertain terms he was unwelcome.

He moved to the bathroom, staring back at me from the mirror, in the sad eyes, the straight mouth.

"Where is my joy?" I asked him. He shrugged. He is indifferent, this Uncle Depression.

I've been listening to a sermon from 2006 a friend posted. I've listened three times. It's my own pastor and he's not saying much different than he says in 2012, except a short rant on how ipods are here to stay (seriously?). He's talking about how sometimes we just have to move our feet in the direction of water and trust that wilderness can be where we find hope. 

There's something different about this visit with Depression—different than his previous occupancy in my heart. Before he felt like he was there to stay, unbidden, but there to stay. This time he's just teasing me but he's also leaving room for me to still see the water. This time I know where the water is and I want it, I'm thirsty for it, and I know where to find it.

I just don't feel like it.

It's hard to win the battle when you don't feel like fighting and I guess that's where I am today. Everywhere I look, Uncle Depression is lining up his battalion, setting up a formation of fighters who will accost my soul and threaten my joy. And I feel alone. I know I'm not alone. But I feel alone. And no amount of people on my side will change that, I know. I've been down this path before.

What's different is formerly I'd fill my army up with doing, doing, doing. And this time I feel I just need to be still, trust. He will fight for me. I know it. I don't feel it. But I know it.

"The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent."

Exodus 14.14

COME to BE

I'm weary. Can I be honest?

I'm weary.

I'm tired as soon as I wake up in the morning and I'm tired long before I turn my light out at night. I'm tired of being and doing and having and knowing and I'm tired of being tired of those things.

In the past two years the gospel has felt oh, so near to me. It has been such a deep well to me and a rich source of joy for me. And, to be honest, I'm confused. I'm confused about why my heart feels so cold these days, so far from Jesus, and so indifferent to the Holy Spirit. He has and continues to abound with grace and goodness toward me, so why the weariness?

The truth is I don't know. I don't have an answer. I want to be spiritual and hope-filled and talk about the valleys of faith and how we have to experience the valley to find joy on the mountain or some other Christian-speak. But I have been doing this long enough to know knowing isn't enough.

So this is what I'm doing in my valley: I'm just being weary and I'm being okay with being weary.

There is one thing you can do in a valley you can't do on peaked mountaintop: you can walk a level path, a flat one, one made for the weary. And I'll take it. Today I'll take it.

I'm listening to Come to Me a lot these days.
(Written by our stellar worship team.)

Weary burdened wanderer
there is rest for thee
At the feet of Jesus
In His love so free

Listen to his message
Words of life, forever blessed
Oh thou heavy laden
Come to me, come and rest

There is freedom, taste and see
Hear the call, come to Me
Run into His arms of grace, 
Your burdens carried, He will take

Bring Him all thy burdens 
All thy guilt and sin
Mercy's door is open
Rise up and enter in

Jesus there is waiting
Patiently for thee
Hear him gently calling
Come oh, come to Me

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THE ORIGINAL LOVE

You might have noticed a curious absence from my story last week. Or you might not have noticed at all (Narcissism is one of my greatest qualities, so I'm always concerned with you being concerned with me.). The absence was this: the Love of God for me.

And it was no mistake that kept it out. That was intentional.

Perhaps it was because I was so intolerable as a child and teen, or perhaps it was because being tolerable wasn't even enough, but I spent much of my time sent to my room or grounded or put away from people and things I loved. I grew to equate me being a disappointment with distance from those from whom I wanted love most.

If you are grown now, you know that feeling like a disappointment is a nagging itch that won't be scratched (or perhaps your greatest quality is ego, in which case I will pray for us both). I think that failure, or even fear of failure, is the mercenary messenger sent to grind us into harder work or hope for heaven. Either one will do. If I fail you, it is only a short reminder to you that I am still human, but it is a long reminder in a slew of reminders to me that I have been sent to my room with no dinner.

This morning I worked from home, finishing a project that's been good for me in the work-with-your-hands sort of way. From original sketches to scanned images to vector files to letterpress machinery to my kitchen table this morning for the final brushes of watercolor before mounting on mats—it has been a labor of love, but labor nonetheless. Piles of prints with Psalm 18:19 on them, "He rescued me because He delights in me."

Half are being hung on the walls of girls we've rescued from the red-light district in India and the other half are our gift to donors who helped rescue them.

It is very easy for me to believe that those girls have been rescued because God delights in them.

It is also very easy for me to believe that our donors who have sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears to rescue, are delighted in by God.

My roommate drinks her tea this morning while I am bent over the cards with my paintbrush. "Don't forget that that's about you too" she says and taps the prints. And I look up at her because it never occurs to me that God delights in me.

He saved me, yes.
He chose me, yes.
He sanctifies me, yes.
He teaches me, yes.
He pursues me, yes.

But delights in me?

Draws me near to him?

Loves being around me?

Surely not.

I'm still very good at lining up my disappointing behavior and coming up with reasons why I ought to be grounded for life, yet all the while He's saying, "Come close, come near, be near."

I write to a friend the other day that the beauty of progressive sanctification is that "there isn't a part of yesterday's me that doesn't contribute to today's me. My hordes of sin, my mistakes aplenty and the proof of them only show that there's work to be done."

It seems to me that the best place for that work to be done is close to my Maker, the artist who crafted me from the original sketches and who will finish me to completion.

Note: If you are a parent, draw your kids close to you in times of disappointment. You will fight it. They may fight it. But I know of no other way to show them the length of God's love from a young age than to draw them close. Love them nearer to you and so nearer to Christ's love.

The Gospel from the Red Light District

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

Flannery O'Connor

We're in a flat fronted van in rural Nepal, headed to the Himalayan foothills. Our driver only speaks Nepali and our host broken English.

"These lower caste." He says, his arms spread wide, encompassing everything we can see from small, square windows. A shanty-town, blue tarps, brown ground, bloodshot eyes, this was the price they paid for their last name.

"So there's no getting out of this?" I ask. "Not even if they get an education?"

"Education? No. These lower caste. No education for them."

"So how do they get out? What hope do they have?"

He shrugs, looks forward again. I wait for an answer. "Sometime they get jobs out of here, out of Nepal. Thailand. India. You know?"

It's a few years later and I am meeting a girl named Rehka. She shares a last name with that of my Nepali host years ago, but she's traveled to America from India. I ask her if she is Nepali. "Yes!" She nods, her eyes lighting up. "You know Nepal?"

"I know Nepal," I say. I remember the shanty town, the tarps, the hopelessness of faces caged in by genes and a system so unjust to my western ethnocentricity.

Rehka is beautiful, with the light, gentle look for which the Nepali are known. Her wide set eyes are bright, her skin clear, her smile brilliant. She laughs easily and is comfortable immediately among us. She sits gracefully on the floor of our office and tackles a menial task I've been putting off in the busyness of the week. She chatters in Hindi and English, switching easily between the two, even though neither are her native language.

She seems like royalty in joyful servitude. A humbling juxtaposition.

And yet, Rehka was sold by her older brother into a scheme more complicated than she could have ever imagined.

Mumbai's Red-light district: 

24 lanes—60,000 women for sale.

The caste system is as unjust as it seems to any westerner raised in an equal-opportunity culture. If "If you can dream it, you can achieve it," is the our mantra, then "Keep your eyes down, and get what you're given," is the mantra of the lower castes. Illegal activity, therefore, seems to be the only way for them to get a little pocket change—which is all her brother received in the trade for her life.

Rehka was drugged repeatedly and driven to Asia's largest Red-Light District in Mumbai, India. Passed from person to person, each one a different link in a chain that closed more tightly around her over the next week, until she was caged completely.

For the next few weeks Rehka was drugged intermittently and beaten regularly. When her resolve and will were finally perceived to be broken, she was delivered the news that she now owed an insurmountable debt to her captors which could only be paid back one way: sex.

In five years, a child goes from infancy to speaking in full sentences, writing simple ones.

In five years, a gangly middle-schooler graduates valedictorian.

In five years, a hard-worker at a blue collar job in America can make $125,000.

In five years, Rehka was raped an average of 20 times a day. About 36,500 sexual assaults. At the equivalent average of $1 an act, and yet she still could not pay the fullness of her "debt" to her captors.

When she met the director of our rescue program in Mumbai, she was broken and void.

I met her seven years later, carrying herself like humble royalty.

Rooms in Mumbai's RLD 

where girls are raped repeatedly daily

As I ask her about her story, she glows, recounting how excited she is to be a part of a ministry that is rescuing girls like her and rehabilitating them, loving them, counseling them, offering them something that supersedes any caste system: the gospel.

When she says this, I realize that the rescue of trafficked victims is so much more than beating a system, shutting down brothels, arresting pimps, madams, pornographers, and greedy older brothers. The rescue of trafficked victims is the reflection of the heart of the Father.

The Father says, come to me, all you who are weary, burdened, heavy laden.

All of you.

All.

The caste system seems to be the most unjust system of any religion I see around me, subjecting humans to begging, stealing, and selling humans. The sex-trade system seems to be a system of dogs, beating children into submission to horrific acts. The rescue of these girls seems impossible, 60,000 women in this one Red-light district ALONE. The finances insurmountable, a $32 billion a year industry globally.

But for the gospel.

The gospel.

The gospel breaks into these Hindi castes and levels them, setting free captives in Red-Light Districts and in shanty slums. The gospel breaks into my western ethnocentricity and levels me at my heart—these are humans, living, breathing, thinking humans, no different than me. The gospel is the only thing that can penetrate the hearts traffickers and victims alike—the only thing that can free them from the cage of greed and the brothel cage.

"Fear not, for I am with you;

   I will bring your offspring from the east,

   and from the west I will gather you.

I will say to the north, Give up,

   and to the south, Do not withhold;

bring my sons from afar

   and my daughters from the end of the earth,

everyone who is called by my name,

   whom I created for my glory,

   whom I formed and made."

Isaiah 43:5-7

Today is Human Trafficking Awareness Day.   

If you'd like to share this post on Twitter or Facebook, consider using this copy: A true story from @loreferguson on the Red-Light District: http://bit.ly/w4HFUr  #humantrafficking

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If this post impacted you, please consider making 

a donation to one of these fabulous non-profits. 

Sower of Seeds International—working to rescue and rehabilitate girls (full-disclosure: I'm employed here, but they didn't make me write this).
Unearthed Pictures—producing media to raise awareness.
International Justice Mission—a non-government organization working to shut down the illegal trade of humans globally.

True Stories

Around here, nobody knocks and everyone uses the backdoor. Around here, you talk over each other, interrupt freely and opinions are passed around like warm butter and cornbread at a chili dinner. I'm exhausted, but loved well and I suppose this makes up for it. I sleep well here because the stars are out and even with my blinds closed I know they are out there still. I sleep better under the stars.

It is hard to explain how beautiful this is to someone else. I try and it comes out sounding like a storybook life and I don't mean for that, because here there are hard, hard things happening and hard, hard story endings for people. But the beauty? The beauty.

The salmon are jumping, the tree tips are burnished orange, and the air is warm and cool at the same time. I am on the side porch, the water rushes past me below, there are voices from the kitchen, they're walking past me with their arms full of freshly picked apples, kayaks rest their weary bottoms on green, green grass by the garage cottage. Gulls sing to the herons and the herons stand taller still. The afternoon sun kisses my toes and God's mercy is on my lips.

I say to someone yesterday that it is like a marriage in my soul to be here. All the good, good things that I have learned this past year brought to this place I love so much and so deeply. All of that is quick on my lips in this beautiful place where in the past it has been so easy to curse God for all the times He didn't come through. The thing is, I say this morning into a microphone at the newest campus of my old church, God was good and coming through then too.

It is easy to live a facade wherever you are. Easy to live somewhere beautiful and have a broken heart. It is easier still to live within a beautiful body and cloister the brokenness inside. You feel that it will be safer there, that people only want to see the beautiful things.

And we do. Oh, how we do.

But it's the beautifully broken things that make the best stories.

And that's why I love it here. Because here, in this home, with these people, I am familiar again with my brokenness. I am reminded of my doubt. I say it in front of them. I say that the doubt wrecked me. Praise God. It wrecked me.

I had a conversation the other day with a friend. We are plain girls, we two, cheerfully scrubbed clean, unaffected, natural, confident, but no great specimens of beauty. We ask one another how difficult it must be to be beautiful, to have that to carry around with you always. It is easier, see, to be plain because people aren't as surprised when you open up the inside and show them the wickedness on the inside.

This place. It's so beautiful. God's kingdom. God's land. It's where He spread around the colors on His palette because He knew there would be little else to sustain when the going got rough. And the going gets rough here, I'll tell you. The going has gotten rough.

But I'll tell you what happens when something beautiful opens up and shows the deep, deep brokenness inside: it births beauty in the form of changed lives.

I am a life that was changed.

So happily ever after.

My view, right about now.

foxy

"Why did you lie to me?" She asked."Because," he answered, "I am a wild animal."

These lines from Fantastic Mr. Fox stick with me this week. The wildness of my sin taunts me, teases me, tempts me. I like to think I am beyond the big sins, but the truth is that it is the small foxes that ruin the vineyard and my sin-foxes are the wildest of them all.

It's the surprise of sin that frustrates and confounds me. I cannot get past the surprise attack on my soul, my actions, my mouth—the things that leap to my touch, tongue, and thought. Did I just say that? Do that? Be that?

The past few weeks I've been thinking about what walking in the Spirit means. What does it mean the walk in what the Holy Spirit has given me for today? He's given me a portion to do and a portion of comfort and help for today. But what am I doing with it? Am I walking in it? Not hording tomorrow's portion, scooping up manna that will mold by morning, but trusting that I have what I need for today?

This is all well, fine, good and easy with the tangibles like finances and cars, homes and roommates and spouses. But when it is applied to my soul and my sin, well, here the needs get blurred. I need to stop sinning, but rarely do I apply the Spirit to those besetting beasts. I'm more likely to rely on my own good works and white knuckles to beat the foxes back to their dens. I don't face the wildness head on with the Spirit and the gospel.

And I'll be honest: it lands me more humiliated in the end and not necessarily more sinless.

I'm learning more and more that the disciplines of this Christian life are not to reach some cycle of peace, some plateau of sinlessness. The discipline is to walk and walk and walk—to pilgrimage, my favorite psalm reads. To walk and walk and walk, to do it with faith and hope and love, to do it in victory and to do it in wild hopelessness. To seek and find the Holy Spirit, the comforter and helper.

Because on the inside we are wild, but He has loved us more wildly and ferociously still.

fraudulent

After I cried I called a friend back home. She is the mother of nine kids and it was 11pm on the east coast, so I sent a text first, to be considerate. We don't talk often, but there is never chatter about days and weather when we do. More likely we are either about to cry or finishing our crying and the hurried rush of words comes out sounding like "Ineedyoutoprayforme."

She listens and counsels and challenges and asks hard questions like "Well, you say that you're struggling here, but is there sin that you're not repenting of?" and "Where are you not obeying the Lord cheerfully?" I call her because I know she will pray for me, but more than that, she will send me to bed with questions ringing in my mind still.

She is a good mother. I know this because her children love her, but also because despite only four years difference in our ages, she understands that nurturing isn't a season of life, but a way of it.

"I'm afraid," I said to her. "I'm afraid that what life looks like right now will be life forever and that old patterns and old ways of thinking are creeping in again, and instead of fighting the me-monster, I want to curl into a ball, stay home, say no to everything, and pity me." And this is the truth, I'm telling you too.

What you read here, on this nicely package, pretty pastel, alliterated links page is the wrestled, true, but it's also the wrestling and I can't have you forget that. Okay?

But more than that, I can't have myself forget that.

It's a safety net for me, I know, to say that. I am warning you before things get too messy that things will get messy and that my heart isn't sure or certain, and that doubts and fears creep in, strangling hope. It's the cheater's way out, to say that. It's why I'll never write a book because, I said in an email last week:

"I am terrified that the story I will tell will be true only while I am telling it and I will carry the guilt of a half-truth for the rest of my life. It's the fraud that scares me. This is why I write tonight in my post, 'they feel that they know the real you.' They read what we write and it feels like a collective secret to them--things I wouldn't verbalize and barely process beyond sentence structure and pithy lines to draw them in. They feel they know the truth and by the time they've read it, it's untrue already. So you're more brave than most, binding your words in a book. Blogging is hard, thankless work, but it's the weak way out. I know this. I'm not okay with it, but I know it."

Here is what I know: deep, deep within me, I am a fraud.

 (we heart it)

I know this because when my friend is asking me hard questions about sin and gratefulness last night, my mouth is saying what does not reflect my heart. I think I'm telling her the truth, but later, this morning, I can list the litany of unconfessed sin and unrepentant acts. I live life glancing over my shoulder, trying to stare down the desperation of my heart. I am desperate for righteousness, but only because true righteousness means rest and I'm desperate for rest.

I want to end this on hope, but I need to come out of the closet and my closet feels dark and small today. A friend tells me this week that you keep wrestling with God until God wins and I like that picture. I like it because it is of no surprise to God that we are wrestling or that we want to win, or think we can. But it should be of no surprise to us that in the end (and all the meantimes in between) God will still win.

So I do find rest in this. I find rest in His righteousness, His final win.

I have wanted to tell you a story for a week or two now, but just because one is a writer does not mean one is a storyteller and storytelling is not my strong suit. I lose the punch line or fumble it up somewhere, I can never adequately describe characters and I get too caught up in dialogue to do anyone any justice. People ask why I don't write a novel and the truth is that I couldn't create a compelling character or story if I tried.

But I have a story to tell you, and it's true and mine so hopefully that will make it easier to tell.

A few weeks ago I saw someone on Twitter doing a book giveaway and I nearly clicked through to follow protocol on winning said book. I actually do this fairly often and usually end up not entering my name in the drawing, mostly because I've never won anything in the past and also I am a chronic doubter in the goodness of God toward me. But this particular time I didn't enter the drawing for another reason: almost a year ago I got rid of most of my belongings, including about a thousand books, and I just don't want to live a lifestyle where I'm consuming and gathering more of anything. Especially if I don't need it.

I don't need much.

It was a good reminder to me that a little stopping and thinking before acting is usually in order.

I went on my way, happily book-less. And perhaps with a notch of pride on my anti-consumerism belt.

The next morning I got an email in my inbox saying that my name was selected to win a Bible study kit from one of my favorite bloggers (Jared Wilson, a guy I have the utmost respect for, not just theologically, but because he left the comfortable Bible-belt suburbs and landed himself and his family in Rutland, Vermont where he pastors a small church. He has a passion to see the Gospel spread in New England. If I ever move back up north, I think Rutland will be on the list of very probable places to land.).

I was a bit confused about the win, see, because I hadn't entered my name in any contest or drawing. But it seems that a month or so back Jared had posted a blog asking for support for a girl in his church who was headed overseas. I was compelled. I gave. And I thought that was the end of it.

Not so, Jared said. He'd selected two names from those who gave to receive the study kit and I was one of those names.

I didn't know anything about the kit, but honestly, I didn't care. I felt immediately so struck by this one thought from the Lord: Hey, listen, daughter. It is not up to you or Twitter or blogs whether I bless you. You just abide in me and be faithful with your heart, your finances, your actions, and I will bless you in the best way I see fit. Don't pride yourself on the lack in your life, find your sole satisfaction IN ME.

Jesus, in a very small way, showed me a very large lesson.

Because I worry about my actions a lot. I play chess with my days, my schedule, my time, my words. I'm always about my Father's business by doing the best job I can at my business. But the truth is, He doesn't need me. He wants me. He desires that I abide in Him, listen to Him, worship Him, but He doesn't need me. He's going about His business whether I'm on my A-game or not. He's going to bless me whether I think I need it or not.

I got the kit in the mail the other day and it was so much more than I even knew it would be. It's called Abide and the tag-line is "Practicing Kingdom Rhythms in a Consumer Culture." And once again I'm struck by the timing and goodness of God.

He knows how to find the perfect gift for the girl who thought she had everything.

He Defends His Cause

"He defends His cause."

That's what the heading to Psalm 74 says in my bible. Then David goes on to give God a litany of reasons he feels He is not defending His cause: your foes have roared; they set your sanctuary on fire; they profane your name; we don't see any signs; why do you hold back your hand?

I wept with a friend the other night, a litany of reasons making us sure God is not defending his cause. There has been a burden on my heart for weeks now for another friend, one prayer fighting for space amongst the others: why, oh God, won't you pull through for them? I get an email last night asking: where is God in the middle of this?

I won't deny there's a flame of hope in me making it easier for me to have faith, and I won't deny that at the thought of the gospel my tears are close at hand, it is easy for me to see God these days. But I'm not so far from three months ago, six months ago, a year ago, that I forget kicking the tires of my totaled car or shouting at God for His lack of provision. I haven't forgotten the lump in my throat walking through the doors every single Sunday, the guilt accompanying a girl without faith. I'm not so far from asking "Why do you hold back your hand?"

I remember that.

Another translation captions Psalm 74 this way: He remembers His cause.

What that means is, "I remember how hard this is; I remember how difficult it is to believe in Me; I remember your pangs and your tears and the pain that accompanies all of these questions. I remember you."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sometimes I think God's cause is to bring heaven to earth. I think His cause is to prove to us that we are peons, but He is gracious to us anyway. Sometimes I think God's cause, His end-goal, is to establish a grand kingdom with Him as King. Sometimes I think He is heading up his army of pro-bono volunteers to work this grand plan of His, kept secret from us until the very end.

But today, this week, this month, I remember that I am His cause. I am part of His kingdom on earth, part of the army who prays, "...on earth as it is in heaven." I am his cause and Jesus is the way.

And He remembers me.

And He shapes and crafts these hard things through which I walk for me.

And He defends me. My squabbles and failures and falters and wrong turns--He defends against people who might object to them being a part of His design for me.

I know how selfish this sounds, how egotistical I must be to believe that God isn't more concerned with wars and rumors of wars, starving children and world politics. But this is why I am a Christian after all. Because He has dipped Himself down to earth and made Himself real to me. Because I haven't been forgotten.

Because thousands of years ago He delivered a message to a young girl-child, impregnated that single girl, birthed a baby in the middle of squalor, raised that boy in the sight of people who wanted to murder him, nailed that man to a cross and accomplished His plan for His Son.

Because He defends His cause and we are His cause. We are the cause.